Today we boarded the Celebrity Summit in Fort Lauderdale for our 25-night adventure taking us through the Panama Canal and up to Vancouver, B. C. The ship is repositioning from it’s winter routes (Caribbean) to it’s summer routes (Alaska), so this itinerary is done only once a year and is notably longer (and less costly per day for passengers 😃) than a typical cruise. Obviously, being a longer cruise, there are far fewer families and kids on board (our cruise director said only 8 kids are registered at the Kids Club 😭), and farrrrr more old retired people like us who have this kind of time to spend cruising. Our long cruise last year from Hawaii to Sydney was also a repositioning cruise on Celebrity. Since we learned we actually love cruising for that long and never got bored, we knew this trip would be fantastic, plus check off another bucket list item for us when we travel all the way through the Panama Canal.

Yesterday we left Atlanta and flew down to Fort Lauderdale to spend the night before we boarded the ship. Our Delta flight departed about 30 minutes late- no big deal- but when we got to Fort Lauderdale, only one of our two bags had made the flight. After a visit to baggage services (the office in the airport no one ever wants to have to go to), we learned for some reason our second bag was on the next plane in from Atlanta, and we were told to sit and wait for that to arrive. It was only about another 45 minutes before it came, and our bag was, in fact, on that flight. So weird. No idea why our bag decided to take an extra hour in Atlanta and enjoy itself (I picture it rolling it’s little self down the road and going to the Varsity for a hotdog), but frankly we were just glad to get it before we got on the ship!

We left our hotel this morning and took a shuttle to the port, followed by the truly easiest boarding process we have EVER had in all our years of cruising. From shuttle drop off, we were through security and checkin and on the boat within about 8 minutes! Well done, Celebrity and Fort Lauderdale Port employees!! After boarding we dropped off our things in our cute little cabin (we usually have an inside cabin on most cruises to keep costs down and because we actually like cold, dark caves) and went to check out the ship. The Summit is an older, smaller ship but it has a great vibe and lots of cool, old school details like wood paneling and funky shaped elevators.

Although this was only our 4th time sailing on Celebrity, they match loyalty points with Royal Caribbean, and we have sailed Royal many times. We were delighted to find out that Celebrity moved (matched) us up to a higher loyalty rewards level on this cruise, so we are now at the “Elite” level (instead of “Select”) of the Captain’s Club. This means some cool perks for us, including a couple free bags of laundry (very important when you are sailing for 25 days!), invites to special events, and – our favorite- free (select) happy hour drinks from 5-7 daily! Nice!!! Here we are enjoying our “perks” this evening.

When we got on board today, we spent a few hours wandering and checking out the ship and entering all the raffles and giveaways they often do on the first day of a cruise. I was soooo excited to hear my ticket number called at the spa raffle today!! I have booked and will enjoy a massage later this cruise!

We’ve met some really nice people already onboard, including some Aussies who we loved talking to about our adventures Down Under. Tonight we dined in the buffet and found the food to be surprisingly good, certainly better than the buffet experiences we had on our last Celebrity ship, the Solstice. We also saw a great comedian – Lamont Ferguson- who has had an amazing career, and we really enjoyed his show.

We walked the jogging track tonight to help digest some of this cruise food, and made it an early-ish night (for us that means in bed by midnight). Tomorrow we are at sea en route to Grand Cayman, so we have the whole day to lounge around and enjoy the ship. Since our day will likely be spent on frivolous and sloth-like pursuits, look for our next update to the blog on day 3 of the cruise, after we dock in Grand Cayman! Thanks for adventuring with us!