Canada/New England Cruise
Celebrity Summit
Sunday, October 5 to October 19, 2014


Things got a little crazy after we got home cataract surgery (me) and admission to the hospital through the emergency room (Paul); so I did not get to this as soon as I would have liked.

These are things that happened that don’t quite fit in the day-to-day account.
We booked the cruise in March and then got an okay from my oncologist. Backwards, but we knew it was early enough that we could cancel with no penalty. He told me I could do what ever I wanted to do as long a I felt up to it.

We were glad we booked early because by May the cruise was showing up as full. One of the couples at our dinner table had gotten their cabin, the only one available, because of a cancellation.

The Bad, The Ugly and The Good

The Bad
I cannot even express how much we hated the Ocean View Café, the cafeteria style restaurant or as my father would have called it “Mess Hall.” It certainly was a mess. The first problem was finding a seat. That was next to impossible. To be served a drink you had to ask for it. Beverage service was never offered, at least to us. Others may have had a different experience.

Lunch one day offered things like a full roast beef dinner, 3 different kinds of curry, etc.
The Maître ‘d stopped by our table and asked how the food was. We told him the selection was not very good, and that the curry I had chosen was too hot to eat. (I like spicy food). We went on to say that what we really would have liked was something like soup and a sandwich. This was fairly early in the cruise.

Six days into the cruise, we found sandwiches, pizza, etc. only because we couldn’t find seats and walked all the way to the back of the café. The design of this space is very poor. When you enter you see the main serving area. To find the other areas you had to walk by a long hallway with no connection to the rest of the cafe. The area for sandwiches, etc. was completely separated from everything else with no indication of it being there for new passengers.

You’d think the Maître ‘d might have mentioned it when we said that we would like sandwiches. They were pretty bad anyway unless you stood in a long line to have one made for you.

The Ugly
Our dinner table was made up of a lovely Mexican couple, she spoke very limited English and he spoke none, a couple from Vancouver, and ourselves.

Midway through the cruise.the woman from Vancouver called the Maître ‘d to our table after the Mexican couple had left. Without consulting us, she asked if he could make our table a table for 8 so that we could have more conversation. She also had the gall to have him ask the Mexican couple if they would move.

She also pointed out couple at another table that she said would like to join us. That came as a news flash to the Maître ‘d and us.

We made it very clear to the Maître ‘d that we had requested a table for 6 and had no problem with the current situation.

The next night Vancouver informed us after the Mexican couple left that the Maître ‘d was arranging a table of all Mexicans. The night after that she told me the couple at our table had refused to move. Hooray for them.

The Good
Paul and I established some pretty good nonverbal communication along with limited verbal conversation with the Mexican couple. I really wish we could have conversed better because they were a lot of fun. Once the above got settled we had some very nice conversations with the Vancouver couple.

The second day we were in Quebec Paul became short of breath while we were walking up a hill. The next morning he really was not well.

Unfortunately, he ended up at the on-board infirmary. It was much larger than we expected. The doctor was very, very competent, thorough and caring. He even tried to call our family doctor a number of times but could not reach her through no fault of his or hers.We departed the ship with a very complete medical record to take to our family doctor when we got home.

We really liked this ship. It is small enough to easily find your way around and attractive in a very traditional way. It is not glitzy like Royal Caribbean.

The crew was wonderful. The crews on our Royal Caribbean cruises were one of the reasons we became repeat customers. That is also true for Celebrity.

Because we are members of Royal Caribbean’s Crown and Anchor Society, we automatically became members of Celebrity’s Captain’s Club at the same level

The entertainment was the best we’ve ever had on any cruise. What a great job the cruise director did in arranging a great variety of entertainment. More about the entertainment in the day-to-day report.