Celebrity Infinity Review

4.0 / 5.0
1,664 reviews

Honest to Goodness

Review for Alaska Cruise on Celebrity Infinity
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Raven Glass
First Time Cruiser • Age 80s

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Sail Date: Sep 2008

Retired FD in Advertising Agency. Enjoyed work. Married to a retired Sports Journalist. Both aged 65, together 33 years and having a ball. Retired to Isle of Walney of the Cumbrian coast, super location but windy. Seasoned cruisers with Celebrity and we like 'em. Always book Concierge class. Up 4 am, taxi to Manchester Airport - 2 hours - flight to Heathrow was OK - flight to Vancouver, a little late and extremely cramped but hey we're on holiday. Arrived in Vancouver about 2.20 pm their time. Utter chaos at the airport. Celeb desks not open and two females wandered around not saying much and definitely not helping the situation. My husband and I had his sister and her husband with us, first time cruisers, and wanting to create a good impression I approached the reps and asked where the Fairmont Hotel was re our overnight stay, in return I was asked my name which was ticked off on the list, told to wait near the bus and was promptly dismissed. The four of us proceeded through the airport and my husband was dispatched to find said bus. He was gone 4/5 minutes so I asked a passing uniformed gentleman did he know where the bus/hotel was and he pointed to an escalator and low and behold the hotel was above our heads. A very beautiful hotel it was, large airy rooms and good amenities. The following morning we went to settle our bill and noticed a long queue was beginning to form with other people looking on in wonderment. Apparently Celebrity's new way of checking in. No announcement was made and we stood in line for two and a half hours while 2 badly spoken ladies proceeded to completely fill in our forms. Two other bright yellow clad ladies were wandering about doing ? so I approached one and asked what was happening, they did not know! On reaching the desk I was asked all my personal details, I advised the person I had already checked in on line and all these details were held by Celebrity. No matter, a repeat job was required. When I saw my name , address and passport number along with my visa card number being written in large numerals across a document I got quite angry, this is utterly lacking in security and is against everything a card holder would normally allow. Having escaped we boarded a bus for a very pleasant drive around Vancouver to kill a few hours before embarkation. I had checked the embarkation time given on the documents because I felt 8pm was unusually late. Celebrity advised me "Oh no you will board around 1pm" Not so. We arrived at the dockside at roughly 5pm. No personnel were present and after 3 hours of sitting around I went to hunt someone down and was advised we could board. Last year we were on board within 5 minutes of arriving in Dover. So no priority embarkation for Concierge class, along with several other missing components from the deal we had paid extra monies for. Once on board we were to find spacious, clean but tired looking cabins and quickly unpacked while at the same time checking the list of great expectations re CC. Plush bathrobe had seen better days some 3 years previous, full of holes and no knap left on the toweling, no leather key holder, no high powered binoculars, no choice of bed linen, pillow top mattress?, daily bouquet of fresh flowers turned out to be 2 small sprigs of tiny lily type flowers and 4 sprigs of greenery. All this is annoyingly embarrassing when your have relatives who have been given the great expectations only to find 1/3 of them missing. The ship is the most immaculately kept vessel it has been my privilege to cruise on over the last 30 years starting with Epiritiki Lines in 1979 and along with the same standard shown by the restaurant staff, bar staff and cabin staff all was almost forgiven and forgotten. The service was the best! UNTIL the entertainment staff came on the scene. For entertainment put DIY karaoke. One young lady cruiser sang 10 songs in one night, DIRE, the backing tapes were a disaster. I thought we were on an X Factor training ship and people were wondering where was Simon Cowell when we needed him. The only paid entertainment worth listening to were Centre Fold and Seany Cash who managed to make the place buzz with his enthusiasm and would make an excellent replacement for Allan King on his imminent retirement? I among many found it insulting and flesh crawling to listen to. No point in changing bar areas because it was all much of a muchness. One young lady named Marianne who had obviously been employed for her charms and looks could neither read or speak English which made the quiz sessions laughable to start with and then a no go area. One evening she was left to her own devises to run a Karaoke night, she could not work the backing machine, which was in a time warp, with the outcome original singers were in the background. Cruiser Alan was no match for Dean Martin and neither was anybody else a match for Shirley Bassey. One glaring difference on this ship to one's previously sailed on was Michaels Club. Last year on the Constellation one had to be in by 8pm or 10pm, depending on dinner sitting, in order to get a seat to hear Perry Grant, who would happily entertain and interact with his audience for 4/5 hours with a very short break and the overspill would be stood in the gangway outside drinking, on this ship the maximum seen in the same exclusive bar was 8/10 people. Tom the piano playing singer seemed content to entertain himself with selfwritten songs nobody had heard of. It was like free verse poetry put to free note music. The restaurant food was as good as ever but we decided to forego our bottle of red wine with our meal due to a mark-up of some 400/600% Wine purchased ashore, an excellent red for $5 was $9 dollars a glass. I had one medium glass with lunch every day and realized I had paid over $150's for the privilege. On looking around the restaurant one realized we were not alone in our train of thoughts. We did not use organized shore excursions until the day of disembarkation. Up at 7, breakfast at 7.30, cinema by 8.30 trip at 8.45am. No - trip at 10.am. Luggage not offloaded. In my experience pent house/suite clients go first followed by Concierge Class, then trips, then people with no ongoing flights, and finally everyone else with all luggage being color coded and off loaded accordingly. No - all luggage off, eventually, together which when we were finally allowed to leave the ship resulted in utter chaos, with very little guidance from staff. The trip for which we had paid 4 x 64 dollars a total of $256, lasted 2 & 3/4 hours instead of the 5 plus hours advertised. The courier on the coach was mystified at the length of time given as she felt "San Francisco was only 49 square miles and therefore you could not make a tour last that long. Was she having a laugh. Having been to SF on several occasions I asked why we were not crossing the bridge into the village on the other side, a beautiful location, - no time was the curt answer - but plenty of time to drive up and down China town's grocery shops, passed various Italian restaurants etc. All in all I would travel with Celebrity again but not long haul. Finally one has to be forever vigilant of the MONEY! Drink prices when 15% commission plus tax has been added bears no relation to the price shown on the bar menus, this made our bar bill quite expensive. When advised of the tips expected one wonders who is paying the staff this extortionate amount of money. For instance who tips a hotel chambermaid/plus helper £100 for a 2 week stay? The Captain - Maybe?

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