Drive to Miami and Boarding

Janie needed one more cruise to make Elite before our Transpacific cruise in April so we booked a 4-day cruise back on the Celebrity Summit. We got up early on a Thursday morning and made the drive down to Miami. After poor GPS directions led us to a non-existent Panera Bread, we ended up at the terminal early but they let us check in and we didn't sit long before we were boarding the ship.

We were directed to our muster station in the theaterand checked in to finish that task and then went up to the buffet for lunch since we had missed breakfast. The crowd for the Tampa Bay Bucs Cruise was starting to fill in by the time we left the buffet and headed down for a drink and to unpack.

As Captain's Club members, we were invited to sailaway again on the helipad so we grabbed a drink and watched the Captain make a U-turn out of the Port of Miami.

J. R. checked the app to see if our dining table was listed and was surprised to find out we were on "Celebrity Select" dining instead of our 8:30 traditional dining. We were originally wait-listed for 8:30 so J. R. had made reservations each night in the Cruise Planner, then Celebrity moved us to 8:30 and automatically cancelled his reservations. So we were not pleased to see they had changed this again. Guest Services sent us to Cosmopolitan where no one was manning the desk. He called GS from the house phone and they said they would send an email to ask us to be moved back. J. R. went back down after 5:15 and the hostess was dismissive when he told her the problem, saying "Whatever. Just show up at 8:30 and at worst you will wait 15 minutes." He told her "whatever" was not the right response to a guest and the whole point was, we did not want to wait since we had traditional dining booked.

The evening show was a comedian, Cory Kahaney. She was moderately funny, but not a lot of laugh-out-loud moments. We watched a little of the game show before dinner.

We had to wait in a line to see if they had our reservation, and they did, and we were taken to our table. Service was exceptionally off this night. Bread did not arrive until after the appetizer. J. R. asked four different times to get an iced tea, which arrived with the entree. Our head server seemed to be the only one working because we only saw the assistant server when she came to clear plates and she never introduced herself, so we wouldn't have known except we saw her name tag.

After dinner was the Silent Disco. We enjoy these usually but when they do them in the Martini Bar area, it is way too crowded to really dance and people want to pass through so you are constantly being jostled and moved. They need to expand this to the upper deck as well since Cafe al Bacio is rather empty at night. The idea of a three-story Silent Disco would be cool too.