In my opinion, the best part and the main reason to go on cruises is the ability to visit a number of destinations during the same trip. The comforts and amenities of the ship, food and entertainment programs are secondary. Again, this is my personal opinion, and for other people priorities may be different. But, when and if I go on a cruise, it is usually to reach a certain array of destinations and to be able to do it in a comfort of a clean and comfortable ship that serves good quality meals. Based on this criteria, I can only give this cruise 3 stars. These are the reasons why.

One of the major destination points on this cruise was infamous Cape Horn, the most Southern piece of land (besides Antarctica). After leaving Puerto Madryn we were on the way there when one of the 85-year old passengers had a minor heart attack. There is no doubt that a human life is more important than anything else, and all actions should be always taken to save a human life, in spite of any circumstances. Thus, the captain purportedly consulted with the local authorities about possible ways to evacuate the sick person. The authorities refused to send a helicopter and denied him entrance to Rio Grande port that we were passing at the time. So, the captain decided to go to Ushuaia right away bypassing Cape Horn all together. We arrived to Ushuaia about 14-16 hours ahead of schedule and the human life was saved. The only compensation for the failure to reach Cape Horn was a meager "I am sorry" statement from the captain later.

Again, I praise the Lord (not the captain), that the human life was not compromised and our fellow passenger was safely transported to a healthcare facility in Ushuaia. Nevertheless, I believe the chain of events revealed a fundamental flaw in Celebrity's policies and organization. Here's why I believe so. I have been a business owner for a number of years and in the past managed a high profile company that went public at the London Stock Exchange. I know what businesses can and should do to fulfill their responsibilities to the public (or their clients per se). I know that in corporate codes there is always a contingency plan in case if something unusual happens. A company like Celebrity having two thousand passengers with majority of them being over retirement age definitely has a contingency plan that dictates actions in case of statistical emergencies as such that happened on our cruise. People over 65 do have a greater chance of a heart attack than people between ages of 25 to 55. Statistically, on a cruise like this there is more than a half of people older than 65. This is just statistics. So, when a "normal" statistical event happened during the cruise, there should have been some contingency plan in place to either efficiently evacuate the person without affecting the rest of the cruise, or to make arrangements to compensate the rest of the passengers if an evacuation attempt fails. However, on Celebrity Cruises the contingency plan was either absent or simply bad. It was definitely not a good plan, for it easily failed with no complicating circumstances such as bad weather, equipment failure, multiple accidents, etc. Read more