Talking with the Captain of Celebrity Mercury

This week we take another look at Celebrity Mercury and who better to speak about her than her captain?

Captain Komstantinos Patsoulas, a veteran of the Greek Navy, joined Celebrity Cruises in 1997. “Everything has changed - - the ships, the people, the opportunities for careers. Everything has changed for the better.”

However, as Captain Patsoulas pointed out to me, there is still a place in Celebrity for the 12-year old Celebrity Mercury. According to the captain, she is a “real ship.” Moreover, her crew tries hard to achieve an atmosphere of hospitality and friendliness. As a result, many guests still prefer this medium sized ship. My interview with Captain Pastsoulas is posted at http://www.beyondships.com/Celebrity-Mercury-art-captain.html

In a second article, we go onto the Mercury’s bridge to take a look at the ship from a nautical point of view. While there, I spoke with the ship’s navigator, Irene Cop, about how they drive the ship, the equipment on the bridge, the bow thrusters, the stabilizers and the engines. This article appears at http://www.beyondships.com/Celebrity-Mercury-art-bridge.html

The Inside Story On Celebrity Mercury

This week we continue our look at Celebrity Mercury by talking to two of the people who play a key role in shaping the vacation experience on the ship - - the hotel director and the cruise director. My goal in presenting this type of interview is to let the people who are actually running the ship explain what they are trying to do. One can learn a lot about ships by reading facts and figures but I don’t think one can get a feel for what a ship is like without hearing from the people who actually sail the ship.

Sheldon Thompson is the Hotel Director on the Mercury.. Since he is in charge of all the services and facilities that immediately impact the guests, he is a particularly good position to talk about the experience that they seek to provide on the Mercury. In addition, Mr. Thompson and has worked on nearly every Celebrity ship since before the line was acquired by Royal Caribbean. Thus, he was also able to explain why a between a Celebrity cruise is different from a Royal Caribbean cruise. My interview with Mr. Thompson appears at: http://www.beyondships.com/Celebrity-Mercury-art-HD.html

Lisa Richard did not follow the usual path to becoming a cruise director. She did not come up through the ranks in the cruise line. In fact, she had only been on one cruise before Celebrity hired her. However, she had been a senior executive with a multi-national corporation and thus had the skills and managerial experience to handle the behind-the-scenes administrative and planning aspects of being a cruise director as well as for supervising an array of employees. In addition, she came with theatrical experience including four years in the cast of the hit musical “Mama Mia.” In addition to discussing her career, I asked Ms. Richard to give her views on why Celebrity Mercury is so popular, particularly with repeat passengers and other experienced cruisers. My interview with her appears at: http://www.beyondships.com/Celebrity-Mercury-art-CD.html

While we are on the topic of Celebrity Mercury, I thought I would mention that I traveled from New York to Baltimore, Maryland where Mercury was beginning the cruise via Amtrak. In fact, I have now done several cruises from Baltimore and each time I have traveled by Amtrak. It only takes a little over two hours to get to Baltimore Penn Station from New York and the price is reasonable, particularly if one books in advance and takes the Northeast Regional train. From the train station, it is only a short taxi ride to the cruise ship terminal. If one is traveling light with one or two bags per person, I have found it to be a viable alternative to driving.

Photo Tour and Profile of Celebrity Mercury

This week, Beyondships focuses on Celebrity Mercury. When she entered service in 1997, Mercury was considered a large ship. Since then ships have become increasingly bigger and thus Mercury is now on the smaller size of the large ship category. While

First, some people do not feel comfortable on a mega-cruise ship. A ship like Mercury is appealing to those people because she has a more intimate feel. Also, I have noticed that the crews of these smaller ships try especially hard to please perhaps in order to make up for the fact that they do not have all of the features that their bigger fleetmates have.

Second, ships like Mercury can get into ports that some of the bigger ships cannot. For example, Mercury has only a few feet of clearance going under some of the bridges that she must pass under in order to get to Baltimore, Maryland. A significantly larger ship could not pass under those bridges. Thus, in order to serve a port such as Baltimore, a cruise line needs a ship the size of Mercury. Since there are a lot of people who would much rather drive to a local port such as Baltimore rather than fly a thousand miles or so to take a cruise, such a ship allows the line to meet the demands of the market.

Mercury in particular is a pretty ship. She has a nice understated décor. Also, as alluded to her earlier, she has a very friendly crew.

Beyondships’ profile of Celebrity mercury is at http://www.beyondships.com/Celebrity-Mercury-Profile.html and the multi-page photo tour begins at http://www.beyondships.com/Celebrity-Mercury-Tour-1.html

The Inside Story On Celebrity Mercury

This week we continue our look at Celebrity Mercury by talking to two of the people who play a key role in shaping the vacation experience on the ship - - the hotel director and the cruise director. My goal in presenting this type of interview is to let the people who are actually running the ship explain what they are trying to do. One can learn a lot about ships by reading facts and figures but I don’t think one can get a feel for what a ship is like without hearing from the people who actually sail the ship.

Sheldon Thompson is the Hotel Director on the Mercury.. Since he is in charge of all the services and facilities that immediately impact the guests, he is a particularly good position to talk about the experience that they seek to provide on the Mercury. In addition, Mr. Thompson and has worked on nearly every Celebrity ship since before the line was acquired by Royal Caribbean. Thus, he was also able to explain why a between a Celebrity cruise is different from a Royal Caribbean cruise. My interview with Mr. Thompson appears at: http://www.beyondships.com/Celebrity-Mercury-art-HD.html

Lisa Richard did not follow the usual path to becoming a cruise director. She did not come up through the ranks in the cruise line. In fact, she had only been on one cruise before Celebrity hired her. However, she had been a senior executive with a multi-national corporation and thus had the skills and managerial experience to handle the behind-the-scenes administrative and planning aspects of being a cruise director as well as for supervising an array of employees. In addition, she came with theatrical experience including four years in the cast of the hit musical “Mama Mia.” In addition to discussing her career, I asked Ms. Richard to give her views on why Celebrity Mercury is so popular, particularly with repeat passengers and other experienced cruisers. My interview with her appears at: http://www.beyondships.com/Celebrity-Mercury-art-CD.html

While we are on the topic of Celebrity Mercury, I thought I would mention that I traveled from New York to Baltimore, Maryland where Mercury was beginning the cruise via Amtrak. In fact, I have now done several cruises from Baltimore and each time I have traveled by Amtrak. It only takes a little over two hours to get to Baltimore Penn Station from New York and the price is reasonable, particularly if one books in advance and takes the Northeast Regional train. From the train station, it is only a short taxi ride to the cruise ship terminal. If one is traveling light with one or two bags per person, I have found it to be a viable alternative to driving.