My wife and I retired at age 49. We have been cruising ever since then and usually make 2 or 3 24+ day getaways a year. We have cruised all lines. In the past 10 years, we have done about 30 cruises, most of which were 12 nights or longer. We generally book our own air on Delta, using miles when possible, as I am almost a double million miler. We stay at Starwood Hotels, as we are Platinum in their rewards program. On this trip, we did back-to-back cruises on the Silhouette (see my review entitled Do It Yourself (DIY) Cruising) and Constellation in September, 2011.

I am legally blind and also travel with a service dog. She is not a seeing-eye dog, but she is still my driver. Guchi is a Chihuahua that has received extensive training to assist me. She normally sits in a front pack and from the way she points her head, I can tell where to go. She also alerts me to the presence of other people and animals in my general vicinity. On this trip, I was also accompanied by a second dog that was in training. This complicated our travels, as I had to carry each dog separately in carry bags, one on each hip.

We stayed in Italy for the 4 days between cruises, and then flew Alitalia from Rome to Istanbul. We took a taxi to the port in Istanbul. Weather delays made what should have been a 2.5 hour sprint into a 12 hour marathon. We arrived at the port very tired, hungry and everyone, including the dogs, needing a bathroom. Security begins in Istanbul when you enter the embarkation facility. The security officials were not aware that anyone would be bringing dogs on the ship, and so we were denied entrance to this facility. THERE WAS NOONE FROM CELEBRITY AT THIS POINT OF ENTRY TO HELP US. So after what seemed like hours, but was probably 5 minutes of trying to explain that Celebrity knew that the dogs were coming, we simply Crashed the gate, ignored what was being shouted at us in Turkish, and walked into the embarkation area. As it was very late in the afternoon, there were no lines and we quickly completed the embarkation process, which included hunting down the Embarkation Officer to give her all of the dogs paperwork. When we reached the ship, we were once again stopped by the ships security, as they were also not aware that dogs would be onboard for this sailing. ALL of us now REALLY had to use the bathroom. Again after what seemed like hours but was only minutes, the security officer got permission for us to board the ship. We were detained twice more trying to board the ship: the next day in Istanbul and 2 days after that in Kusadasi. I do not understand why it took until te fifth day of our 13 day/12 night cruise for the word to finally get out to the security team that my service dogs were allowed to board the ship. Read more