We cruised on the Summit on 30 May 2010, for our 40th Anniversary. This was our sixth X cruise, including two on Chandris, Celebrity's predecessor. We are two active professionals who prefer sea days to port days. The reason we chose this cruise was the result of timing between other family events more than the ship or the ports. We prefer Celebrity mostly because of their superior customer service. Since we both believers in customer service in our work, we usually pick up a few "pointers" on each cruse. We have been on RCCL, Crystal, Carnival, Royal Viking, Cunard, NCL, P&O, Princess and some now defunct European lines in the past. We are retired military and have a more global outlook on travel. We love to sit and vegetate on the balcony and read all day. We don't do a lot of activities on board, preferring to take it easy. Our major activity on board is walking a few miles a day.

We were visiting family in Washington DC before the cruise and took Amtrak to Newark Penn Station on the morning of departure. We arranged for Black Executive Cars to meet us at the train station and drive us to Port Liberty. This all worked out quite well.

EMBARKATION: Being both an elite and a sky suite passenger, we had priority embarkation processing. As we arrived and checked in our bags at the curb, we were told to go to long line in the baggage tent to go through security. Since the temperature was in the high 80's with some humidity, this looked like it was shaping up to be one of those embarkation nightmares. However, the line moved well and we got through the security scanners in about 10 minutes. We told the hostess at the beginning of the line that we were suite passengers and she escorted us to a empty check-in counter. We filled out some forms and walked into a bus and were whisked away (about 500 feet) to the gangway. The whole check-in process took ten minutes after getting through security. Not bad, curbside to ship in 20 minutes! Read more