Cruise Ship: Celebrity Mercury
Date of Cruise: June 22 - 29, 2003
Cruise Destination: Alaska
By: George
Overall
A wonderful, relaxing way to explore the cities and beauty of Alaska's Inside Passage. Explore the ports of Ketchikan, Juneau, and Sitka, plus a few hours in Disenchantment Bay, the access point for Hubbard Glacier. A refined, classy ship without a superpremium price. A crew genuinely interested in the pleasure of your vacation. Nearly flawless shipboard operations, including a dining room that serves 1000 meals at a time without missing a beat. The scenery? Beautiful!
The Cruise Ship
Mercury was built in 1997 as part of Celebrity's expansion into the market a notch above Princess, RCL, and Carnival. Conde Nast rates Mercury (and many other Celebrity vessels) as tops in their class. However, our first impression was that Mercury was not that different from Carnival. This changed after the 2nd day, when we began to notice Celebrity's refined customer service, its sincere crew, and the passengers themselves, who were not nearly as "wild" as on other lines. Though the ship was full, everyone was nice, and even the kids were amazingly well behaved. The bars, the casino, and the disco were never crowded. We had the place to ourselves most of the time.
The Staff
Julian Bertsch started his seagoing life as an AV geek --handling sound and lighting for shipboard production numbers. Now he's Mercury's Cruise Director -- professional, informed, entertaining but not intrusive, handsome, and (sorry girls) no longer available - he's heading to the altar this fall. Two gems on his staff: The vivacious Robin Pilarski and the smooth and stealthily charming "Cookie" will make great future Cruise Directors. Robin's birthday is coming up September 10 - wish her a happy 25th!
Best Deals
The best place to hang out, day or night, is the Navigator Club, the ship's huge disco up on Deck 12. With a commanding 180-degree panorama out floor-to-ceiling windows, the multi-leveled seating areas are wonderful for viewing the gorgeous scenery.
Celebrity allows advance tour booking on their website, a wise idea, especially for the more popular tours. Although in the Caribbean you can save as much as 40% by booking excursions over the web with vendors in advance, we did not find the same savings in Alaskan ports.
Like other cruise lines, Celebrity offers an adult unlimited soda card for US $39/adult for 7 days. You cannot buy this by the day, only for the entire cruise. If you don't drink alcohol, this is the way to go.
The helicopter trips to glaciers, dogsled trips, and other unusual excursions are expensive, and everybody leaves the ship grumbling about it. But everyone comes back beaming.
Definitely take a taxi to and from the Vancouver airport -- it is only $13 CDN per person and much faster than the Celebrity bus. Plus you don't have the long waits for other passengers and their bags.
Best prices on quality t-shirts that won't fall apart on their 3rd wash is at the Juneau T-Shirt Company just across the street from the Juneau dock.
The best Spa deals are in the glass display case to the left as you enter the spa reception area. Typically those deals are for when you're in port. Feeling a little "dirty"? Ge the magic mud and then clean up with your beloved in the mysterious and sensual Rasul Chamber.
Join Celebrity's Captain's club. It's free and you get perks on your next Celebrity cruise.
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