Last December our friends Julia and Bob returned from a Thanksgiving week cruise and urged us to join them the following year. We had not started construction on our home, and since our own Thanksgiving traditions have been in transition since John’s mom passed and Lauren began hosting Thanksgiving at her home in New Jersey, we thought why not?
This was our first cruise and we relied heavily on our friends’ previous experiences and also selected our stateroom so we were just down the hall and had similar amenities.
Our cruise was an “Eastern Caribbean” cruise and ports of call included San Juan, Puerto Rico, Charlotte, St. Thomas (US Virgin Islands), Samaná, Dominican Republic, and Nassau, Bahamas along with two days at sea. I won’t review the itinerary as that is what we selected based on what our friends had already booked and there are many, many varieties of itineraries with Celebrity and all of the cruise lines.
Instead, this is a review of the Celebrity Cruise Line and the Equinox Ship.
I think John was saying, “I hate this,” while this photo was taken
The Bad
The positive aspects far outweigh the negative, so let’s get my criticisms over with. They mostly have to do with technology based issues.
As concierge class, the lowest of the upgraded levels, we were able to have lunch in the main dining room on embarkation day, which was lovely. But when we went to order drinks, the waiter told us that we had purchased the Classic Non-alcohol Package. Huh? No, darling, I most certainly did not pay for a Non-alcohol Package. I was even told by no less than 4 employees that I probably thought I had bought the Premium Alcohol Package, but obviously I had not.
I get it – the staff believes in their own systems and I must be a confused passenger. After digging through hundreds (literally) of emails from Celebrity, I finally found my receipt for the Premium Alcohol Package for both John and myself. After a long wait for our turn at the service desk, they reprinted our Seapass cards that you use as a room key and anytime you order anything. The whole process was stressful and freaked me out because I had purchased (and paid for) these packages MONTHS ago so I spent most of lunch searching my phone for a receipt instead of enjoying our special perk.
Similarly, I had pre-paid for internet for 2 devices for the trip, but that did not register on the Celebrity App either. You can use the Celebrity App for free to see your schedule, message other guests, see the ship time, and check out all the activities occurring that day. It’s very similar to using an airline’s app while flying – you can check things associated with your flight and luggage, but you cannot access email or the general internet.
WiFi is not cheap – we paid $358 for 2 devices in the weeks before the trip. By Monday, I really needed internet and had to purchase internet for 2 devices again – this time for $208! Of course, another trip to the service desk had them refunding that, but still – I should not have had to do that and it is annoying that the price dropped by $150 two days into the trip.
My final criticism about the expensive WiFi is that it was incredibly slow in the staterooms. So not only is it expensive, but it sucks too – for example I couldn’t load a single photo up to this blog while on the ship.
My final criticism has to do with the messaging aspect of the Celebrity app. Again, the app is free to use by anyone and includes the option to message other passengers, which would be great – If it worked. But unfortunately it was completely unreliable as sometimes messages went through and other times your friends received nothing, so Julia and I used What’s App to communicate. It did help that we were literally down the hall from each other, but the app really should work properly.
The Good
There were many more positive aspects of the cruise than negative aspects. First and foremost, the entertainment was surprisingly, incredibly good. Every night there is a show at 7 or 9 pm, so you can choose either time, depending upon when you are having dinner. There were 3 theater productions throughout the week with loosely organized plots highlighting singers, dancers, acrobats, and aerialists. Seriously amazing and I could put many, many more videos up.
There were also 2 comedians and 2 musical acts that gave some nice variety throughout the week.
During the show by the musical group “Uptown”, they pulled a passenger into the stage to sing to and she introduced herself as Squirrel from Arkansas. 🐿 Not joking. Squirrel was a bit hands on during her time in the spotlight with the 3 male singers and I literally laughed until I cried watching her. I later met Squirrel, who is originally from North Carolina, and she would stop and chat with us throughout the cruise. I loved it when she was schooling John on how to play video poker (yet another Concierge Class perk was that we each got $50 in credit for the casino – combined we made $150 in cash from our time in the casino). 🤓
Another positive was the staff and the ship itself – everyone was very nice and helpful and the ship was beautiful and did not feel crowded. There are numerous comfortable places to sit and gather with friends. The bar staff at our favorite bar, the Ensemble Lounge, knew our first names and our drink preferences pretty early on. I think the cleaning staff must have cleaned 24/7 because everything was always clean, dirty plates were picked up immediately, and our room was refreshed 2-3 times a day. It was a beautiful environment for the week and our friend, Bob, even opted to stay on the ship when we arrived in the Dominican Republic because he likes being on the ship that much!
Another positive aspect was the high quality and wide variety of food options. We had Select Dining in the main dining room as part of our Concierge Level perks, meaning that we could show up at anytime for dinner or lunch (on non-port days). Other guests were assigned an early or late dining appointment. The portion sizes were thankfully small, but there is still a lot of food so I usually skipped the desserts offered. I was only disappointed a few times, which is pretty impressive. The broiled lobster was great, but as someone who has made beef Wellington, theirs was NOT beef Wellington, but a sad, thin steak with some puff pastry placed around, after it had been cooked. But overall, the food was great.
Our Concierge Class also includes a tray of canapés in our stateroom every evening at 4 PM. Again, the portions sizes were small (2 deviled egg halves or 2 slices of cucumber with smoked salmon with a small sweet treat), but it was good to have something to tide us over until dinner.
They also had several specialty restaurants such as the French restaurant Murano, the Italian steakhouse called Tuscan Grille, Blu (the Aqua class only restaurant), and finally Qsine, which had a 3-D video show where 4 animated little chefs had a cooking competition.
The food at the specialty restaurants was much better, but you must pay extra to dine at them. We ate at Murano on the first night because they offered steep discounts for that night. Sorry, no pics from that night.
Another positive aspect was finding a fun community of folks on the ship, like Squirrel referenced above. One guy on our catamaran trip to St. John’s lost his wedding ring as soon as he got into the water to snorkel. Chris, one of the 3 guys working the catamaran dove into 20+ feet deep water almost 30 times and actually found his ring. We later sat next to him and his wife at the 2nd formal night and they said they would be snorkeling again in the Bahamas – and he would be more careful on this excursion.
Finally, I would say that the enormous number of activities each day was also very impressive. There was a program placed into our room each evening that highlighted the next day’s events, which ranged from 75 to 115 separate events. It was very easy to overbook yourself between dance lessons, meditation classes, spa treatments, Bocce ball games, wine tastings, etc. Not all the activities were free, but the majority were.
Our friends, Julia and Bob opted to pay extra for the weekly pass to the Persian Garden which is a private part of the spa/workout facility that includes hydrotherapy, steam rooms, and aromatherapy rooms. They used it enough that I think they would opt for the Aqua Class upgrade in the future. We had an agreement with Julia and Bob that we would do dinner together each night, but could do our own things during the days (although we took several excursions together as well), and it seemed like a reasonable balance of together and separate time for all.
Final Analysis
Overall, the Celebrity Equinox Cruise was a great experience and one we would try again, especially with friends. We probably would have made more “cruise friends” had we been on our own. I would suggest that you take printed copies of receipts for the various perks you paid for (such as the drink package and the WiFi) as it was unfortunate and annoying that they did not have those properly recorded in our account.
Let let me know your thoughts on cruising and if you have your own review of Celebrity or other lines. (If you do not see a space below for comments, click on the title of this post to get to the original post so you may add those comments).
Thanks for stopping by! – Libby