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We are a family that has found cruising the Caribbean to be the perfect winter getaway! Our party includes 30+ husband and wife with a teenage daughter and 60+ father. This was our first sailing with Celebrity and we choose to sail on the Equinox because of the itinerary first and Celebrity's wonderful reputation second. We were aware that Celebrity is enjoyed by more mature passengers but have to admit a bit of culture shock upon arrival at the port and realized that our party was about the youngest there, including my father.
Equinox is a beautiful ship and we found it easy to find our way around. It wasn't long until we felt at home. We loved the library and the comfortable lounge chairs on the deck. The solarium was always quiet and peaceful. We enjoyed the number of whirlpools and there was always room available whenever we wanted to soak. The smoker in our party was pleasantly surprised at the several areas that allowed smoking. The entertainment was good and the musicians talented.
We were disappointed the the two main pools were not heated and found the water too cold to swim during the trip. We also found the schedule for the evening shows conflicted with our late dinner seating. Our past experiences have been to see the shows before a late dinner but the first show didn't start until 8pm with the second usually around 10 to 11 pm. We found the main dinning room cramped and difficult to move in. It was nice to be able to ask our room attendant for a menu from the main dinning room to order room service. We had several nice meals on our balcony.
The food reviews were mixed among our party so I would attribute most disappointment with a given meal to personal taste as opposed to problems with the quality of food. There was a general agreement that sauces were bland though.
There was a teen program available but my daughter never found anyone participating and after a couple of days didn't even bother to try and check it out. She spent a lot of time with us. (When does that happen during the teen years??? I can't complain about that!) At 16 she was allowed almost anywhere on the ship but the guidelines on the ship were for under 16 to be supervised. Our impression was that if you have active kids that need to hangout with others in their age group that they would be disappointed.
A final note about up-selling - there was a lot of it! One of the reasons we like cruising is the inclusiveness of the experience. We found the constant push to "upgrade" our experience wearing, especially for 11 days.
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