Celebrity Equinox Western Caribbean live blog Jan 4

[Jedi Jason]

My wife initially suggested this cruise about 10 months ago kind of half joking because the kids would be back in school and the price was really good and there was a promotion that included 4 perks (tips, premium drink package, internet and an OBC).  Well I called her bluff and we ended up booking this cruise a couple of days later with Michelle from MEI.  It is on Equinox, a five night cruise departing from Port Everglades (Fort Lauderdale).  It ports in Cozumel and then Key West on the way back.  We booked a concierge class balcony room. Since we live in the Orlando area we decided to drive down the day before to a hotel we booked so we could be on the ship as early as possible without having the stress of driving down in the early morning hours.  Anyway, I plan on sharing photos and a description of what we did each day and am open to any questions about the cruise or ship.  More info to follow.

[Jedi Jason]

So we didn't expect the kids to have a longer than normal Christmas break due to a teacher in-service they scheduled for the first full week of January.  Our original plan was to have an Aunt stay with them at our house but we have since changed plans since they won't be in school to travel to our Aunt in Indianapolis in the hopes our Florida kids could enjoy some winter weather including snow while Mom and Dad relaxed on a warm Caribbean cruise.  The travel day to Fort Lauderdale will begin with dropping them off at the airport.  We booked unaccompanied minor tickets on Southwest for them.  After dropping them off at the airport we will head south towards our hotel.  We booked the Sheraton suites Fort Lauderdale at Cypress Creek in the North Fort Lauderdale area.  It is peak season in south Florida for hotels so the prices are higher and the selection  and pricing has only gotten worse as we approach our cruise.  We did book this about three months ago for around $150 a night nonrefundable since we were at or inside our final payment date.  We have plans to try out a new to us restaurant in Fort Lauderdale, La Bamba the evening we check into the hotel.

[SpeedNoodles]

Definitely following. I'm looking at Celebrity cruises right now (and am also well cared for by @michelle from M.E.I.!)  I think I just missed the great holiday perks, though.

[JLMoran]

8 hours ago, Jedi Jason said:

We have plans to try out a new to us restaurant in Fort Lauderdale, La Bamba the evening we check into the hotel.

Ohh, you're going to LOVE La Bamba! Several of us here have dined there before and/or after our cruises, and it's always fantastic. Their margaritas are as awesome as the food! 

Have a good sailing! I'll be curious to learn about Equinox and the Solstice class in general. Have you previously sailed Celebrity? I'll be on Summit (the smaller Millennium class) this summer, and while I know on paper what the differences are, it will be good to see a Solstice class ship and hear your impressions.

[Floski]

Tomorrow's the big day!!!

 

I've never sailed Celebrity, but just yesterday my cruising friend told me that it was an awesome experience.  He says "I know you're loyal to Royal, but..."

Yes, I am.   But it's still family, so who knows?

 

Looking forward to reading your blog!

[Jedi Jason]

We made it to the hotel and got checked in a little before the official check in time of 3:00. The hotel is similar to some Embassy Suites that I have stayed in. The rooms are around a courtyard lobby that has some nice fountains. The rooms have a kitchenette and desk area in the front with the bathroom in the middle and the bedroom in the back. Our room is overlooking the pool area. The rooms are fairly simple in their decor and furnishings. There seems to be mostly stucco type walls as opposed to drywall.  Brunch at First Watch near the Orlando airport was a while ago. I had a really nice breakfast burrito that was on the seasonal menu.  We had some fish and chips from the bar to hold us over until we go to La Bamba for dinner. 

[Jedi Jason]

9 hours ago, JLMoran said:

Ohh, you're going to LOVE La Bamba! Several of us here have dined there before and/or after our cruises, and it's always fantastic. Their margaritas are as awesome as the food! 

Have a good sailing! I'll be curious to learn about Equinox and the Solstice class in general. Have you previously sailed Celebrity? I'll be on Summit (the smaller Millennium class) this summer, and while I know on paper what the differences are, it will be good to see a Solstice class ship and hear your impressions.

Thanks for reinforcing my decision to dine there. To answer your question, we were on a short 3 night preview sailing on Celebrity Edge before the official maiden voyage. That is our only prior Celebrity cruise. We enjoyed it a lot so we knew we wanted to take another Celebrity cruise. It happens to sail out of the same new Terminal 25 in Port Everglades. 

[Jedi Jason]

My breakfast burrito and a couple of hotel lobby photos. Front desk staff confirmed that this hotel was originally an Embassy Suites. 

[Jedi Jason]

Hotel pool and room photos 

[Jedi Jason]

The highlight of our trip so far La Bamba. It was amazing Mexican food. The chips and salsa weee good. We had a guacamole appetizer and the margaritas! One passion fruit and one blood orange. They were very good. My wife had the Mexican pizza for her entree. They list it as an appetizer but it was the size of at least a medium pizza. I had the La Bamba combo since I couldn’t decide. The combo had the Chile rellano which was great and the chicken enchilada really good but the beef taco was mostly meat and just OK. Our table mates, my wife’s family, got the chicken mole and fajitas both of which were really tasty and looked good. We tried the fried ice cream even though we were super full. It was OK. I think the corn flake crusting on it was an odd texture for this dish for me. I see why it is a favorite of others in this forum. I hope I was able to make at least @Lovetocruise2002 A little jealous. 

[Jedi Jason]

We are still not very hungry from last night so it’s something small and quick for breakfast at McDonald’s. The hotel  room had Starbucks coffee in the room yeah. We had two interesting issues with our room. The first issue was being locked out of our room because the batteries in our room door went dead and we had to get engineering to open our room and replace the batteries which are on the inside of the door. The shower had a crazy high water pressure and the shower head was left pointed up and out of the shower. It started to take the paint off the wall and flood our bathroom floor with water in the few seconds it was first on. The elevators were painfully slow moving which was worsened by us being in the 6th of the eight floors. Oh well, it’s cruise day. 

[Jedi Jason]

We  are sitting in beautiful terminal 25 waiting to board. There is a separate waiting area for concierge class. It looks like we may have priority embarkation behind suite guests. The sea pass card is at your room on this ship and they encourage you to drop off your carry on luggage and pick up your card. Expedited check in was super quick. It took less than five minutes to checkin and get through security. There was a separate line including security screening  for expedited guests. 

We boarded about 10 minutes to 11:00 and we are exploring the ship. Lots of cool features to share with you. 

[Lovetocruise2002]

5 hours ago, Jedi Jason said:

 

JEALOUS!!!!  I'm assuming you are not at the 17th St. location though because of your hotel?  I have yet to visit any of their other 5 locations.

Just catching up now on this blog.  I'll be following along as I have always been interested to sail Celebrity one of these days.  That terminal looks really nice and modern.

Happy sailing!  Looking forward to your pics and your thoughts.

[JLMoran]

18 hours ago, Jedi Jason said:

My breakfast burrito and a couple of hotel lobby photos. Front desk staff confirmed that this hotel was originally an Embassy Suites. 

Holy Christmas! You're in the same hotel on 17th Street that I stayed at in March / April 2018 for my first ever cruise! I totally recognize that lobby, fountain, pool, and everything else as I had taken nearly identical photos back then. What is the new hotel owner if it's no longer Embassy Suites?

2 hours ago, Jedi Jason said:

We had two interesting issues with our room. The first issue was being locked out of our room because the batteries in our room door went dead and we had to get engineering to open our room and replace the batteries which are on the inside of the door. The shower had a crazy high water pressure and the shower head was left pointed up and out of the shower. It started to take the paint off the wall and flood our bathroom floor with water in the few seconds it was first on. The elevators were painfully slow moving which was worsened by us being in the 6th of the eight floors. Oh well, it’s cruise day. 

:: facepalm ::

They were just replacing the door locks with the new "smart" units when I was staying there. You'd think that after almost two years they could get kinks like that worked out. And that's nuts about the shower! If it was high enough pressure to strip the paint, I shudder to think what that must have felt like on skin!

Hope you're enjoying Equinox and having a great sailing so far.

[Lovetocruise2002]

20 minutes ago, JLMoran said:

What is the new hotel owner if it's no longer Embassy Suites?

I think he said Sheraton...

[JLMoran]

23 minutes ago, Lovetocruise2002 said:

I think he said Sheraton...

You, ma'am, are correct...

On 1/2/2020 at 11:31 PM, Jedi Jason said:

We booked the Sheraton suites Fort Lauderdale at Cypress Creek in the North Fort Lauderdale area.

Had to read the entire thread four times before I finally saw that. In the second post.

[Lovetocruise2002]

1 hour ago, JLMoran said:

Had to read the entire thread four times before I finally saw that. In the second post.

Haha...glad I wasn't the only one.  It was sort of hidden. 

[Jedi Jason]

3 hours ago, Lovetocruise2002 said:

JEALOUS!!!!  I'm assuming you are not at the 17th St. location though because of your hotel?  I have yet to visit any of their other 5 locations.

Just catching up now on this blog.  I'll be following along as I have always been interested to sail Celebrity one of these days.  That terminal looks really nice and modern.

Happy sailing!  Looking forward to your pics and your thoughts.

We actually were at the 17th St location because we were meeting some locals who lived closer to that location and we didn’t mind driving to meet them since we didn’t fly but drove from Orlando. 

[Jedi Jason]

Muster drill is completed and we set sail at 3:30. Probably going to watch from our balcony on the port side. My early impressions are the ship has an intimate feel to it. We finished exploring the ship just prior to the muster drill. The concierge lunch in the main dining room was a nice alternative to the buffet restaurant but was nothing fancy. The Apple pie ala mode was really nice. 

[JLMoran]

35 minutes ago, Jedi Jason said:

The Apple pie ala mode was really nice.

Please tell me they don't follow sister brand Royal's example, and that the Celebrity apple pie is raisin-free!

[Jedi Jason]

9 minutes ago, JLMoran said:

Please tell me they don't follow sister brand Royal's example, and that the Celebrity apple pie is raisin-free!

No raisins in the apple pie. That’s why I enjoyed it so much. They let the apples be the highlight of the pie. RC ruins it with raisins. 

[Jedi Jason]

A few random pictures from around the ship. You don’t have to check out the pool towels and they are plentiful. Adventure of the seas was also departing today as well. There were a total of seven ships in port when we arrived. We have a comedy show at 7:00 and the late dinner seating at 8:30. 

[Jedi Jason]

Calling it a night since we are still behind on sleep from staying up late the last couple of nights. We had a nice dinner in the MDR. Nothing was extremely exciting but there were a few highlights: a feta and beet salad, beef spring roll, chocolate cherry trifle and a pomegranate mojito. The comic was good but not side splitting funny. His name was Miguel Washington. Tomorrow is a sea day. We booked a behind the scenes ship tour that we got on a cruise planner sale. 

[KathyC]

We experienced our first Celebrity sailing in October and will definitely be going back.  We loved it.  The towels is a HUGE plus...have you noticed the blankets yet?  

[Jedi Jason]

8 hours ago, KathyC said:

We experienced our first Celebrity sailing in October and will definitely be going back.  We loved it.  The towels is a HUGE plus...have you noticed the blankets yet?  

Public area blankets?   I haven’t noticed. 

[Jedi Jason]

We went to the Oceanview Cafe which is the equivalent to the Windjammer. It offers most of the same food but is better spaced out on pods or islands. There were two egg/omelette stations it was very empty until after 8:00 today, a sea day. There was a featured item of the day cinnamon rolls. They were pretty good but could have been a little softer. I noticed in the restroom outside of the buffet  they have both paper and cloth hand towels as hand drying options. 

[KathyC]

4 hours ago, Jedi Jason said:

Public area blankets?   I haven’t noticed. 

Summit had them in the same boxes that you can get a towel from.  I wish I had a picture.  I remember them on the deck with the tv screen.  

[Jedi Jason]

Taking it easy today. Enjoyed lunch at Oceanview Cafe. Some featured foods were fried calamari, pork ribs and fried chicken. Multiple desserts look really good. I enjoyed the Mexican food section by making some nachos and I also sampled some Indian curry. Surprisingly I really enjoyed a creamed spinach with corn. 

[Jedi Jason]

The seas seem tougher than normal so we are taking easy including not taking full advantage of our beverage package. We had the premium package included as one of our 4 perks for our booking promotion. We ended up upgrading to the drinks and more package which was a wash because the upgrade price included a casino credit equal to or less than the upgrade. You can choose chips for table play or have the credit loaded unto your card if you want to play the machines. We had some afternoon canapés waiting for us in our room when we returned from watching football at the lawn club and later the craft bar. The behind the scenes ship tour this morning included visits to the waste facility, engine control room, gallery and food storage, laundry and the bridge. It’s amazing how they make everything happen behind the scenes while you are enjoying your vacation. 

[Jedi Jason]

Captain’s Club Elite benefits which is the equivalent to diamond in Crown & Anchor. We used the matching status on our first Celebrity cruise about a year ago which was after we achieved diamond with Royal. I included the evening happy hour menu as well in the sky lounge. There were also some canapés that servers brought around. The space is massive and has great view out the front of the ship on deck 14. 

[Jedi Jason]

We saw a men’s musical trio, NYC3, last night for the featured entertainment. They performed a variety of pop songs from the 2010s.  They danced around some and did their best to engage the audience. They were fun and talented but nothing that really stood out from your typical cruise entertainment.

We struggled a little at dinner to find dishes that were appealing but we ended up having a nice meal. The entrees were the highlight. There was a beef tournedo but not like at 7-11. It was basically a filet with a sauce and some mushrooms and potatoes. My wife enjoyed it. I enjoyed the Lamb chops and it was cooked perfectly to my request. It had a crusting of pistachios on the edge which normally I don’t enjoy but it was a nice contrasting touch. We both tried the warm Apple crumble which unfortunately unlike the Apple pie had some raisins hidden within. Served piping hot with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, it didn’t take long for the ice cream to melt into the crumble. Showtime is at 7:00 and 9:00 nightly with a different late night show at 11:00. Main dinner is at 5:45 and late dinner at 8:30. Hoards of people start lining up early especially for the second dinner seating. I think second seating is later than normal dinner time for most and the shows don’t last more than an hour so people are more than ready to eat. 

[Jedi Jason]

Docked in Cozumel and we have no plans. We just visited here in October and will be back in less than two months so taking it easy and enjoying the ship when most people have gone ashore since this is just our second Celebrity cruise. Pool beds and chairs near the pool are available. It was a little difficult to find a chair in the sun yesterday, a sea day, but no problem today.
 

Breakfast was the Oceanview Cafe (buffet).  Maybe we aren’t used to eating so late and despite our efforts to stay up a little after a big meal we aren’t that hungry when breakfast rolls around. I focused on some items that My wife doesn’t care for or that I don’t eat often like cream of wheat and figs. Might have to try room service or the dining room tomorrow morning. Banana bread was a featured item this morning. Eating outside today because it was so nice. There should be 6 ships in port today including Celebrity Infinity which is parked next to us. Norwegian Sun and a Carnival ship can be seen from our pool deck. 

[Jedi Jason]

Here’s some concierge class benefits and a photo package special they are offering. Luggage valet service was also offered for guests with flights from Miami and Fort Lauderdale airports for $25 per person. 

[Jedi Jason]

I briefly left the ship to get a few pictures and do some shopping. After returning to the ship we ventured to the Mast grill which has a variety of burgers and hot dogs with toppings options that include grilled onions and mushrooms. French fries are the only side here. After getting aced out of dessert yesterday in the Oceanview cafe because they close most things at 2:30 except pizza and pasta, we were determined to not let it happen again. Even though the dessert lineup looked better yesterday we still managed to find something delicious like chocolate pie. Since the food was limited at the grill we topped ourselves off with dessert and I found some fish and chips as the featured lunch item and a sampling of some Indian curry.   Not long after in our room the afternoon canapés arrived and I had no choice but to sample them. There were some nice olives, a curried chicken salad, tomato and mozzarella and a lemon treat. Our plans for the evening include the production show and dinner in the MDR. Due to morning and afternoon naps we might make the 11:00 show tonight. 

[Jedi Jason]

Had to share this most beautiful sunset from the balcony leaving Cozumel which would’ve been even better if the ugly Carnival Valor had moved out of the way a little faster. I managed a couple of photos anyway.  That’s the pilot boat in the corner of the picture  

[KathyC]

There is a RCPeriscoper on your sailing,  His name is Mark.  He scoped some of the NYC3 show - agree with your assessment.  LOL 

[JLMoran]

Love the little icon grid on the MDR menu! Royal has some similar markings, but all the same color and always in a line; this seems to be a step up in both number of possibilities and also clarity.

I'm curious, is your table in the MDR one with the new super-high-back chairs that arch over your head, or normal chairs? Did you get a good view where you're located?

[Boston Babe]

Loving this blog!  Been on Summit twice and loved it, looking forward to Equinox hopefully in May!  Enjoy!!

[Jedi Jason]

12 hours ago, JLMoran said:

Love the little icon grid on the MDR menu! Royal has some similar markings, but all the same color and always in a line; this seems to be a step up in both number of possibilities and also clarity.

I'm curious, is your table in the MDR one with the new super-high-back chairs that arch over your head, or normal chairs? Did you get a good view where you're located?

The chairs are not high backed. I will attach a picture of a similar but from a different area of the ship. They make you lean back and slouch a bit or you end up sitting up without your back touching the back of the chair. We have a table for two right next to a window but we have the 8:30 dinner so it’s dark outside and you get a lot of reflection from inside lighting making it hard to see out. Also there are pillars on either side of the window which force you away from the window and requires you to lean forward to see out. I will try to remember to get a photo of our table. 

[Jedi Jason]

There is always one complainer that has to share their opinions with the world. I joined a Facebook group for our sailing and a couple of people have done nothing but complain about the food, entertainment and more. They went on to say how much better of on experience they have had on Carnival. Fortunately I am not letting it detract from my experience and I am enjoying everything so far. The Captain Tasos and Cruise director Dan are very entertaining and make jokes all the time including in the overhead announcements. The captain has joked that he didn’t know how to get to Key West so he was just following Celebrity Infinity to get there. 
 

There was a great late night show last night. Liars Club is a show in which the host gives an obscure word that could be misconstrued into an adult oriented word. One of the words was full fart. The captain, cruise director and one of the activities staff members were the panel members that came up with the meaning of the words of which only one of them was the real definition. The audience would vote with their applause to guess who was telling the truth. Hilarity ensued for over an hour and they only had four words to define. I would consider seeking out a cruise with Captain Tasos or Cruise director Dan because they are so funny.  I included a photo of them explaining one of the other words.