Beware traveling on Celebrity, the Constellation in our case, if you are expecting 5 star service, maintenance and management. Ok it wasn't the Carnival Triumph or Costa Concordia disasters, but when you spend $8,000 on an alleged 5-star ship you have the right to expect an excellent experience. Instead we had a "wreck" of a cruise with repeated service and maintenance problems and a lack of concerned and responsive management. This spoiled our July 2013 Constellation cruise in the Baltic, our first with Celebrity.
As the issues multiplied, management's inadequate problem handling, faulty staff training and lack of communication to guests gave us quite a different view of Celebrity's standards than they had advertised. We escalated the issues past the Guest Relations Director and needed daily meetings with the Hotel Director for the first 7 days of our 12 day cruise. We learned that ship management was much better at smooth sailing than knowing how to avoid, manage and resolve problems and keep passengers informed and happy when those problems occur. We also observed that these senior guest relations officers had little authority, needing approval from Celebrity's Miami headquarters on routine compensation and other requests. After a while you got the sense that they just didn't get it.
Our problems included: