Celebrity Eclipse, February 18 - 25, 2012

By deb1220

• February 28, 2012

This cruise was to celebrate our 26^th Anniversary and our son’s impending College graduation.

Our trip started out a little rocky but eventually turned out better than we expected. Originally, I booked a direct flight from Detroit to Miami through Celebrity Choice Air. In late January, Celebrity contacted me and said that Delta had a schedule change and they had to change us to two flights with a layover in Atlanta. We had confirmed seats on the original flight, but not on these. Long story short, we got bumped from these flights with no explanation and very rude ticket agents. Then we got bumped from another flight. Through a manager, we were able to get a confirmed direct flight, getting us in to Miami just an hour later than originally planned PLUS (because of the way we were handled) we each received a $644 check and $10 airport food vouchers PLUS a total of four drink tickets for the plane. They apologized and totally admitted that they were in the wrong.

Embarkation went very well – very fast and efficient. We were on the ship about 2:30 with sailaway scheduled for 4:30.

The Muster Drill was very poorly organized (in my opinion). They just had us meet at our stations (ours was a small restaurant), and watch a short video on emergency procedures. Then just pointed to the exit to our assigned lifeboats and told us what numbered boats were ours.

The ship itself, is gorgeous. Launched in April, 2010, it’s still fairly new and doesn’t show any wear and tear. Very elegant décor and not tacky or overdone – beautiful! It was kept impeccably clean throughout the cruise.

Main Dining Room: Moonlight Sonata –

The dinners in the MDR were superb. I have no complaints whatsoever on the service or quality and variety of the food.

Buffet: Oceanview Café –

For each meal (and in between) they have a wide variety of food. Instead of a long assembly-line type set-up, they have individual “islands”. For example, at breakfast they had two egg stations (and other hot food) where you could get any kind of eggs you desired – from scrambled to poached to several varieties of Eggs Benedict among other islands of types of food. My husband Zack’s favorite was the Sushi Bar which was available every day after 5:30 pm. Other examples are Pizza, Ice cream, Anti-pasto, Salads, Mexican, Indian Curries, Baked Goods, Desserts…..and I know I’m forgetting some.

Martini Bar –

This was our stop every evening before dinner. The bar has a frosted top where people would often “carve” little messages into the ice.

Quasar – A DJ/dance nightclub. The one night we went there, they were playing “Rat Pack” songs. Many dancers, of all ages were on the floor. Not us, though.

Eclipse Theater – Shows –

We went to four shows while on board. 1.) A magician/comedian – Neal Austin. It was a fun show. 2.) A Broadway production show – “Ovations”. It was a typical ship production show with the ship’s cast. It was entertaining. 3.) “Eclipse” – An absolutely amazing “Cirq du Soleil”- type show. It was by far the best show I’ve ever seen on a cruise ship. Everybody we met, that saw it, couldn’t say enough great things about it. 4) The variety show that included a few of the week’s performers plus the winner of the Karaoke contest. It was OK.

Two nights, we went to a late-night comedy show with Brad Mastroangelo. We really enjoyed his observational comedy. We also went to the “Newlywed – Not so Newlywed Game Show”. That was fun too.

Zack went to two lectures. One on ship navigation and another on the ships mechanics – engines, etc.. He and I also participated in a Galley tour, which was very fun and interesting – demonstrations of food, pastry and drink preparations along with a walk-through tour of the galley.

We went to one of the four specialty restaurants (which are $40/person). We decided on Qsine. Very good! As their slogan says, “Uniquely/Unordinary”. It’s very hard to describe. It’s not a typical restaurant. If you want to know more about it, I suggest you look it up on the Celebrity website.

The ports were San Juan, St. Thomas and St. Maarten. We didn’t do any excursions. Just kind of did our own thing. In St. Maarten/Martin, we took an $8 pp cab ride (each way) from Philipsburg to Marigot and back. We spent most of our time in Marigot.

Disembarkation: Very smooth. Our instructions were to meet in the dining room on deck 4 and disembark at 9 am. We went down there about 8:30 and were told we could go straight to the gangway. We picked up our luggage on the carousel, got on the bus and off to the airport.

I would highly recommend this ship to anybody and everybody and we hope to sail on her again. The crew was very professional and efficient. Our cabin steward seemed to read our minds and always greeted us in the hallway with a “good morning”, “have a nice day” and spoke to us by name. We were very impressed with everyone we encountered on board.