This is a review of our recent cruise on the Celebrity Constellation. We had done 15 cruises up until this one, none on Celebrity, and 2/3 of them on Holland-America, so this review is written from the point-of-view of a frequent HAL cruiser.

Ship: The ship was very beautiful and immaculately maintained. Although it was the largest (passenger capacity) we have been on to date, it never felt crowded. The show lounge was excellent, with excellent sightlines both on the main level and on the balcony level, except for a very few seats obstructed by pillars. The casino, as usual, was way too smoky, made worse by the fact that you had no choice but to walk through the casino to get from one end of that deck to the other (without going up/down to a different deck to bypass it). The casino was large and well-equipped, probably the best we've seen on a ship. And you could charge chips to your shipboard account up to a very generous limit. We found that the noise from the late-night disco carried down the front staircase for 5 decks, and we wondered if it would be an annoyance to passengers in the verandah cabins near the stairwells. The internet area had lots of terminals, but we found the connection time painfully slow a number of times, and we gave up a couple of times. It was a pleasant change to not be hearing announcements all day long about activities, etc. They kept announcements to a bare minimum, and the silence was appreciated. If you want to know when an activity is on, look in your daily program! There were too many formal and informal nights on this cruise, considering the number of port days we had. They even had an informal night on the night we stayed over in Quebec City, which I found particularly strange. One very annoying thing: Whereas we found the ship's service staff in the dining rooms, lounges, cabin stewards, etc. to be exemplary, the ships officers were often the opposite. A number of times, while walking down the corridor on our cabin deck, we encountered officers coming the other way... and they would NOT move over, even to the point of maintaining their 2-abreast stance and forcing the passengers to squeeze against the walls. This was a noticeably different "culture" than we have ever seen before on the 4 other cruise lines we have tried. We were NOT impressed! Cabin: Our cabin, a category 6 Ocean view on Plaza deck was nice, but not outstanding. And at 170 square feet, it was fully 14% smaller than the equivalent cabin on HAL's Ryndam. What we did notice was how quiet it was in the cabin. Whether that was due to better soundproofing or unusually considerate neighbors, or both, we don't know. We found the cabin very warm (in October & November on the North Atlantic coast!) and difficult to get the temperature where we wanted it. Strangely, in spite of that, I found that the heat/air system blew cool air down directly on my head, neck and shoulders when I was in bed. And the foot of the bed had a strange curved shape which, as a tall guy, I found less than ideal. We also found the TV placement difficult to watch except from the bed. Food & Beverages: The food.... well, let's be generous and call it inconsistent. I tried roast beef and steak a number of times: it was either exquisitely prepared, or tougher than an army boot (about 50/50). One night I had fettucini alfredo with chicken and my wife had beef sirloin tips: there were a number of chicken rib bones in my alfredo, and my wife's beef was so tough she couldn't cut it. When we complained to out assistant maitre d', he apologized profusely and told me the head chef or food and beverage manager would contact me about our displeasure with that meal... nobody ever did. (Oh, this same assistant maitre d' set off the dining room sprinklers on a formal night while preparing a flambe dessert, but that's another story.) The dining room service was pretty good, but we've had better; again, "inconsistent" would be the correct term. The service in the Seaside Grill was exemplary. But why, oh why, do they not post menus at the entrance to the Seaside Grill? We were concerned, having been assigned to late seating, that we would get too hungry by the time 2nd seating took place, but there were anumber of places on the ship where you could get food in the late afternoon... never a problem. And the pizzas were superb! And the maitre d' was very accommodating in getting us reassigned to early seating without fuss and very quickly. A big annoyance was the LOUD music in the dining room. I don't know how loud it was for diners close to the live music (which we found often inappropriate for a formal dining room), but in our location, they blasted the music in, obliterating any conversation. Bar service was excellent, and the drinks were well-prepared, a far cry above HAL, but I was staggered that they did not offer Canadian beer on a Canada/New England cruise. They could have at least put the excellent Alexander Keith's on their menu, as it is brewed right in Nova Scotia. Events and Activities: There were a number of events scheduled to commence at 5:00 p.m. Great for late seating passengers, but impossible for main seating diners to attend. Very strange. The ship's song & dance cast were absolutely the best we have ever seen, but we only saw them on the first 2 nights. The rumor was that they had come down with some kind of "bug" and were quarantined. The other entertainment was excellent. Showtime in the Celebrity Theater was often VERY late for main seating diners. Activities staff: A couple were very good, 2 or 3 others were pretty useless. It was a running joke during trivia contests that they weren't even literate enough to read & pronounce the clues properly. Then when they showed up with Jamaican music for a line-dancing class...

Tender service was very well-coordinated. Itinerary: Was excellent, even though we never got to see Charlottetown due to high winds from Hurricane Noel. The information and maps about the ports of call were next to useless.... very disappointing. Miscellaneous: Check-in was incredibly slow, even though we arrived at a good time and had done the on-line check-in. The rumor was that there had been a problem on the previous cruise with influenza or Norwalk or similar, and the delay was due to them disinfecting the whole ship. Immigration process (at least for Canadians) at Portland was poorly run: The member of the activities staff was pretty clueless when it came to coordinating it so that passengers were processed in the order they arrived. He even allowed the last couple of passengers to jump the line in front of those who had been waiting 45 minutes or more. He damn near had a revolt on his hands when he waved some entertainers through ahead of everyone else. The way I see it, the entertainers are no different from the ship's staff, and they should NOT get priority over the paying passengers. The American passengers had different complaints about their immigration process. Basically, it seems that none of the passengers were happy with the way immigration was handled. Strange, because HAL handled it so logically on the 10 HAL cruises we have been on. Checkout/disembarkation was quick, but I found it bizarre that we were assigned a disembarkation time of close to 10:30 a.m. when we had our car waiting in the terminal parking lot. They corrected it quickly, but what were they thinking? On the whole, based solely on our experiences with this cruise, we would not sail with Celebrity again unless they had a very unique itinerary. However, a number of frequent Celebrity repeaters assured us that what we had experienced was NOT up to Celebrity's standards, and they encouraged us to try again. So we booked a Mediterranean cruise while on board and we'll give them one more chance to meet our expectations based on our HAL and Orient Lines experiences.