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I chose this cruise for my DH, myself, and four other couples because of the interesting new itinerary that included the eastern seaboard of Australia, the Gold Coast area, and into Benoa, Bali and Singapore.
The ship was lovely, the dining room wait-staff & room staff were exceptionally good. Our veranda room was very nice. Most of the ship staff seemed to go over and beyond trying to please their passengers, with the small exception of a young woman from England in Guest Services that was very snippy one day to almost everyone, (certainly in the wrong job, or a bad day for her). Fortunately, I only had that one experience with her.
The Celebrity orchestra was excellent. Glad to see that someone had toned down the volume with plexiglass stands in front of the drums and some of the brass. This made the listening much more enjoyable without the extreme high decible blast endured in some of past shows on some cruise ships. The program musicians were fantastic and multi-talented. All of the shows were above average except for the crude comedian that thought it was funny to grab his private parts. Much of the audience left that show, and he ended it early. I think the Cruise Director had a lot of complains over him from what I heard. The entertainment in the lounge areas was very enjoyable.
In the great scheme of things, I guess you could say it would have been a well orchestrated cruise except that Celebrity had a huge failure in the tendering department. Many of the ports required tendering, and that was without exception, a fiasco. It was obvious that Celebrity was greatly unprepared for these new ports and the process to get so many people onto the shore. If I had one suggestion to make to Celebrity's new president, it would be that he hire an expeditor to go ahead of the ship to make sure everything went smoothly. Celebrity hired some local businesses to tender passengers to shore. There was trouble with them docking beside the ship, extensive time to board the multitude of people, ship elevators opening on the floor to which people with priority numbers were already waiting in the halls, etc. and etc. This poor planning by Celebrity caused many an anguished moment for those wanting to get to a planned excursion. Tempers and anxiety soared. Celebrity could have done a much better job of handling the process of the tendering. Hopefully, this was a learning experience, and it will be handled much better in the future.
For anyone wanting to have an overall "taste" of these ports, I would recommend this cruise. Hopefully, Celebrity will correct their tendering problems and make this an outstanding cruise experience for everyone.
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