Day 1 - Celebrity Summit Thanksgiving Cruise – Saturday, 23 November - Atlanta, Georgia to San Juan, Puerto Rico

Our flight left Atlanta at 6:40 am so we had to be up early and get to the airport before 4:15 am to park the cars and take the shuttle to the airport. The airplane ride was pretty unremarkable to San Juan.

We got to the San Juan airport, collected our bags easily and changed our airline tags out for the cruise line tags. We were able to take one large shuttle taxi from the airport to the cruise terminal for a total of $45 ($23 + $1/suitcase = $31 + tip). That was a lot less than what Celebrity was charging per person to get from the airport to the cruise terminal.

We got in line to drop off our suitcases first and tipped the guy some more to take them away then went around to the back of another line to get past security with our passports and cruise document to get into the terminal. Once in, we got in the line for suites and were waited on pretty promptly. After changing our on board charges from my Discover card to Seth's American Express card (no international fees), and filling out the requisite “I'm-not-sick-and-if-I-was-I-probably-wouldn't-admit-it-to-you” forms, we were told to go down to the end of the hall where I think they were going to escort us aboard to our suite but we got sidetracked by the dining guy who wanted to sell us a “unique” opportunity.

They were only letting 10 people sign up for a special dinner inside the kitchen (galley) where we would be served a pre-set dinner with all-you-can-drink wine for $275 per couple (they charged the kids $200 per couple because they weren't drinking). There was one other couple signed up and with all 6 of us, they would only let one more couple sign up. The Chef's Dinner was on Wednesday night when we already had Normandie reservations so they booked us and automatically changed our dinner reservations that evening. (We found out later when we were at Qsine that they had changed our reservation from Wednesday to Friday instead which was just fine). The guy selling us the dinner was very excited for us that we were staying in the “nicest cabin on the ship”.

We boarded the ship on our own (I'm still not sure if there was supposed to be someone to escort us in to the penthouse suite). Got the usual embarkation portrait done and made our way to deck 6 (penthouse deck) to #6147.

I had read everything I could get my hands on about the penthouse suite on the Summit and had seen pictures but nothing but seeing with your own eyes does justice to it. I can understand why some say that once you stay in the PS – there's no going back.  I'm writing a separate blog post focusing just on a description (with pictures) of the PS.

The kids wasted no time getting into the hot tub. When we first arrived, our butler was no where to be found so we just hung out and looked around for a bit. Our luggage arrived pretty fast and then our butler, Peter from India, came to introduce himself. I had pre-written some information for him: not a list of things to do but more of an introduction of our family and a copy of our plan for the week including when we would be dining where and when/where our excursions were since we didn't book a single excursion through Celebrity. I had also written down a few things on the back of the envelope including the Chef's dinner reservation we had made – to make sure our Normandie reservation was taken care of, a problem that they were having ship wide with the beverage packages. I guess there was some confusion regarding the classic beverage packages that was complimentary on this cruise for us – but we had paid to upgrade to the premium beverage package and those were not notated on our Sea Pass cards. Peter did ask us if we wanted him to help with unpacking but we had not received Seth's suitcase yet. Peter took my Sea Pass card to see about getting the liquor package taken care of so we hung out for a little while in the suite while he did that. When he returned, I didn't quite understand what he had done about the liquor packages but my understanding was that they still weren't fixed. Charlie and Wade had gone to guest services to have new cards made that said “Call Pall” which was the premium liquor package. Peter gave me my original card back and said something about sending a message to customer service so we went up to the buffet to get a snack. After a very light snack, we went down to Guest Relations which, surprisingly was not crowded at all, where, after just a bit of confusion about what we paid for (premium) and what we didn't (classic), we got new cards issued with our premium liquor package. Of course, we had to go and try out our new cards so we headed for the Martini Bar to order some drinks.

Dinner that evening was in Qsine and we had a 6:30 reservation. Because of its location mid ship, we had gone to the deck it was on but then had to go down one level, walk to mid ship, and then go back up to the deck it was on to get there. We were each given an ipad but we ended up designating a “captain” (me) and it was my order that went to the kitchen. We didn't know how much to order so I ended up inputing all of the choices and removing the ones that didn't sound good to us thinking it was like ordering at the Iberian Pig. We ended up with 13 choices which, at the time, didn't sound like too much – just roughly 2 orders per person – but it ended up being a TON of food because each order was prepared for 6 or more people.

They didn't bring out the tastings in the order in which they were listed on the ipad. We started with the sushi lollipops and Lava Crab first which were absolutely delicious. I especially liked the little bottles of sauce that came with the different dishes. 

The sushi lollipops were fun – sushi on a stick with all sorts of different flavors like spicy tuna – I didn't catch all the different kinds. The lava crab looked like a giant crab ball which our waitress divided up 2 of them between the 6 of us. This was also wonderfully delicious. They served the “popcorn” fish and chips in popcorn boxes and the “chips” were like fried mashed potato balls. We also had the Spring Rolls which were served in real metal springs and each with their own sauces.

Disco Shrimp

We all agreed that our least favorite was the Chitini. The spicy shrimp was good and I liked the stir fried veggies and steamed rice but the rest of it wasn't great – the meat was tough. I liked the lobster escargot although I had a hard time telling that there was lobster in it – there really wasn't enough lobster it seemed mostly like finely chopped escargot. I did appreciate the brioche baked in cones that you could use to dip into the escargot sauce.

Chitini

Slider Party

I think it was around this time that we had to take a “break” from our dinner and attend the mandatory safety drill. In the bygone era of cruising (eg when we took our first cruise some 20 years ago), you used to have to go back to your cabin to get your life vest and wear it on deck. It made for some funny pictures but in this day and age they are now satisfied with just getting everyone to their muster stations (ours was in the rendezvous lounge but it was very crowded and we didn't get seats so we sat on the floor). We completed our safety drill and returned to Qsine but we were dismayed to figure out that we had only finished 5 selections and still had 8 to go. We were getting full. Our next few selections were good but we tapped out and gave in after just a few more entrees.

Meatball Trilogy

We were returning to Qsine on Tuesday night so we decided to try the rest of our selections that night. Things that we had yet to try from our list:

Painter's Mignon, Crunchy Munchies, Taco “Royale”, Persian Kabobs, and the Tresceviches.

We were pretty wiped out for the evening and had to be up early for our morning excursion so we headed back to the suite and went to bed. We did ask our steward, Socorro, earlier in the afternoon to set up a roll away bed for Rhys to sleep in.