Our family of two adults and two teens sailed with Celebrity Cruises round trip from San Juan, Puerto Rico on a seven night cruise that stopped at several islands in the Southern Caribbean with a sea day before disembarkation.
Ports of Call
– San Juan (embark)
– Saint Maarten
– Antigua
– Saint Lucia
– Barbados
– Dominica
– San Juan (disembark)
Our Staterooms
Celebrity Summit is one of the smaller ships in the fleet and has been “revolutionized” with refurbished staterooms and public spaces. For our travel party, I reserved two oceanview staterooms, next door to each other, on Deck 2. While the staterooms were relatively small, they were comfortable. In the kids’ stateroom, the attendant split the bed into two twins. This was the first time our family has sailed in separate rooms, and it was a really great setup – in every possible way. In addition to standard staterooms like ours, there’s a wide variety of stateroom types available from interiors to multi-room suites, to everything in between.
Decor
This cruise sailed during Christmas week, and we were curious to see what decorations, entertainment, and holiday foods would be offered. Celebrity Cruises uses a modern, “clean lines” style of decor in neutral tones — which carries over to all parts of the ship. The overall vibe is both lively and serene, with nightly activities wrapping up around midnight most nights. On this sailing, holiday decorations were apparent in many public spaces, with the dominant colors being silver and white. There was a large Hanukkah menorah and a Kwanzaa display in the main plaza.
Dining
The food on this Celebrity cruise was excellent: we were all impressed, having dined on several cruises previously and knowing how hard it is to prepare great food in large quantities. For our main dining dinners we selected late dining (the choices are early, late, or “my time”) which was at 8:30 p.m. for this sailing. There’s one main dining room, The Continental, which is a large space encompassing a portion of both Deck 4 and Deck 5. Our assigned table was on Deck 5 and we had a wonderful serving team who helped us each night we dined there. Breakfast is available in main dining every day, and lunch there is offered on sea days only.
Celebrity Summit has a few specialty restaurants as well: Sushi on Five (a la carte sushi, dumplings, and a few other choices), Tuscan Grill (Italian steakhouse), Le Petit Chef (animated dining experience) as well as restaurants reserved solely for Aqua Class guests and Retreat guests (reach out to me for info on these, they are great). The Spa Cafe offers healthy food items (included) and smoothies (extra charge) from noon to 3 p.m. in the Solarium space. Cafe al Bacio is the onboard coffee house where the pastries and other snacks are included and elevated coffee drinks are available for purchase. And there’s an a la carte gelateria as well (though the included ice cream counter, Scoops, was perfectly good). The buffet, Oceanside Cafe, is quite impressive with many different types of cuisines represented at each meal, and easy access to the individual serving “islands” spread all throughout the space (i.e. no lines). It’s hours are typically 6 a.m. – 1 a.m. with set times for the three main meals within that, and heavy snacks offered between meals. In main dining there were special dinner menus on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day (included in the fare), as well as opportunities to purchase a special meal at the Tuscan Grill.
In addition to food venues there are several bars onboard including in the casino. In the buffet the following beverages are included free of charge: water, lemonade, coffee, iced tea, pomegranate/orange/guava juice, and fruit punch. Guests without a drink package are welcome to purchase beverages a la carte, and they are billed to their onboard accounts.
Celebrity’s model for all-inclusivity is one in which guests can pre-purchase drink packages (basic or full), Wifi access (Starlink), specialty dining, and pre-pay gratuities, if desired. Some of these features come packaged with suites.
Entertainment
The primary entertainment on the cruise was in the form of theater production shows with a talented cast of singers of dancers. We enjoyed some themes more than others, but overall were really blown away by the quality of the shows. On Christmas they performed a special medley of holiday music that was fantastic. We were also impressed that instead of performing to soundtracks they were accompanied by a live orchestra, and that the shows were offered twice each evening so that everyone could attend opposite their dining time. In addition to the production shows there was a comedian, a juggler, an acoustic guitar player, a singing duo, and a steel drum player who performed in different venues at various times.
There’s a children’s and a separate teen’s club onboard which offer a schedule of activities for kids ages 3-17. The activities in the teen’s club include video game contests, basketball on the sports deck, a cooking lesson, a scavenger hunt, a dance party, and many more. Though Celebrity does not have other amenities geared toward children like many other mass market lines do, such as water slides, rock climbing walls, splash pads, (etc.), they do welcome children and the clubs are well run.
Port Days
Of the five port days, we reserved two ship excursions, one private excursion, and toured two days on our own – which turned out to be a good mix for us. All of these destinations were new to us so there was something to learn at each one. On Christmas, we pre-booked a private tour guide to take us all over Barbados while sharing his perspective and experiences, which was fun and interesting. Another port experience I loved was visiting waterfalls on Dominica with a small group and learning from our guide there about the education system and economy. Snorkeling in St. Lucia was beautiful, and driving a rental car around St. Maarten/St. Martin was a fun adventure.
In Conclusion
This cruise was a wonderful adventure for us and I would encourage other families to explore Celebrity Cruises and the Southern Caribbean. It was a unique way to spend the winter break and a vacation we will remember for a long time. There’s a lot more detail I can offer about our experience and about Celebrity in general — please reach out for travel planning assistance like these folks did, and let’s get your family’s cruise countdown underway!
