We had booked cruise only with our UK TA and booked our own flights with US Air from Manchester to Fort Lauderdale via Philadelphia, arriving the day before and staying overnight at the Best Western Oceanside on Seabreeze Boulvd., overlooking Port Everglades. Fortunately the weather in Philadelphia had improved from a few weeks before and all our flights were on schedule, although we were about 30 minutes late arriving in Fort Lauderdale. We had booked in June 2009 and this routing gave us the best price at the time, we had checked US TA prices but these were only a few pounds lower, and this was offset by the excellent pre-paid gratuities exchange rate we secured from the UK TA, and our own flights were much cheaper than booking fly cruise with Celebrity, even after taking account of our own hotel accommodation.

We took a cab from the hotel about noon and were through the booking in process and on board by about 12:45, despite a problem we had booking in because US Air and Philadelphia immigration seemed to have jumped the gun and ceased using green I95 visa waivers for UK passengers before they should. One other point, despite checking at booking in that they had taken account of our request to have the final bill left in US dollars and not be converted to GBP, I still had to get Guest Relations to correctly set it up during the cruise.

We were offered the quarter full (three quarter empty) complimentary glass of champagne, which was finished before the lift arrived, and were inspecting our cabin a few minutes later, and it did not disappoint. Ours had the bed by the bathroom which would be our normal first choice as it means the sitting area and balcony become one large lounge or living space. The bathroom is excellent, a very large shower cubicle with glass sliding doors, in fact it may even be too big, the sink and worktop take up almost the full length of the long wall opposite the door, with a full height shelf space at one end, the top half has a glass door and the lower section a wood door. The toilet is at the opposite end to this, between the shower and the counter, and there is more shelf space under the counter. Certainly the biggest standard cabin bathroom I have seen on a cruise ship except for the few ships that include a bath as well as a shower in their standard cabins. Unfortunately the wardrobe and cupboard/shelf space in the cabin is barely adequate, and for a 14 plus day cruise it might become a problem. The wardrobe is narrow, barely able to fit a jacket and has the safe under half its width, not a lot of room for long dresses and ladies pants, although I think on Equinox the safe location has been changed, There are 5/6 narrow drawers in the vanity unit, and another shallow one at the dressing table end where the hair dryer is stored. The rest of this unit houses the fridge/minibar and a large cupboard above it, which you will probably use to store some of the minibar contents to make room for your own water, beer and soft drink bottles to go in the fridge. Opposite this is a 3 seater sofa, which in our cabin could be converted to another bed and therefore lost the under seat storage, and an oval coffee table between it and the vanity unit. The bed, as usual, is huge by UK standards and has quite a deep mattress and a quilted and padded mattress topper which made it very comfortable. Alongside the bed are two of the smallest bedside tables I have seen, they have open shelves but are so narrow that it is almost impossible to make much use of them. There are then two large covered shelves over the bed, which are quite tall but only shallow and a bit impractical for keeping items segregated, and these will be taken by the steward for storing the surplus bedding taken off overnight if you don't claim them early. One of the cabin walls is indented to make the cabin wider by the bed and I assume this design is standard throughout the ship, now I may be a nerd but on checking the indented cabin wall I thought that the cabin with the bed by the balcony is likely to be the larger of the two, which may interest other nerds. Personally I would like to see a clever blending of the storage space on the Princess Grand class ships into this cabin to make my ideal standard ships cabin design. Read more