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Live From the Summit from SJ 11/16


Steelers0854
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On 11/14/2019 at 11:49 AM, hiccups said:

We're on Summit for the first time next week, so I'll be following along!  Can you check if Qsine is indeed gone, replaced by Le Petite Chef?

In case you can't watch the game tonight, I'll be cheering on the Steelers for you  🙂 


Looks like yes it had converted over to Le Petite Chef

 

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We swung back by the stateroom at 1pm to pickup our Kindles and our luggage was there waiting for us!  So we quickly unpacked and while doing so found this neat little amenity kit. 
 

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after unpacking we went to explore the ship some more and people watch til the muster drill. 
 

here is the Today for today (I guess that’s what they call it on X?  Sorry about the format. CC hates photos apparently. 

 

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25 minutes ago, nunuc2000 said:

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 🙂

 

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here you go!

 

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For those following along on the allergy issues their MDR menu also clearly indicates what items are gluten and dairy free. Here is the menu tonight for the MDR and Blu. I’ll try and do better with the photo orientation. CC doesn’t like vertical photos either apparently 😏

 

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Your view looked great. Wondering which wing you were in at the Hilton Caribe?  I haven't found a lot of informaiton on the differences between the three wings.

On 11/14/2019 at 3:56 PM, Steelers0854 said:

Ok. So I flipped these upside down on my phone and no matter what I do they post upside down. Sorry about that!

 

one last thing to try and see if this turns out. Here is the view from the patio

 


 

 

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1 hour ago, Torfamm said:

Your view looked great. Wondering which wing you were in at the Hilton Caribe?  I haven't found a lot of informaiton on the differences between the three wings.

 


I can’t remember which wing we were in but it’s the elevators just off the lobby. 
 

12 minutes ago, MAMAFIX said:

They have doors😁👏🏻👏🏻

 

 

yup. No fighting with a curtain. Doors it is. 

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On 11/14/2019 at 2:14 PM, Steelers0854 said:

So basically I’m holding my phone wrong lol. I use an iPhone and take the photos with the volume buttons on the top. Apparently for CC you have to take them with the volume buttons on the bottom. Go figure. I tried to flip them after I took them and they still post upside down. Sorry!

I also use an IPhone but usually don't use the volume buttons.    I've found that if I upload in anything except full resolution that it flips some of my pictures.   Seems a be a bug in the software Cruise Critic uses. 

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5 minutes ago, Jim_Iain said:

I also use an IPhone but usually don't use the volume buttons.    I've found that if I upload in anything except full resolution that it flips some of my pictures.   Seems a be a bug in the software Cruise Critic uses. 

Great tip Jim!  I’ve been uploading them as large. I’ll give that a try. Thanks!

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Embarkation Day 1 Continued

 

God bless Celebrity (and Princess) for being reasonable and having their muster drills indoors with seating.  Why every line doesn’t do this is beyond me.  Took them a bit to get through it, with a long pause in the middle, but painless nonetheless.

 

We went right from the Muster drill (started at 4:45 and ended right about 5:20) to Blu for dinner.  There was a small line with about 10 of us in it but we were seated right away at 5:30 and had a nice window view.

 

DW spoke with the Maitre’D and they took particular care of her allergy issues.  She ordered off both the MDR menu and Blu.  

 

For DW it was the Watercress Salad, Tomato Chickpea soup, and grilled chicken with white rice and veggies.  DW said the soup was outstanding and that the chicken breast was delicious.  Most of the time the kitchen kills it and over cooks it, but she said it was perfectly cooked.  (Sorry missed a couple of photos, don’t normally take them at home so need to get in the CC habit of doing it now).  A note on DW’s dessert.  She was trilled pre-cruise scoping out the menu int he app to see Sorbet every night. Much to her disappointment the Sorbet onboard is NOT Sorbet, it all has milk in it.  This is very disappointing and incredibly misleading for those with Dairy allergies can usually assume Sorbet is safe to eat.  So be cautious if you have dairy allergies to not get the sorbet onboard.  

 

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For me it was the baked Brie with pepper jelly, the corn soup, beef short ribs and for dessert the chocolate lava cake.  My meal was excellent, not a bad thing to say about any of the dishes and the short ribs were so tender and I didn’t even need a knife.  Outstanding!  The chocolate lava cake isn’t really a lava cake, more like a chocolate flourless cake, but it went down very easy!

 

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After dinner we wandered around a bit and hung out before the CC Meet and Greet which was at 8pm at the Sky Lounge.  With this itinerary it was the only available time but it was too bad because I think it conflicted with a lot of peoples dinner plans.  We had about 20 show up at 8 and more trickled in towards 8:30.  A good showing of the officers, the head of Hotel Operations was there along with several food and beverage folks and the cruise director of course.  It was nice to seem them there and greatly appreciated given all that was going on with dinner and the late departure.

 

We hung out and met some great people before heading back to the room to catch sail away from our balcony.

 

We called it an early night tonight.  The comedian doesn’t come on until 10, and that’s just too late for us tonight.  We were ready to crash so we could be ready to go tomorrow for breakfast in Blu and St Thomas.  Unfortunately we are docking at Crown Bay so we have a short taxi ride to get into downtown, but not a big deal.

 

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We got off and just wandered around the downtown area. DW’s Philip Stein watch had just died on us so we got her a new battery and spent 25 minutes dodging cross-sell offers for everything from diamonds to tanzanite.

 

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We walked around a bit more and then headed back to the ship to grab some lunch. DW had issues finding something to eat. Most everything was either gluten free or dairy free but not both.  Surprisingly the grilled chicken breast is listed as not gluten or dairy free and we think its because of cross contamination.  So she grabbed another burger and hot dog with sauerkraut. I had the fish and chips and they were ok.

 

Overall I haven’t been overly impressed with the buffet. I’m not a picky eater by any means but there haven’t been a lot of standouts up there at lunch or dinner.

 

We also found in our room a delivery of tea (it had some cinnamon and allspice notes, I wish they gave you a little card telling what everything is) and canapés. They were uninspiring. 
 

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We relaxed in the Persian Garden for over 90 minutes and never saw another soul. The benches were perfectly warm and the salt room sauna was refreshing. Afterwards we headed to the solarium pool and relaxed and read for the remainder of the afternoon.

 

Tonight was formal night and we got gussied up and headed down for dinner.  Here were tonight’s dinner menus.

 

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DW got the baby spinach salad and the filet mignon. She said they were both delicious.

 

I grabbed the blu cheese soufflé, the vichyssoise, and the filet. Everything was exceptional except the vichyssoise just wasn’t my thing. The filet, for being a dining room steak, was delicious and perfectly cooked. Sorry no photos tonight, I just plain forgot. 😎

 

For dessert, these wonderful, beautiful people did an amazing poached pear for DW since she was struggling finding something sweet to eat. This was exceptional and unexpected. The pear DW said was fantastic. I got both the Apple crumble and the strawberry soup with pana cotta and both were delicious.

 

After dinner we headed to the show, “Life” in the theater. Us and 40 of our fellow cruisers saw what I thought was a very well done show. I was shocked at a 7pm show there weren’t more people there but that probably has to do with us leaving port at 5pm. After the show we walked to the Sky Lounger for battle fo the genders.  There were maybe 30 people in there but they wanted to split us up on different sides of the room.  We decided it was time to bail so we headed to the buffet to grab some fruit before heading to the cabin and calling it a night.

 

Some random thoughts thus far:

 

-Celebrity is very much like Princess and we are really enjoying our cruise.

-I am going to buy a t-shirt that says “I don’t want your damn drink package” to wear on Day 1.  I mean I am used to trying to be sold to on the first day, but this was literally an assault and it didn’t stop. All. Day. Long.

-The food in the dining room has been exceptional.  I couldn’t be happier with the quality.  I am certain this is not just because we are in Blu, I am sure the MDR enjoys similar quality, but i will try and order an MDR dish before the cruise is out to compare.

-The staff on board have been wonderful.  Particular shoutouts to Joe the assistant maitre’d in Blu and our waiter Rodrigo, both are wonderful.

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On 11/16/2019 at 11:57 AM, Steelers0854 said:

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. 

 

I can't speak to dairy, but regarding gluten and fries, sometimes there is something in the coating of the fries that makes them not gluten-free (McDonald's in particular has been guilty of this - I don't eat there anymore, so I don't know if anything has changed). But more importantly, unless the fries are made in a fryer that ONLY fries (without any gluten-containing coating) are cooked in, there is cross-contamination as most other things that are fried have breading on them.

 

(Actually I guess the dairy thing could be cross-contamination as well if they are frying cheese or if any breading contain dairy.)

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