Notes from Celebrity Reflection, 11 night Caribbean 1 Apr 2019 cruise

[johno1234]

Hi all, better late than never, I hope!

 

Boarding on day 1:

Piece of cake. The queue formed inside Celebrity's nice new cavernous air conditioned terminal so no baking in the midday heat. Through the line and on board in about 20 minutes. 

Lifeboat drill. Again, this was easy. Our station was the Celebrity Central mini theatre. Plenty of seats so no standing required. The drill was mostly watching a cheesy video.

 

Port 1 - Grand Cayman. Beautiful island and beaches. We jumped on a bus from the tender dock This wasn't a great option. Jammed into the bus like sardines, and instead of the far end of Seven Mile beach they dropped us off at Camana Bay in the parking lot of Royal Palms Beach Club, who charged us $2 to walk through their security check to the beach and they take away any food or drink in your bags. Could have just walked through the public beach access 20 yards away and avoided all that. We rented beach umbrella and chairs from the resort. Although the beaches are gorgeous, they are a bit over-developed with resorts for my preference. I like a natural quiet beach best. We found plenty of those in the ABC islands - see below.

 

What I learnt: I would next time get a taxi rather than the sardine bus with it's grumpy driver, to further along Seven Mile Beach and just use a public beach access. Camana Bay is walkable from the tender dock in about 30min. Across the road from the beach there are some shops including a good dive shop for dive and snorkel as well as beach gear.

 

Port 2: Cartagena

This was the only disappointment of the cruise. Cartagena old town and fort is beautiful and fascinating. However it was oppressively hot and humid and we were constantly hounded by beggars and hawkers. There were terribly sad crippled polio sufferers moaning at us and hopping along with their home made crutches. I felt bad for them but I am trying to have a nice holiday, not feel guilty. A UK couple from the ship had their bag stolen including passports (do not take these ashore!) which meant they had to leave the cruise and find their way back to the UK as CCL were apparently not allowed to take them back to the USA.  Next time I would not select a cruise that included this port. Would much rather stop in at one of the other islands.

 

Port 3: Aruba.

Sensational. We did the https://www.agwtoursaruba.com/ tour with Leroy as our guide. I cannot begin to explain how much fun it was driving these ATVs! The lady at the base told us that there was to be no racing, fishtailing or drifting. But Leroy set a cracking pace and we just raced along and did plenty of drifts and skids. First through streets, then beaches, then rocky coast, up a volcanic slope and along a high speed road back at the end of the day. We visited beaches, caves add rock pools. The terrain included scrambling over some very rough rocky terrain and these amazing vehicles gobbled it up. Several of our vehicles (16 people and 8 ATV's in our group) got punctures on the sharp rocks but Leroy repaired them on the spot in minutes. A word of WARNING about this tour though. Some of the couples found the driving too fast and struggled to keep up. The natural rock pool was potentially extremely dangerous and people have drowned there. Large ocean swells crash into it and you can't seem them coming. There's a risk of being swept out. If you are elderly or a child or not an adventurous capable swimmer, consider sitting out the rock pool or stay close to where you enter the water.

This tour alone was worth the 14 hours of flying from New Zealand! Notwithstanding the warnings above it is a must for adventurous thrill seekers.

Plenty of good shopping and bars in the town.

 

Port 4: Curacao. 

Beautiful. We did the Max Taxi tour. Max was very knowledgeable and took us to great spots in his nice van. He didn't stop talking though, so for the long drive back to port, plug in your headphones and zone out. We toured the Curacao distillery and visited a several beautiful un-developed beaches. We swam at one beach with literally dozens of sea turtles. Plenty of good shopping and bars in the town here too.

 

Port 5: Bonaire.

We did the Woodwind snorkel tour. Lots and lots of people here and at TripAdvisor have raved about how fantastic this tour is. They are not wrong and it really is as good or better as everyone says. I am an experienced scuba and snorkel diver and I loved it. My wife previously has not enjoyed snorkelling and even she loved it. Dee and her team do such a good job of making snorkelling easy for anyone. They provided great gear - they even had +2 prescription goggles for me. Plenty of food and drink included. This tour is a bargain, a must do, and on ship visit days sells out months or even a year in advance. I can see why. We say plenty of turtles again, and it was like snorkelling in a giant tropical aquarium. Every single person on this tour (about 26 people) really enjoyed it and felt safe.

Aside from that Bonaire is really nice. All the ABC islands are under Dutch sovereignty and the ports are so clean and friendly.

 

Celebrity and the Reflection:

My first CCL cruise. Really impressed with the ship and the crew. As everybody has said, the food and service was first class. I was surprised how good the shows were. Loved the Divas and MoTown music shows. Loved the comedy shows. We mainly ate in the MDR with William and Jomar as our main men and they were excellent. We had buffet dinner and one meal in each of Murano and Lawn Club Grill and enjoyed both. On an 11 night cruise the MDR can become repetitive so you need to break that up. The MDR has a stricter dress code than other lines - no shorts! I didn't know and had only packed one pair of long pants! Everyone seems to talk about the captain and the CD. The captain we hardly saw but he got the ship from port to port safely and on time and that's really all I care about. The CD I personally found annoying but who cares - It's not like I was required to sit and listen to him.

 

Drinks package. We had Classic package included. Not financially worth upgrading to premium for us despite getting through a huge amount of poolside cocktails, pre dinner cocktails, dinner wine and post dinner cocktails! HOWEVER some of the bars (e.g. World Class cocktail bar) only make premium cocktails so you have the irritation of having to sign for $1-$3 charges. That was a little annoying as I specifically wanted to avoid this tedious task that gets between me and my martini. They don't know how to make a sloe gin sour properly but I'll not quibble about that.

 

The pools. These were busy as expected on sea days and CCL are working to deal with chair hoggers. It still happens, and we routinely removed towels and other personal effects from chairs that had been unused for 30+ minutes. We even had some glaring idiots complaining to us that they had "reserved" chairs! Told them that wasn't allowed and they could go complain to the pool butler. We were a group of up to 8 so not much they could do about it. Really enjoyed the pools - swimming, reading and sucking down those pina coladas. Got sunburnt though!

 

Kids. Hardly any on the ship and CCL don't cater that well for them. No Flo-rider, no water park, no climbing walls etc so kids would probably get bored on this cruise. Suited us as we (4 couples) left our poor kids at home !

 

Overall I give this cruise an 8. It would have been a 9 but for the Cartagena port day.

 

Cheers!

 

 

[johno1234]

PS our cabin 6170 partial obstructed view balcony. There was a post from the lifeboat launching mechanism in the way but that didn't really matter. Some POV cabins didn't even have that. The lifeboat top was about at the cabin floor level so only obstructs the view looking down at the sea.

Cabin was plenty roomy. Being on deck 6 means a good workout if you take the stairs to the pools! Our cabin attendant Ninga was super unobtrusive and kept our cabin perfect. There was one gripe though. There was some sort of duct in the window corner of the cabin and when the ship was moving about in a sea way something in the duct (a loose cable?) would clang against the duct. Drove me nuts. CCL never did anything about it.

[luvcdays]

Thanks for the review!

[2flacruisers]

Loved your review...thank you!  We will be on the Reflection in November for the Southern cruise and can't wait 

[johno1234]

On 5/3/2019 at 1:25 PM, johno1234 said:

matter. S

 

Oh, and I forgot to mention: the "Silent Disco". When I saw this on the activities list I though "Lame-o".

 

I was basically forced to go along to this and what do you know - it was an absolute winner. Lots of fun, and for people like me who cannot dance or sing for nuts... it doesn't matter! Ended up going along to this one whenever it was on. Tip: have a couple of martinis first - makes it even better.

 

Come to think of it, a couple of martinis first makes just about anything better!!!!

 

Hmmm, martinis....

 

[happy cruzer]

Thanks for the review.  See you had the Classic package.  Did you have any trouble with the drink service?  Especially wine with dinner.

 

Thanks for sharing.

[johno1234]

7 hours ago, happy cruzer said:

Thanks for the review.  See you had the Classic package.  Did you have any trouble with the drink service?  Especially wine with dinner.

 

Thanks for sharing.

 

Hi, no trouble with wine at dinner. Generally just drank the house Chardonnay with my meals and it was ok. There were premium wines available by the glass, you just have to sign for the price difference. Our sommelier was omnipresent and topping up everybody's glass. If you ordered a cocktail it could take a while for the order to get to the bar., made and delivered back.

[ALWAYS CRUZIN]

Took the same cruise, Apr 1st and was blown away by the MAXX show. Awesome. Such exquisite choreography. yes, the food, the ship, the crew everything was excellent. Only one problem we had and that was our room steward. other than that. Unbelievable wonderful cruise. Worth every penny went home having a wonderful cruise. Now anxiously awaiting for the Equinox June 22.

[johno1234]

We missed that show 😞

 

Did catch the Motown, Divas, magic and a couple of comedy acts though. All pretty good entertainment but the music ones were the highlight for me.

[JaneAustenCruiser]

The Reflection and this itinerary last year (2018) was my very first cruise! Glad you enjoyed it. We went as a chartered group so most of our excursions were through our TA and they were wonderful. We had a great experience in Cartageña, but I'll bet we were shielded from some of the troubles you had based on our guide.

 

Glad you enjoyed it. It totally spoiled me and we're back for more on the Infinity this October!

[davekathy]

Thanks for taking us along on your cruise. 

[dmcburnie]

we were also on this cruise and absolutely loved it!!

 

We did Doras tour in Cartagena and felt sheltered from  lot of the begging and we really enjoyed seeing all of the sights, not sure I would have felt comfortable doing it on our own.

 

Curacao, we did a 6 hour island beach hopping tour with Irie tours - this was amazing.

 

We also did Woodwind in Bonaire.  We have two girls aged 10 and 11 and Dee made their first sea snorkel very memorable, couldn't recommend this enough.

 

Our two children loved the Reflection and were happy to go to Kids club and then meet us for shows, silent Disco etc, wouldn't suit all families but our children enjoy doing trips with us and trying different foods in each of the restaurants, for us family time on holiday very important as we both have pretty full on jobs at home with not a lot of family time.

 

We ate in Lawn club, both for lunch and dinner - both times were outstanding.  Porch seafood tower was amazing and we also ate in Murano which again was fantastic.  Had dinner in Tuscan Grille and it was ok, not worth the supplement.

 

Entertainment highlights for us were Diva, Broken strings, Karaoke, and Silent Disco.

 

We had premium beverage package which suited us perfectly as everything all included, same for wifi.

 

Our family rated this a 10 out of 10 cruise and I wish I was back on it, especially since I have spent the last two weeks ill and in hospital with infected gallbladder - how thankful am I that this didn't happen on the cruise!!!!!  Cannot wait to book our next family cruise.

[Mike981]

I hope you get well soon.
Thank you for your review.

[johno1234]

8 hours ago, dmcburnie said:

we were also on this cruise and absolutely loved it!!

 

We did Doras tour in Cartagena and felt sheltered from  lot of the begging and we really enjoyed seeing all of the sights, not sure I would have felt comfortable doing it on our own.

 

Curacao, we did a 6 hour island beach hopping tour with Irie tours - this was amazing.

 

We also did Woodwind in Bonaire.  We have two girls aged 10 and 11 and Dee made their first sea snorkel very memorable, couldn't recommend this enough.

 

Our two children loved the Reflection and were happy to go to Kids club and then meet us for shows, silent Disco etc, wouldn't suit all families but our children enjoy doing trips with us and trying different foods in each of the restaurants, for us family time on holiday very important as we both have pretty full on jobs at home with not a lot of family time.

 

We ate in Lawn club, both for lunch and dinner - both times were outstanding.  Porch seafood tower was amazing and we also ate in Murano which again was fantastic.  Had dinner in Tuscan Grille and it was ok, not worth the supplement.

 

Entertainment highlights for us were Diva, Broken strings, Karaoke, and Silent Disco.

 

We had premium beverage package which suited us perfectly as everything all included, same for wifi.

 

Our family rated this a 10 out of 10 cruise and I wish I was back on it, especially since I have spent the last two weeks ill and in hospital with infected gallbladder - how thankful am I that this didn't happen on the cruise!!!!!  Cannot wait to book our next family cruise.

 

Ah yes I'm pretty sure I remember you guys on Woodwind - we were the pack of 8 kiwis and 2 adopted Americans (assuming your Scottish name and Scottish accents match up?) So glad you at least didn't get sick on the cruise.

 

 

[dmcburnie]

On 5/16/2019 at 9:34 PM, johno1234 said:

 

Ah yes I'm pretty sure I remember you guys on Woodwind - we were the pack of 8 kiwis and 2 adopted Americans (assuming your Scottish name and Scottish accents match up?) So glad you at least didn't get sick on the cruise.

 

 

Yes that’s us!  Great memories from our woodwind tour!  Yes I am so glad I didn’t get sick on the cruise, the thought of being medivaced off for surgery not a great thought, or worse being put off the boat in Cartagena to a local hospital🙉🙉🙉🙉

 

[cruisinfever]

We are doing a TA on Reflection in November.  Should we prepay and reserve the Lawn Club for dinner?  Was there tables available?

[johno1234]

7 hours ago, cruisinfever said:

We are doing a TA on Reflection in November.  Should we prepay and reserve the Lawn Club for dinner?  Was there tables available?

 

We had no trouble getting tables on our cruise.