Live From the Summit from SJ 11/16

[Torfamm]

Looking forward to following! We’ll be sailing the same itinerary on the Summit in 2020 and also staying at the Caribe Hilton.

[cruzeluver]

Happily and eagerly following along. We will be on Summit in March out of San Juan to the ABC's. Hope you have a great cruise!!

[Steelers0854]

Buenos Dias San Juan!

 

 

[Finnrox]

Anxiously looking forward to this review, as we are also getting on next week in San Juan down to the ABC's.  First time on Celebrity as well, so I am interested to hear your thoughts.

[The Mommy]

Eagerly awaiting news on this sailing - we go on 14th Jan 2020

[K&RCurt]

Awesome start, we are planning to stay at the Caribe Hilton as well!

[Steelers0854]

Precruise San Juan Day 0

 

For dinner last night we went to the onsite Caribbean restaurant, Mojitos.  We were starving and tired and didn’t want a complicated dinner plan, so it was all about convenience tonight.  Not a bad decision, but it certainly wasn’t great.  My mofongo was dry and hard, while the pork was actually fairly good.  But at $23 (resort prices of course) left a little TBD as DW would say (To Be Desired).  DW got grilled chicken and rice with pigeon peas.  She liked her meal, but again a $22 hit to the pocket book, while expected, wasn’t worth it.  We were wiped out and called it an early night.  

 

Hectic work lives meant a much needed day of rest today, and likely the rest of the next week and a half 😉.  DW slept in and I rolled out about 7:30 for breakfast.  One note, the hotel is not very sound proof.  When your neighbor rolls over in bed you’ll likely hear it (a bit of an exaggeration, but you get my point).  

 

As Diamond members you get a free continental breakfast, valued at $10.  All the items are cold items, but they put on a good spread.  Probably a dozen pastries and bread offerings, 5 or 6 different fruits (mangoes, pineapple, melons, the usual suspects). Also juice and a nice yogurt and cereal bar.  The hot breakfast, made to order omelettes, waffles, and the normal buffet of tater tots, sausage, eggs etc, was $11 more.  I was hungry and went with the hot option, $11 was a good value for me, $21 and I would have passed.  

 

After breakfast and a bit of lounging around, reading on the balcony we got ready and headed out to lunch.  

 

Directly across the street is a small outdoor mall with a fantastic food offering, El Mercado.  It’s a giant space with multiple food vendors, and they have everything.  Chinese, check; Thai, yup; Italian, got that too....Mediterranean, Mexican, ice cream, just about anything you could want was here.  
 

 

DW hit up the Mexican place and got tacos.  2 tacos, chips, salsa, a small container of beans and guacamole was $8!  She said they were the best chicken tacos she has had in a long time.  Sorry, she got to the tacos before i could snap a photo!

 

 

Intent on getting a descent mofongo before i leave PR i went to the one stall selling it and I wasn’t disappointed.  $10 got me a plate of food that was more than i could eat and was delicious!  Highly recommend if you are staying at the Caribe Hilton you skip the on property stuff and walk across the street for great food.  
 

 

We walked back over after lunch and grabbed a couple of comfy chairs, cocktails and enjoyed the absolutely wonderful view and weather. 

 

Loads of people leaving today on a 5 day Disney repositioning cruise up to Miami on the Magic.  DW and I did the Magic not too long ago and loved it, they should have a great time!  The pool wasn’t very crowded with everyone heading to the port, which is literally just across the water from us and maybe a 9 minute drive.  

 

[tcmagnum]

Have a great cruise.  Looking at a possible cruise from SJ.

[elaineb]

2 hours ago, tcmagnum said:

Have a great cruise.  Looking at a possible cruise from SJ.

Do it!  I have cruised 3 times from San Juan and loved each one.  Better islands since you are closer and it is nice to start your vacation already on a Caribbean island.  Somehow it is a different vibe - very romantic.  Definitely go one or two nights before your cruise.

[cynbar]

Really looking forward to your wife’s comments on the dining. Our daughter is also gluten and dairy free. We’ve been trying to coax her and her family to go on a Celebrity cruise but she has been reluctant. I’ll be following to see if your experiences convince her!

[Steelers0854]

7 hours ago, cynbar said:

Really looking forward to your wife’s comments on the dining. Our daughter is also gluten and dairy free. We’ve been trying to coax her and her family to go on a Celebrity cruise but she has been reluctant. I’ll be following to see if your experiences convince her!

DW just found out about a year ago. She had not felt well for years and no one could figure out why. We finally found a doctor that knew what was going on, ran the right tests and now she is off of 4 medications she was previously taking and feels great. 
 

TBH, DW gets better service on the ship than in most restaurants. I would highly encourage your daughter to go on the cruise, but I will make sure to discuss how DW fairs this cruise. 

[WrittenOnYourHeart]

Excited to read this as I’m booked on the Summit out of SJ for Feb break 2021. Slightly different itinerary (mine is Tortola, St Maarten, Barbados, Dominica, and Grenada - order might differ on the last 3). Also gluten-free, so interested in what your wife finds to eat in SJ since the limited research I have done has not yielded good results (possibly since I don’t do fish either...yuck!).

[Steelers0854]

27 minutes ago, WrittenOnYourHeart said:

Excited to read this as I’m booked on the Summit out of SJ for Feb break 2021. Slightly different itinerary (mine is Tortola, St Maarten, Barbados, Dominica, and Grenada - order might differ on the last 3). Also gluten-free, so interested in what your wife finds to eat in SJ since the limited research I have done has not yielded good results (possibly since I don’t do fish either...yuck!).

well, in addition to her allergies (she can’t eat bananas or melons either) she doesn’t do fish as well. We weren’t here that long but if you see my post above she had some of the best tacos she’s had on a while and when I get around to recapping last night we hit a chain restaurant as she knew there were a lot of safe options there and it was right next to the hotel. 

[jimbri]

Looking forward to the rest of your review!

[WrittenOnYourHeart]

4 hours ago, Steelers0854 said:

well, in addition to her allergies (she can’t eat bananas or melons either) she doesn’t do fish as well. We weren’t here that long but if you see my post above she had some of the best tacos she’s had on a while and when I get around to recapping last night we hit a chain restaurant as she knew there were a lot of safe options there and it was right next to the hotel. 

Awesome! Thank you!

[Mr. Boston]

Following along.  We’re sailing on this same itinerary on Summit in February.  I’m interested in hearing what you do in the various ports. Bon voyage! 🚢

[Steelers0854]

20 minutes ago, Mr. Boston said:

Following along.  We’re sailing on this same itinerary on Summit in February.  I’m interested in hearing what you do in the various ports. Bon voyage! 🚢

Well...... lol I think you may end up being a little disappointed.  We have done this itinerary before and took this cruise as a much needed work respite, so our plan is to do a lot of reading, pool lounging and people watching.  So there will be plenty of posting on the ship, but maybe not a lot on the ports.  But stayed tuned, our plans may change!

[Zigster]

Looking forward to your "live" report.  We sailed Summit in March post Revolution and enjoyed it so much we're booked again in January and May.  

Loved the look of the ship and the Crew was outstanding!

Have a wonderful sailing!

 

[Steelers0854]

Day 0 continued

 

So it was getting close to dinner time and DW didn’t want to roll the dice on a new place and potentially getting sick so we say Fogo de Chao was right across the street and we hadn’t been there in forever.  It’s easy for DW to eat there so we walked over and sat at a window overlooking the ocean.  The restaurant was relatively empty despite it being a Friday night in the middle of a Bruin here of resorts.  The food was ok, but for $52pp I think i would have preferred to walk over to El Mercado and hit up another one of those food vendors.  Oh well, it was still a descent meal and DW didn’t have to worry about getting sick.

 

We went back to hotel and lounged around for a little bit before calling it a night.

[Steelers0854]

Embarkation Day 1

 

Finally, its here!  We had booked this cruise 18 months ago and are very excited we are just a couple hours away from boarding.

 

Our boarding time says 12:30 but we did a little research  and are going to try and get to the port around 11.  Always prefer to wait in line at the port than at the hotel on embarkation day.  I’m like a kid at Christmas and even though it may be more comfortable at the hotel I just don’t care 😬.  So we grabbed breakfast this morning downstairs, showered and did some final packing and rearranging and are getting ready to Uber to the port.  There is a taxi stand here at the hotel, but the Concierge said Uber was cheaper and easy.

 

So we will be departing shortly and heading on our short 10 minute drive to the port!

 

 

 

[Steelers0854]

Well Embarkation couldn’t have been easier. 
 

We arrived at the port at 10:51. No security line. Lady scanned our phones took our picture and we were at our stateroom at 11:03. 
 

 

We headed to the stateroom which was ready to go and our keys were in the door. The Celebrity app can also act as your key. I’ll see how well that works over the course of the cruise. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 16, 2019 by Steelers0854

[Steelers0854]

We did a quick tour of the spa and booked some massages for later in the week. 
 

Persian Gardens

 

 

 

 

 

[Steelers0854]

We headed to the buffet for lunch. DW was craving a burger so she grabbed one sans bun at the poolside grill. I picked up a couple items and they were on point. Their salad game is strong on X. 
 

one thing we do like is that ALL the items had these handy cards that immediately indicated if an item was gluten or dairy free. I haven’t seen these in any other line and DW really appreciates it. For DW cross contamination isn’t a concern, she only becomes ill when eating it. They clearly error on the side of caution, which those with more serious conditions will appreciate as they marked the French Fries as containing both gluten and dairy, which they clearly don’t. 

 

 

 

Hand washing stations are a nice touch. We liked these on Disney. Only problem they don’t enforce it like they did on Disney. IMO you should have To wash your hands when going to eat at the buffet. 
 

 

[Steelers0854]

A few other random photos from around the ship. It’s very clean and modern looking. Makes me feel at home, just like how we feel on Princess.
 

 

 

 

Also really liked the Solarium. Can see us spending a lot of time here. 

 

[nunuc2000]

Loving your pics of the newly redone Summit! We'll be boarding her in mid January for a few weeks, and can't wait to see her in person. We sailed on her Last January too, and I'm sure the changes will be wonderful!  Your pictures are of such great resolution... I wonder... could you be convinced to take a picture of the pool deck from the same angle as the attached picture and post it here? The one I have is from pre-drydock, and I use it as my computer background... would love to have a post drydock pic from the same perspective! LOL :)