Celebrity Century Review
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For context, this was our 3rd cruise... but the first time my wife and I got to go just by ourselves, with no family. Previously we had cruised with Royal Caribbean (Mariner of the Seas in the Caribbean) and Princess (Grand Princess in Alaska). Our expectations were set that Celebrity was a noticeably upscale version of Royal Caribbean, and therefore worthy of the premium price.
We sailed on the Century out of LA on a 7 night pacific coastal; stopping at Santa Barbara, San Francisco (overnight), Monterey, Catalina and Ensenada before returning to LA. As we did not fly into LAX we were unable to book transfers on their bus service, so instead we returned our rental car at Long Beach Airport (which didn't have transfers, even if we had flown in.) and used Uber to get to the pier. The directions Celebrity sent for arriving at the ship were pretty bad, they basically amounted to "go to the harbor and follow the signs for your ship." There were no signs for the ship or cruise line... all signage was for the pier numbers, which Celebrity had not told us. Thankfully, that big tall X on the mast is pretty distinctive, and can be seen over the buildings.
Embarkation was a breeze. We arrive kind of late in the window, a bit before 2pm, and there were no lines in the port at all. We dropped our luggage with the porters and walked right to an agent to checkin and get our sea pass cards. From there walked right through security with only a very small wait (less than a minute) to put our carry on on the xray. The first real line we hit was on the ship on the promenade deck. They had only 1 of the 3 lanes working to scan folks into the ship, and there was a large family in front of us that had every other member of their party had been issued a sea pass card and a room number, but were not listed as a guest on the ship. This took about 3-5 minutes per person for the officer on the deck to clear up... and since it was every other person, they would get one resolved and start to walk away only to have to turn around and come back to deal with the next one.
Cabin Review
A very tired room ready to be gutted by the ship's new owners. The carpet was filthy and would turn your feet or socks deep brown if they were damp. The shower was moldy, and it was starting to come into the rest of the bathroom. Parts of the window were so foggy you couldn't really see through it. This was the last passenger cabin on the aisle, so right next to our door was the door separating out the crew space. It's a very heavy door and they tend to just let it slam behind them... all night.