OK, we are Royal Caribbean Diamond Plus members with 24 consecutive cruises on the parent line. This time we wanted to try something different. Although not totally removed from RCCL (they own Celebrity). We felt it was worth a try in that we could keep our loyalty program from RCCL and transfer to Celebrity with the same amenities.

I guess we are getting old but we hate the thought of sailing from Miami. The traffic is terrible and confusing getting to the port. Once that was behind us and we were parked and ready to board, we began to see the differences in the cruise lines. We took no more than ten minutes to get checked in and have our documents processed. Everything seemed streamlined and being Elite members of Celebrity got us into check-in without a line. To be fair, the last RCCL ship we were on was the Allure of the Seas and had 5,000 passengers while the Equinox had only 2,850. Again it took less than ten minutes to process us in! The next thing that we noticed was as we entered the ship, there was a crew member there handing us a glass of welcoming champagne! Really classy. Since our stateroom would not be available until 1 PM we headed for the Oceanview Cafe (buffet) to wait and have lunch.

We were surprised at the roominess of the cafe as well as the layout and availability of food. The selection was superb. Soon we headed for our Veranda room and found that it was a bit larger than the same room on RCCL. If I remember correctly Celebrity claims their bed is Queen size but we certainly thought it was a King. On deck 8 we had a beautiful view. Our luggage arrived around 2.00 PM. This too was impressive. Read more