Constellation in Aruba
As always, hits and misses are purely opinion and other people may feel differently.
Hits
We had a stateroom with an oversized balcony which at the time was priced as a regular balcony cabin. Starting in April of 2033 that cabin and the others like it changed to deluxe veranda cabins so we got a good deal on it.
oversized balcony
Between a covid outbreak and thousands of flights getting cancelled due to weather or no staff our January 2022 sailing was less than half full at just 700 passengers. Which is great when you are a passenger because nothing is ever crowded and you rarely ever have to wait for anything. It’s not so good for the cruise line as they didn’t make as much money as usual or for the crew who outnumbered the passengers so their total tip count would be way down, but this is about what works for me and that low passenger count definitely worked for the passengers. With such a high staff to passenger ratio, the crew were very attentive.
dinner in the dining room
Menus for the entire cruise were available in the app. Besides being able to decide what to order ahead of time, if you want to go to a specialty restaurant or eat dinner at the buffet it’s nice to know which night’s dining room menu you’d prefer to miss so you can make plans for that night – or if there’s a menu you really don’t like you can make alternative plans because of it.
solarium
The ship had a great adults-only solarium. Besides having a covered area with glass windows with a pool and hot tubs, the pool was similar to the sort often found in pay-extra thermal suites with jets and racks to sit on over the jets, only this one was free. The water in the pool and hot tubs wasn’t as warm as generally found in thermal suites, but people weren’t paying to be in that area either. The solarium even had a little café that served healthy breakfast and lunch options, of which some were free. In other things sometimes found in thermal suites, this ship had a free sauna in the locker room by the spa & gym.
archery in the reflections lounge
The Reflections Lounge was a great hang-out space with floor to ceiling windows, and they often had activities there. We went to archery and Deal or No Deal of which the archery was free, but the Deal or No Deal is their replacement for bingo so it had a price – and good prizes.
little nook by windows
The ship had quite a variety of seating areas near windows in public spaces so even people with inside cabins could find somewhere to sit and watch the sea go by.
After having been on some ships with pretty tiny showers it was nice to see a bigger one on the Constellation. A bigger shower means a longer clothesline which comes in handy when you have wet swimming suits that need somewhere to dry every day. Even handier on long cruises if you handwash laundry in the cabin.
cruising duck
We found our first duck on this cruise, tucked into the center of a round couch sort of thing that spiraled out from that point.
The cabin closet had more than the usual number of hangers found in cruise ship closets. It also had plenty of other storage space for two people, which was all that we had.
desserts at the buffet
Food on the ship was mostly good – at least mine was. John tended to get served overcooked proteins at dinner, but mine were always fine. The dining room service was quite speedy, which could have had something to do with the crew to guest ratio since they didn’t have nearly the full amount of meals to cook. It was quite nice to have quick service throughout most meals. The only slow one was when I asked if they had gluten free pancakes in the dining room one breakfast and nobody knew. It took them awhile to find out so we had to wait to order, but they did indeed have them.
pool deck
Plenty of space was always available in deck chairs, buffet tables, and theater seats. There were generally more empty spots than ones that were taken pretty much everywhere onboard. No crowds anywhere.
Caribbean Sunset in the Reflections Lounge
Some of the bars each had their own different specialty drinks so people who wanted to try different things could find something new. You could also order standard drinks at most of them.
No indoor smoking always makes a ship a more pleasant place to be.
gym
The ship had a nice gym.
La Petite Chef cooking steak on a plate
The petite chef show at Qsine was lots of fun. It’s as much about the experience as it is the food with the little chef show before each course, and the food there was delicious.
The ship was clean and well maintained. Boarding and disembarkation were quick and easy.
One good thing covid brought to cruising is having people individually watch safety videos on their phone or cabin TV and check into their muster station on their own instead of the old much-hated muster drill. Hopefully they continue with the new system and keep the old muster drills a thing of the past. It’s a lot quicker and easier and no getting stuck in a crowd.
The bathroom had separate shampoo, conditioner and body wash, and even had hand lotion provided. This used to be pretty much standard, but some of the ships have started going to that nasty all-in-one stuff which was horrible enough when it was just shampoo combined with conditioner, but some even have the body wash included as part of it now.
Misses
Although this cruise was during the peak of a covid outbreak some guests sat in the theater with chin diapers, noses hanging over their masks, or no mask at all even though they were required in all inside spaces. Also some of the stage acts called for audience participation and since yelling and loud singing in indoor spaces is a good way to spread covid that was a bad idea even if there weren’t that many people in the audience. Especially since everyone tended to cluster in the areas with the best stage view rather than spreading out around the entire theater.
the promenade deck doesn’t go all the way around the ship
The outside promenade deck doesn’t go all the way around the ship, which is always a miss to me. Promenade decks that go all the way around are great for walking or jogging around them, while the ones that are more like an oversized balcony aren’t that useful.
Constellation had no ship model ornaments in the gift shop. It had other sorts of models of the ship in the logo shop, but not the most useful one.
top deck track
The running track is just a painted line on the top deck. It only goes around a small space so it would take a lot of laps to amount to anything. It goes through and above smoking areas which is not where anyone exercising wants to be. Plus top deck tracks are always in the wind and weather as well as the main thoroughfare for people transiting that deck so never really a pleasant place to run. There was really nowhere to run on this ship. It did have a nice gym, but masks were required and it’s pretty tough to run on a treadmill while wearing a mask.
it helps to bring your own outlets and USB ports when the ship has 2 outlets and no USB ports
Being an older ship, there were only two outlets and no USB charging ports in the cabin. Luckily we come prepared. I have a plug that turns one outlet into 3 and a clock with 2 USB ports which gave us enough places to charge things.
No outlets in bathroom for shaving or hairdryers, and the hairdryer they had is the sort you have to hold a button down the whole time while using it.
What time is it?
All of the ship’s clocks were covered up with a sign or photo saying isn’t it time instead of displaying the actual time.
solarium hot tub
The hot tubs were more warm than hot and the pools cool.
The future cruise people could only book what was available online. Even when faced with massive cancellations and people unable to get there due to flight cancellations, they were unwilling or unable to make a deal to keep people who were already there onboard for the next sailing instead of letting one more cabin sit empty. Apparently having more people onboard to spend money on other things and provide the crew with more tips was not worth it to the cruise line to make anybody willing to stay on for the next cruise a good deal even though it would have been to their benefit to make something rather than nothing.
Cruise ship internet is known for being notoriously slow. Now that a lot of them including this one have all-inclusive packages that include internet there are more people online than ever making it so slow that it couldn’t even open an email account sign-in page, let alone an actual email. So pretty pointless having internet at all when it’s totally useless. Hopefully they update to Starlink if they haven’t already done so. The last cruise we took (on a different cruiseline) installed it the day we boarded and we had the fastest and most reliable internet we’ve ever had at sea even though that cruise crossed the Pacific Ocean. That was a huge change from previous ocean crossings when there was no internet service at all whenever the ship got too far away from land.
No self-serve guest laundry and ridiculously expensive laundry service.
Smoking areas in the center of the pool area and upper decks where there’d have been smoke everywhere had there been many smokers onboard. Luckily there were only a few.
dueling pianos
Microphones in the theater, especially the one at the center of the stage were set so loud that the music was often distorted. They had a trumpet show one night and the guy stood right by the center microphone. It was so loud it hurt people’s ears and pretty much all of the already small audience left during the first or second song. You could still hear it outside the theater even in areas far from it. The next time they had an outside performer it was a fiddle player and she made sure to stay away from that microphone. She either had more sense or saw what happened to the trumpet guy.
earworm stairway art
A lot of the artwork around the ship was weird, odd, or just plain bad. The photos in the hallways to passenger cabins were blurry shots of things people wouldn’t generally take photos of like telephone poles and street corners. The stairways each had a different sort of art. One had weeds, one had blobs, and the other had childish things. Odd statues seem to be a requirement in cruise ship art and this one had its share of those as well.
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