Sailing Like a Celebrity -- Day 1
Published Thursday, December 21st 2023 - Updated Thursday, December 21st 2023Our most recent cruise was aboard the Celebrity Summit from May 6-15, 2023. Our travel party was myself, my wife Kathryn, and my mother-in-law Dale. We sailed in a Concierge Balcony stateroom. (This was the only balcony option available to us when we made our reservation.) We visited Martha's Vineyard; Newport, RI; Charleston, SC; and Bermuda during our 9 nights.
Day 1 -- Bayonne, NJ
Sunny, high 60s/low 70s
Embarkation Day! Arrival and parking at Cape Liberty were very easy. I dropped Kathryn and Dale at the terminal with all our luggage and parked in the parking garage. ($30/day). By the time I walked back to the terminal entrance, the ladies had already finished their check-in and were waiting for me beyond security. Most of the check-in is done on the cruise line's mobile app before you even leave home, so we just had to show a passport and go through the metal detector and that was it. We were on the ship 15 minutes after walking into the terminal.
Once we boarded, we immediately went to our lifeboat station to check in and complete our muster drill responsibilities. That took all of 3 minutes. You're also supposed to watch a video on your app with more information, but nobody checked to see if we had actually watched it. Our rooms weren't ready yet, but we were allowed to drop our carry-on luggage in the room anyway. This is a nice change from some other cruise lines, which don't allow you to get into your room until all the rooms are ready.
One of the "firsts" for us on this cruise is that we rented a scooter for my mother-in-law. We rented it for $265 from Special Needs at Sea. And it was waiting for us in the room. This was very helpful for my mother-in-law, and overall, it was a positive aspect of the trip, because she would've been very limited without it.
Might as well also talk about the room itself at this point. The room was definitely smaller than a normal Disney Cruise Line balcony (which is what we're used to), but not terribly so. The difference, essentially, was the width of the "split bath" in the Disney stateroom. Other than that, the sleeping area was roughly the same size and the couch/desk area was roughly the same size. Another difference, however, is that there was no dividing curtain between the bed and the couch. So there was a little less privacy than we're used to, as well.
On the plus side, the balcony was comparable in size to what we're used to on other cruise lines (and wider than what I remember on the NCL Breakaway). The bed was VERY comfortable. And as Concierge guests, we had a "pillow menu". Dale was able to get a body pillow which she loved. I hate most hotel pillows, but all of our bedding was great.
TINY bathroom and shower.
One of the perks of the Concierge stateroom is that we got a sit-down lunch, while almost everybody else had to go to the buffet. So we made our way to the Cosmopolitan Restaurant (the main dining room). It was really nice not to have lug our carry-on luggage with us. I had a Caesar salad and BBQ short ribs for lunch and chocolate cake for dessert. The girls both got the salmon and apple pie for dessert. All were very good.
There some minor issues with our lunch. The tablecloth and my napkin had black dust, almost like soot, on them. And my butter knife was stuck to my bread dish because there was dried jelly on it. Kind of gross. Made for a rocky start -- first impressions, and all -- but thankfully, it was not a harbinger. I'm happy to say that this was the only time there was any issue of cleanliness at any meal (dining room OR buffet!).
After lunch, we spent the afternoon wandering the ship, trying to get our bearings. We visited the pool deck and checked out a few of the lounges. I'll probably talk more about this later, but at 2,100 passengers or so, this ship was almost exactly the right size for me. Easy to walk and easy to find my way around. There's a lot to be said for the really big ships in the Celebrity fleet, or for the "neighborhoods" of Royal Caribbean's Oasis Class ships. But for me, this ship felt just right, in terms of size..
I went to Welcome Aboard Trivia in the afternoon, but I didn't have a team, so I just played solo. It was fun, and I only lost by one question, even though I was by myself! The host was good, too. Funny, but kept things moving. After that, we all went up on deck for Sailaway. We left from Bayonne and could see the Statue of Liberty from where we were docked. We also sailed under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. I have video, but I'll have to add it later. . .
Our luggage got to our room at 6 pm. A little later than we're used to, but we weren't going to dinner until 8, so we didn't need to change clothes or anything before that. After unpacking the evening show was a magician, Jason Bird. He's been on a bunch of TV magic shows like "Masters of Illusion". He was very good. He didn't do any "big magic", like making a person disappear or sawing a lady in two. But he did very good close-up magic and did some fun interaction with the audience. He also seemed like a pretty nice guy, as I got to talk to him briefly on two separate occasions later in the cruise.
When the show was done, we hustled to the Cosmopolitan Restaurant for our 8 pm reservation. Unfortunately, this first experience didn't go well. There was a mob of people waiting outside the restaurant, and the staff didn't seem to be handling it well. There was a line for people with reservations and another line for people without reservations. Even with a reservation, it took us 20 minutes to get to the hostess station. And then another 5 or 10 minutes for someone to take us to our table. I don't know if the delay was due to everybody arriving at once from the show, or because it was the first night and too many people showed up without reservations; but a lot of people were not happy.
Thankfully, for us, we had an 8 pm reservation every night of the cruise (except our night in Bermuda), so after that first night, they knew we were coming and what table we were going to, and there was never another delay after that. But I did hear multiple people saying that the "Anytime dining" (that's not what it's actually called) was not handled well throughout the entire cruise. So I was glad that I had made our reservations prior to boarding.
Our serving team was Reynaldo and Glory, and they were outstanding throughout our entire cruise. I'll say more about the level of service compared to our expectations later in the report. But the entire restaurant staff was great to us. (Our sommelier was Meena and our Head Server/Maitre D was Eva. Both excellent.)
I had a shrimp cocktail appetizer and the pasta bolognese, which were both very good. I've had better bolognese at Trattorio al Forno or Tutto Italia at Walt Disney World, but for a first impression, it was very good. Kathryn had the Thai coconut soup as her appetizer and it was spicy, but she enjoyed it. Dale's entree was a cheese ravioli dish, which she also liked very much.
My chocolate mousse dessert was excellent, but Kathryn's banana-blueberry cobbler was inedible. The bananas were hard, and the crumble topping was like rocks. It was the only truly awful item we were served during the cruise.
Pasta Bolognese:
Cheese ravioli:
The horrible cobbler:
Chocolate mousse:
First dinner:
Interestingly, there's no evening entertainment planned. On a lot of cruises, there's a 10pm or 11pm cabaret act, or an "adults only" comedian or game show. But after dinner, the only entertainment that was offered was "silent disco" or a singer in a lounge. This was actually ok, considering the demographic of this sailing. But I just found it interesting. We love Disney Cruise Line, but some people have complained that the Disney ships basically go to sleep at 11 pm. Well, so did the Summit
So we headed back to the room, finished unpacking and called it a night.
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