Our First Cruise – Honeymoon on Celebrity Summit (2007)

Selecting Our First Cruise

I can’t recall why but, my fiancé (now husband) and I decided to go on a cruise for our honeymoon.  We had never been on a cruise before and had no clue on how to plan it, so we went to a travel agent.  He asked us a few questions and helped us in making an informed decision.  We decided to splurge on a 5-night cruise on Celebrity Summit sailing out of Miami and selected an ocean view mid-ship balcony cabin with concierge service.  We wanted something nice for our honeymoon but didn’t want a long cruise because we weren’t sure if we would like it.

Setting Sail

We flew out from NYC-JFK to Miami a day before the cruise and booked a hotel close to the port for convenience.  Port of Miami and the downtown are areas quite close so we were able to explore the downtown area as well as the Bayside market that has a ton of shops and restaurants.  We don’t like flying in the day of the cruise to avoid any last-minute delays or cancellations weather related or otherwise.  Celebrity is definitely a nice luxury cruise line and the experience was definitely something we could get used to.  We had priority boarding since we booked the concierge service.  The room was nice and the balcony was decent size which made it easy to sit out for a meal/snack and watch the open ocean view.  We enjoyed breakfast on our balcony every morning as well as celebratory champagne courtesy of Celebrity cruises.

The one thing that I did not like was when we docked at Key West were the seagulls flying overhead while we were trying to enjoy our breakfast.

The food was top notch which included a great sushi restaurant 😊.

The shows and activities on board were awesome.  There were mostly couples on board so it wasn’t really a kid friendly cruise.  There weren’t many kids’ activities on board either.  At the time we didn’t mind that at all since we were on our honeymoon.

Cruise Ports

We only stopped at two ports as it was shorter 5-day cruise.  We enjoyed both of our stops, Key West & Grand Cayman immensely.  It was our first time in both of those ports.  In Key West we did a local bike tour and in Grand Cayman we got picked up by husband’s buddy who lived there and explored the island on a jeep.

We were HOOKED!

We had such a great time on our cruise that we decided to book another cruise soon thereafter.  The 5-day cruise felt a bit short so we booked a 7-nighter for our next cruise.

If you are first time cruiser, we highly recommend reading the Cruising Vacation Basics post to acclimatize yourself with the cruise booking basics.