Really enjoyed our cruise on Celebrity Reflection. We arrived in Rome 3 days before the cruise, which ended up being the perfect amount of time to explore the city. Day 1, explored the city on foot and saw many of the piazzas and fountains. Day 2, went to the colosseum and the forum, and took the Colosseum's underground tour. Important note: The meeting place for the underground tour is different than the regular tour, we eneded up missing our tour because the ticket people told us to go to the wrong place. You have to go all the way to the end of the hall, by the elevators. Day 3, took the green line hop on/hop off bus tour, which ended up being a good way to get around.

We took the train to the port, watch out for scammers. We had a lady latch on to us, take the tickets out of our hands to lead us to our seats, and rip our luggage out of our hands to put it away for us to try and get money. The train ride was easy, took about 50 minutes on the express train. If you buy first class seats there's room overhead for your luggage. But the best part of the trip for me, was how easy embarkation was. There was a free bus to take you from the front of the port to the ship, and from there we were basically able to walk through security, up to the check in desk, and onto the ship. Whole process was easily less than half an hour, absolutely no waiting (we were there at about 11). They did hold our passports though.

As far as the cruise itself. The buffet was ok, it's buffet food. Same stuff for breakfast everday and the eggs weren't great. Dinner and lunch also appeared to mostly be the same. There was an afternoon tea everyday with mini sandwiches and some scones. The sandwiches were weird combinations, roast beef with hard boiled egg, one day they had turkey with cheese but there was a piece of white bread in the middle too. We didn't do any of the specialty restaurants cause, for me personally, $35-$45 pp on top of the fact that the MDR is free is too much. The MDR was ok, the soups and salads were great, some of the entrees were good. Nothing we had was outright bad, just not the type of food I really enjoy eating. I'm happier with hamburgers and pasta than lamb and duck. We had select dining, which worked well for us because we like to eat early, so we were there most days at 10 till 6 and the matre'd noticed and always sat us first. But if you prefer eating at 7 or later, select may not be the way to go. They take reservations, but don't require them, so there are two lines that that matre'd has to balance. And she said she had people the whole trip that went in the reservation line without reservations. It's just not a great system, and resulted in everyone waiting for a table. We talked to a couple that tried to make reservations for 7 every night and had a 20 minute plus wait every night. Read more