The ship itself

I have never been on a cruise ship before, so this added another whole new dimension to the adventure of the trip. The ship itself, the Mercury, is enormous. There are 11 elevators on board. The ship itself if over 14 floors tall. The public has access to decks 4-12 and you could get up even higher outside. The Mercury is nearly 900 feet long (a ¼ mile is 1320 feet) and weighs in at over 77,700 tons. There were 3 hot tubs and 2 pools on board. The rear pool had a retractable roof and was the only working pool. The ship can accommodate 2000 passengers and has over 900 crew. Note the passenger to crew ratio - a little over 2 passengers per crewmember. Needless to say, service is very important to Celebrity.

Our stateroom, as the cruise line called it, was small but adequate. We paid the extra fee to have a stateroom with a window. And quite unlike what I expected, the window was not a small round hole, but a decent sized picture window of approximately 2.5 x 3.5 feet (Nope, it didn’t open). Our stateroom was on deck 4 the lowest passenger deck. This was reasonably convenient with regards to the dining room, as the entrance was located on deck 6. More about the dining room later. The stateroom offered us a queen-size bed with a nightstand and lamp on each side. Our window was positioned directly above the bed. There were two small chairs and a small round glass top table. On one side of the stateroom was a desk with a large mirror above. The mirror was hinged and opened up to offer a set of wide but shallow shelves and a small safe to store valuables in. The safe was programmable, so we didn’t have to worry about remembering some unusual combination. On the other side of the room was a small set of shelves, which housed the mini-bar, and TV. The TV offered several channels, including ESPN & CNN. Mostly though it had ship board programming including, the shopping channel, the excursion channel, the ship board activity channel, an outside view of the ship with time, temp & location and several music video channels. You could also access your account, get Pay-per-view movies and gamble – blackjack, slots, draw poker. Behind the shelves was a bank of closets, shelves and drawers to store your clothes. It was really necessary to put your clothes in the closet, as we had to store out luggage beneath our bed. The closet also had our life vests. The bathroom was located behind the desk and had all the amenities one might expect in a bathroom. The toilet was not your typical water flushed unit, but was a vacuum operated unit. There was no bathtub, but a reasonable sized shower stall next to the sink.

Our cabin steward was named Luis. He was very friendly, although we only saw him twice during the whole cruise. He was very adept at being able to get into our room, and organize the mess, clean the bathroom, change the sheets, refill the ice bucket and water pitcher, and restock the mini-bar without us ever knowing he was there

The dining room itself was two floors. You entered on the 6^th floor and took the central staircase to the 5^th floor. We were assigned a table for diner. Our table was at the very back of dining room on the sixth floor. Our table was situated next to 2 floor-to-ceiling picture windows that were as wide as they were tall. We always had a spectacular view during diner. For me at least, this made diner a step up over any fine restaurant that one could find. The dining room is enormous. It is easily 4 times the size of my house on just one floor. Dinner had an early and late seating, so with that in mind, the dining room was seating 1000 passengers per seating. Our waiter was also named Luis. He was absolutely fabulous. He was from Colombia, and although he didn’t speak English very well, he was very adept, friendly and courteous. He also managed to learn the names of everyone at our table in one evening. Every day afterwards, he would address us by our first names. That, is a level of service that I’ve not found anywhere else.

As you may have heard, cruise ships are basically a non-stop feeding frenzy. And dinner was no exception. Dinner was always an extravagant affair. Dress for dinner varied per night, with the first and last nights casual, interspersed with formal and semi-formal nights. To some, this may seem like a burden, but I found it to be part of the charm. When else do I get to dress and go some place with my wife, enjoy a gourmet dinner, a fine bottle of wine, and then attend a Broadway like show afterwards. All without screaming kids or dirty dishes to clean up. I looked forward to dinner every night! The meals were always 5 course affairs and more flatware than I knew what to do with.

We typically at breakfast at the buffet, but we could have gone to the main dining room and ordered from the menu. Mostly we went to the buffet because of time considerations due to the shore excursions that we had signed up for. Twice, we ordered room service, but this really wasn’t all that great. The buffet was an extravagant affair as well. Countless food carvings, and just about anything you could want for breakfast was available. Lunch was the same. You could eat at the buffet or in the main dining room. We ate at the buffet mostly when we were on the ship. Sometimes we ate lunch in port at a local establishment.

The ship has numerous bars about. And beverages are one of the few things that you had to pay for, save coffee, tea, and water. You always had to keep you Celebrity card with you, as there was no exchange of cash anywhere on board, except the casino. The Navigator Club was on the 12^th floor at the front of the ship and offered dramatic views from anyplace in the bar. The Navigator Club was surrounded on 3 sides with huge picture windows, I’d estimate to be well over 12 feet tall and wrapping over into the ceiling. It was quite pleasant to go here after a show in the theatre, get a drink and watch the scenery pass by. It was quite calming.

I was a bit nervous as to how much the ship would pitch and roll. I was fairly certain that it would be reasonably stable due to its immense size. And my presumption was correct, only is the roughest water did you ever get any sort of rolling or pitching sensation. The best I can describe is that it was much like being a bit tipsy. That sensation would only last for just the briefest moment though. I never got seasick or had any sort of nausea. In fact the ship is so large, that I mostly felt that I wasn’t moving at all. Which caused me several times to do a double take when passing by a window, as it was a bit disconcerting to see the scenery moving by but yet not have any sensation of movement. This was odd to me and it never failed to catch me off guard.

It was curious to me when docking or leaving port. No tug boats. I always thought that ships of this size required tugboats to maneuver them into and out of the dock. Apparently this problem has been laid to rest long ago, at least on cruise ships, as the ship is equipped is bow and stern thrusters, which allow the ship to move laterally or rotate as desired. The ship would be moored to the dock using very large ropes. No steel cable. I’m not sure why, but my guess is that steel doesn’t get along with salt water/air very well, and nylon rope is quite resistant to just about everything.

Boarding and exiting the ship was no more complicated that climbing or descending a set of stairs or ramp. Depending on the tide the gangway could be quite flat or quite steep. At Ketchikan, our first port, this was quite evident. When we debarked the ship, the gangway was almost flat, but upon our return, 5 hours later, the climb was quite steep.

There were no tours of the bridge, radio room, engine room, kitchen or any other "non-public" area. I was disappointed to find this out. The reason given was security and safety reasons. Still, I would have loved to have seen the powerplant(s) that could move 77,700 tons of ship.

	A view overlooking the swimming pool on the upper deck, looking towards the front of the ship.
	A view of the upper most deck.
	The shroud surrounding the smoke stacks of the Mercury.
	Lounge chairs on one of the upper decks.
	A view of the Mercury in port at Ketchikan. The Mercury is the rightmost cruise ship.
	A closer view of the Mercury in port at Ketchikan.
	A view of thestarboard side of the Mercury in port at Ketchikan.
	Another view of the Mercury in port at Ketchikan. The upper row of windows is a lounge which offer spectacular views of the inner passage while cruising. This was one of my favorite places to relax.