Let me start by saying that my family loves to cruise and this review is hard for me to write as I do not want to post such negative comments about cruising, but feel I must let future cruises know about our experience with Celebrity Cruises. This was my 21st cruise (most with RCCL), but my first and last cruise with Celebrity. We have enjoyed and have always had a wonderful time on each and every ship we sailed with RCCL (13 cruises). After hearing so many positive comments about Celebrity and there service is a 'step-up' and being they are owned and operated by RCCL, we figured that Celebrity would be a great choice for our next cruise. BOY WE WERE WRONG!

We booked our cruise 11 months ago in June'08 along with our airline tickets. Our flight left Los Angeles at 8am on 05/22 and arrived in Seattle on time at about 10:15am. There was a Celebrity agent at the terminal to collect out luggage and shuttle us to Pier 66. Things seemed to be going good, then the nightmare began! When we arrived at the pier terminal, there was no ship. The shuttle bus driver handed us a pre-printed sheet stating the ship would not arrive in Seattle until 7pm that night, with a boarding time of 7:30 to 8:00pm. Every cruise I have ever been on before had a boarding time of usually 1:00 or 2:00pm. They unloaded the ship in Vancouver that moring and then sailed empty to Seattle. This would have been nice to tell us that we were paying for 7 days, but will only get a 6 day cruise. They would not even allow check-in until 2pm. We figured we had hours of waiting, so we went out to see the sights of Seattle, which we originally planned on seeing after the cruise. Our return flight was booked late, for this reason. Seattle was beauiful and the weather was great (not your normal rainy Seattle day). We walked around the pier for a few hours and returned at 3pm to find the worst check-in system ever, the line zig-zaged and went on forever, we waited and waited, and waited, finally arrived at the counter. At the counter they handed us hand written slips of paper with our cabin number on it, no ship, so no cabin key cards. By 5pm we decided to just go thru security and wait as we were getting very tired. We were placed in a waiting room, with no refreshments, no food, no coffee, no tea, just water. As we are Elite Club members, we were allowed to wait in the VIP lounge, which was nothing more that another room with the same refreshments, just water. The ship arrived at 7pm, but now needed to clear customs, so more waiting. Finally at about 8pm they started to allow passengers onboard, this took another hour, so at about 9pm we were ready to start out cruise. We dropped by the cabin, and looked for somewhere to eat, we found the Oceanview Cafe and noticed the poorly put together buffet, with very limited selection. We had no choice, as there was no other options, and we were hungry. After the horrible dinner, we decided to go to the 'Welcome Aboard Show' at 10:30, when the show started, they was only about 40 people total in the theather. Artie the cruise director was putting me to sleep, after 15 minutes we walked out and went back to the cabin to just end this day.

The next day we woke up and due to the late departure, we had to do the Safety Drill at 10am, all the restraunts and cafe closed at 9:30 for the drill. We figured we would get breakfast after the drill, as this was a day at sea. The drill ended at about 10:30 and off to the Oceanview cafe we went. Much to our surpise, when we arrived, they had only one out of six serving stations open, with a line that went all the way out the back of the ship. I would guess the wait would have been at least an hour before we were served, so we just left in search of another option. Guess what, there were no other options, the dinning room did not open until noon for lunch. Now come on Celebrity, you knew the Safety Drill would interfere with breakfast, why couldn't you open more than one serving station? By now, forget gaining weight, I must have lost 5 pounds, as I have not had a decent meal yet. The rest of the day was spent walking around the ship, which I must say is showing some serious wear, this ship needs dry dock soon. Our dinning was early seating at 6:15pm and we were anxious to get a sit down full meal. We arrived to get our table location and meat our table mates (we always request a large table, so we can meet and converse with new people). Much to our surprise our table was for two and shoved into a far corner of the dinning room, this is NOT what we requested with our reservation. We immediately spoke with the head waiter, and his repsonse was go to table 517, that was it, he did not look at me or show me where the table was or even point in the right direction, just "go to table 517". So we wandered thru the dining room until we found table 517, a table set for 8 that was empty. The remaing 6 days were spent eating dinner alone at an empty table set for 8 people. Read more