My wife and I sailed on the Celebrity Century Eastern Caribbean cruise from Feb 4-11, 2006. This was our first cruise on Celebrity and our 2nd cruise ever (we had taken a Big Red boat 3 day Bahamas cruise with our kids from a WDW vacation 8 years ago). This cruise was different in we only saw maybe a dozen kids on board and a guess is most onboard were in the 40-80 years old range; however there were a few 30 somethings that kept things lively! We were on our 30th anniversary and during an anniversary celebration champagne & cake party there were 2 sets of honeymooners and a wide range of other anniversary people; 65 years won the longest wed prize. This definitely was a couples cruise and by far couples seemed to be 98+% of all we talked to on board.
Having experience many air travel delays due to weather and wanting to use 2 of our last 4 frequent flyer tickets, we flew down Thursday afternoon and spent Friday exploring Ft. Lauderdale and enjoying 80 degree weather away from Minnesota (even with a warmer than normal January, 80 is heavenly compared to mid 30's). We boarded on Saturday at 1230pm despite all the Celebrity brochure warnings not to board before 130pm. The skies were dark to the north and T'storms with heavy rain were forecast for mid afternoon, so rather than chance boarding in a downpour we entered the large waiting area. We got on board right away and were welcomed with champagne and a nice buffet; the staterooms were not ready until 130, but who cares? And by 1pm the skies dumped inches of rain, flooding from the pool deck into the 11th floor buffet dining room. We were glad to be inside and relaxed. Our 8153 stateroom was adequate sized, just enough room for two comfortable chairs and a small tile bath/shower, but lots of closet/dresser space. We had a large window (Century is due Mar 06 for adding many balconies to most staterooms), but we did not spend much time in the room anyway. However the captain announced a few hours later we'd be leaving late due to bad weather as the Ft Lauderdale airport shutdown and 150 of Celebrity's booked passengers were not able to make the ship on time (more on that later). We finally sailed before 530pm and got to meet our table mates in the formal dining room during the 6pm early seating. For those who have not cruised, be sure to sit at a group table to really meet some fine people on the cruise.
About 30 minutes into our meal we got to experience "the List". Which was a problem in the steering control to rudder system that managed to dump some food on the floor and we heard later quite a few liquor bottles on the upper bars. The first 20 seconds were tolerable but the last 20 were a bit unnerving. The captain got on the PA later and apologized (and also apologized a couple times later). I was concerned we'd have to return to port but apparently there was a repair or backup system ... as an engineer I then appreciated the last 6+ days how complex this system really is and why you have a large crew despite the autopilot system!