Celebrity Summit Cruise Review by toujoursmax

First, let me say that we loved the crew. Our waiter Serkan, sommelier Eren (sp?), assistant Tri (sp?), cocktail server Sharika (from Jamaica!) and maitre'd Sasha were all wonderful. They provided great input on the sights at the various islands, since many of them take advantage of their time off by going to all the best beaches and sights! They were truly invested in seeing that we enjoyed our trip.

Logistics getting on and off the ship were smooth. Doing all of your check-in online prior to the cruise is a must.

I had read that the age demographic on Celebrity was in the 45-65 age range. I would say that the range was predominantly over 55, so if you are looking for a younger crowd this is not the cruise line for you.

As one other poster noted, the ship is showing its age. It was clean, well maintained, but the decor needs an update for sure. This was a small issue in my opinion.

I highly recommend the zipline trip at Morne Coubaril on St. Lucia. It includes a boat trip to Soufriere with views of the Pitons, followed by a really great zipline trip. The first line starts off a 60 foot platform and there were 8-10 ziplines from platform to platform. Our guides took safety very seriously; we were always hooked up with a safety line and had a thorough safety briefing beforehand.

We had only a few issues. First, the food. The buffet restaurant was very good for breakfast. We only lunched on the ship twice and that was good also. However, during breakfast every day it was almost IMPOSSIBLE to find coffee, cream, or milk. They just couldn't keep up. I often found myself going to 5 coffee stations before I could get a cup and that was annoying. Also, some ice machines kept breaking down on the pool level making it harder to get a glass of water during the day.

In the main dining room, the food was OK, just OK. For us, quality is so much more important than quantity. My husband and future son-in-law tried a beef entree 3 times during the week (prime rib, sirloin, filet) and each time they were terrible; hard to chew, gristly, and not very flavorful. One of my fish entrees was so overcooked that it was basically inedible. Having traveled with Royal Caribbean twice, I was expecting the food on Celebrity to be just as perfect and it was far from that. I guess this is one area where they are trying to cut costs? You can dine at La Normandie for an extra charge ($35/person?) but considering we spent thousands of dollars on this vacation that should not have been necessary to get a fine dining food experience.

The other issue I had was from an excursion we booked in St. Maarten, the America's Cup Sailing. The excursion was fantastic and I would highly recommend it, but it was supposed to start at 11:30 and it was 1:00-1:30 before we finally started. It wasn't clear why - one of the crew said another cruise ship was late docking and the first trip of the day was delayed because of that, throwing off every trip after that (we were the third). My complaint is that we were kept waiting on the dock for over half an hour with no information or explanation. Then we were moved to the shopping area and told it would be another half hour. Then we moved to the taxi dock for another 20 minutes before the tender finally arrived. As expected we were hot, frustrated and angry by the time we finally got on the ship. If they had told us that the trip would be delayed we could have gone off and done something else instead of just SITTING and WAITING. Someone on Celebrity should have informed us of these delays, offering us the choice of a cancellation. I complained to Guest Relations and received no satisfaction, except that they would speak to the vendor. A partial refund would have been appropriate. I will be writing to their corporate office regarding this issue.