Celebrity Reflection Review

5.0 / 5.0
1,978 reviews

Flagship showing a few flaws

Review for the Western Caribbean Cruise on Celebrity Reflection
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Chantl01
10+ Cruises • Age 20s

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Sail Date: Jan 2015
Cabin: Deluxe Ocean View with Verandah 1C

This was our fourth Celebrity cruise, with the previous having all been on the Millennium class ships. We thought sailing on the Celebrity flagship would take us to another level of service, and it did, but sadly the direction was downward. The ship itself is beautiful, and the public spaces are well thought-out and maintained. We had late dining in the main dining room, where the food and service were excellent, although our initial sommelier was sufficiently disengaged that our tablemates requested and achieved a change, resulting in much better wine service.

We had a similar sommelier malfunction during our experience dining one evening at the Tuscan Steakhouse, which was a massive disappointment compared to our previous specialty restaurant experiences. First, we were given Italian/Spanish language menus. Our waiter seemed somewhat put-out when we requested translation or an English language menu. Then when we placed our wine order, the waiter returned with the wrong wine. When we pointed out it was the wrong wine, and showed him the correct one in the wine menu, he simply grabbed the menu and walked away. A few minutes later the 'sommelier' arrived at our table to confirm our order. As we had ordered a California wine (apparently a faux-pas for the Italian restaurant), he suggested we might want to look at some of the Italian wines. When we asked what he would recommend, he indicated there were three pages of choices. When we then specified our meal choice, and asked what would be best paired (explaining that we were not very familiar with Italian wines), the sommelier essentially shrugged and said it would depend on our taste, and then listed a few different categories of Italian wines. We decided to just stay with the original California wine we had ordered, since the sommelier had been of no help whatsoever. Throughout the meal at the Tuscan steakhouse, each course was delivered very quickly, so much so that we felt we were being rushed through our meal. By the last course, we were certain this was the case, as the waiter proceeded to reset all the tables around us in preparation for the following day. He couldn't bring us the bill quickly enough at the end of the meal. The food was good, but not sufficiently better than the main dining room meal to warrant the cover charge, in our opinion.

Overall, we found this cruise good but not worthy of rave review. Our previous experiences on the millennium class ships seemed much more personal, with the staff being more attentive and less emphasis on drawing every possible dollar out of our pockets at each opportunity. For the cruiseline flagship, I expected more.

Cabin Review

Deluxe Ocean View with Verandah 1C

Cabin 1C

Very spacious and quiet cabin. The bathroom was the largest we've ever had on a cruise ship. A bit of a hike from the nearest stairs and/or elevator, so be prepared for that. The cabin could definitely use more storage space - we ended up filling the cabinets over the bed, which were much less convenient to use than those in the dresser/table area.

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