We were on the January 7th sailing of the Celebrity Equinox, a 10 day cruise to the Eastern Caribbean. First a quick bio on my wife and I: I am 36. She is 33. We are from Eugene, Oregon. We have cruised once previously, last April on the Carnival Splendor on a 7 day cruise to the Mexican riviera.

I booked this cruise through Priceline in August, after a month or so of research on what the best option for us would be for our first cruise to the Caribbean. I knew I wanted to see more of the exotic islands - versus, perhaps, the "typical" ports such as Nassau, San Juan, or the Caymans. My final three choices were the Equinox, the Celebrity Millenium (8 days out of San Juan), and the Carnival Victory (similar itinerary to the Millenium, only cheaper). In the end I decided to sacrifice seeing Aruba and Curacao (bummer) in order to experience what I figured to be an amazing onboard experience on the vaunted Solstice-class ship. I made an excellent choice.

We arrived on a red-eye into Fort Lauderdale at 5am Friday morning. This was my first experience with a red-eye and I mistakenly assumed my wife and I would be able to catch a sufficient amount of sleep over a 5 hour flight. Oops. After killing a number of hours at the airport Chili's, we paid $12 for a taxi to the ship. We arrived at the terminal, dropped off our bags to the porter with a $5 tip, and checked in. We waited a couple of hours, boarding at about noon. I am glad I did not pay more for priority embarkation/disembarkation as it would have appeared to make the difference of 15 minutes in the instance of the former, and no difference in the latter. At the terminal, we did notice a striking demography as far as the passengers on this cruise. Virtually no children were present and at least 80% of the passengers are above the age of 55. This didn't bother us a bit, but I feel as though it is worth mentioning. We were welcomed aboard with mimosas and genuine smiles. The absolute beauty of this ship did not hit me at once, but I began to grasp at it as we took the glass elevators to the Oceanview Cafe for some buffet-style lunch. The artwork (paintings, photography, glasswork,is beautiful and beautifully presented. The interior of the ship is truly a marvel to behold - always pristine and striking. We were told out cabin would be ready at 1:30. It was ready and also very impressive looking. We met our cabin steward Ramesh and his assistant. They worked extremely hard to please us and, like almost everyone who works on this ship, went out of their way to greet us with a genuine smile and a friendly "hello". The interactive t.v.'s are very slick - a quantum leap above what we experienced on Carnival. (We both really enjoyed our Carnival Cruise and would do it again without question) - but the phrase I just used to describe the t.v. system really does sum the difference between the Carnival Splendor and the Celebrity Equinox - a QUANTUM LEAP. Read more