I've decided to make this a three-part series. In this part, I'm going to compare this Celebrity Summit cruise with the 80's Cruise Denise and I took in March on Royal Caribbean's Mariner of the Seas, including a comparison of the two ships. Then, in Part 3, I'm going to break down and review the various musical and entertainment acts I saw during this cruise.
Denise and I got home this past Friday, and we've still been recovering from (and coming down from) the cruise. Even though I'm still pretty tired, though, I feel that by the end of the week, my spirit will be ready for another cruise. Which is a little unfortunate, as we're probably not going to actually take another cruise until next year's 80's Cruise next March. Oh well.
Anyway, the biggest difference between these two cruises was their complete dissimilarity in focus. The 80's Cruise was a charter cruise. The company Entertainment Cruise Production (ECP) chartered the ship, and while the crew working the ship came from Royal Caribbean, the entertainment team, including the Cruise Director and (almost) all of the entertainment on board was scheduled, contracted and run by ECP, an independent company. The focus was on 1980s nostalgia, and (almost) all of the bands, musical artists, interviews and even games and theme nights were related to that.
This most recent cruise on The Summit, however, was a traditional cruise. It was put together by Celebrity Cruise Lines, and the entertainment, schedules, etc. were all theirs.
There was a lot of similarity between the two ships, although there were also some differences. Both are owned by the same parent company, Royal Caribbean International. Both are older ships - Mariner had its inaugural sailing in late 2003, and the Summit had its in late 2001. They're also both smaller ships by today's standards. Mariner has a capacity of a little over 3,000 passengers and the Summit holds about 900 fewer than that. Compare that to the newest Royal ship in service, Wonder of the Seas, which can hold nearly 7,000 passengers.
The two ships come from two different cruise lines which are aimed at slightly different demographics. Royal Caribbean, like Carnival Cruises and the Norwegian Cruise Line, are lines designed for mass popularity. They're relatively inexpensive, feature lots of entertainment, and the newer ships in the line tend to have splashy features - wave riders, rock walls, ice shows, aqua shows and roller coasters. They're great for families (because of all of the activities on board), and for party people as well.
Celebrity is kind of the next step up - not exactly a luxury line, but meant for travelers who are willing to spend at least a little more, and who want to cruise without all the bells and whistles. They're roughly equivalent to other lines such as Princess Cruises and Holland-America. They have a slightly older demographic, although Celebrity stills sees itself as hip and cutting edge, compared to very traditional lines like Cunard and Holland-America. And they're usually slightly more expensive, although as it happens, I got a great price on this cruise.
Which ship did I prefer? Based solely on these two sailings, I liked the Summit better, for several reasons. Both ships had comfortable cabins - we had a balcony cabin on the Majesty and an inside cabin on the Summit, although they offered to give us a free upgrade on the second day. But it would have meant a move from the center of the ship on Deck 7 (and a cabin conveniently located right near the elevators) to a cabin in the very aft of the ship on Deck 9, right under the pool deck. This would have been potentially noisier, a further walk from a lot of the places on the ship we needed to get to (the theater, for example), and a rockier time when there were rough seas (which there were for a good part of the trip). So ultimately, we decided to stay where we were.
Both ships were also small enough to get from forward to aft relatively easily, which was good.
The main areas where I think the Summit was better were:
1. The comfort of the theater. If you read my 80s Cruise Review articles, you know I complained bitterly about how uncomfortable the Royal Theater was for larger people like myself. The seats mainly had hard wooden arms on both sides, which left my hips bruised for about a week after I got off the boat. In contrast, the Summit's theater had comfortable, love-seat like seating. It was pure bliss compared to the Mariner's theater (although the seating for the shows in their Studio B were better).
2. The food. Celebrity has a reputation for good food, and while Denise wasn't always happy with hers (she likes her soups, coffees, etc. blazing hot, and that didn't always happen), I only had one misfire - a cheeseburger for lunch one day in the Main Dining Room that I would describe as bowling-alley quality. (OK, the one time I made it to breakfast at the buffet restaurant, the scrambled eggs were kind of runny also.) Everything else I ate was excellent, including a lot of steak and prime rib. Some of the soups were also amazing. And in general, Celebrity's buffet restaurant was much more consistent than Royal's. Most of Royal's dinners were pretty good, but there were also a lot of meals that weren't that inspiring.
3. The crew. While both crews were mostly polite (with one exception on Mariner), the Summit's crew seemed to be a little more organized and knowledgeable, even though both ships were moving from dealing with much emptier ships to fuller ones.
4. The design of the ship. As I said in my 80's Cruise write-up, I don't like that Mariner (and seemingly most of the Royal Caribbean ships) have a ship design that seems to be focused inwards, to the point where you can forget you're at sea. The Promenade in particular feels like a mall - it's a big, wide corridor with shops on both sides and no portholes that allow you to see the ocean. The Summit is more of a traditional ship where you at least can see the water from most of the onboard venues. I like that much better.
5. Outlets. Although the Summit is an older ship, there were more outlets to work with in our cabin than there were on Mariner.
Looking at the cruises themselves and not just the ships, they were apples to oranges experiences, but both were good. The 80s Cruise was an insane party boat, with an absolutely full ship and something going on at all hours of the day and night. The cruise on the Summit, on the other hand, was a quieter cruise on a less-full ship with a (much) older demographic. The 80's Cruise only allowed passengers 18 and older. On the Summit, children were allowed, but because of the kind of cruise it was, the time of the year (with Spring Breaks all done and schools everywhere open and preparing for finals), in practice, we only had one child on the entire ship - an infant traveling with a family of five.
The average age of the 80s Cruise was probably people somewhere in their 50's - those who grew up as teens and young adults through the 1980s. On the other hand, the average age on The Summit was probably the early 70s, with every third or fourth person sporting a cane, walker, scooter or wheelchair. So as you can imagine, The Summit was a much quieter cruise, which was exactly what I was looking for. (In fact, I wish we had done the Summit cruise before the 80s Cruise, to help work me back into cruise shape in a gentler fashion, as opposed to throwing me from my COVID-imposed isolation of the last two years into the middle of a bacchanal.)
The Summit cruise was also an easier experience because it sailed from New Jersey instead of Florida. We didn't have to deal with flying to get to the ship, which was something I really appreciated.
Interestingly, these two cruises were the first two times where the ship I was on was forced to miss a port, not because of COVID, but simply because of the weather. On the 80s Cruise, we sailed right past Nassau, Bahamas because the waters were too rough to dock there, while on the Summit Cruise, the captain chose to spend an extra day in Charleston, SC rather than sail up to Newport, RI (as we were scheduled to) because it would have meant sailing through 25-foot waves. (We didn't have any huge plans for Newport, but I did hope to at least get off the boat there and maybe find some nice New England Clam Chowder for lunch.)
So which cruise did I prefer? Like I said, it was apples vs. oranges. It was impossible to beat the entertainment on the '80s Cruise, where there were multiple concerts by name bands going on every night. On the other hand, I specifically booked the Summit for a quieter, more relaxing experience, and that was just what I got. So in the end, both were great, albeit very different, vacations.
