Overall, this cruise was good, its main strength being its itenerary of Tasmania and New Zealand (from Sydney). Wellington and Dunedin (as well as Sydney and Aukland at the beginning and end of the cruise) were outstanding stops, and the day spent in the Sounds was fantastic. The dining room dinners and the buffets were very good, providing a plentiful variety of food throughout the cruise. We ate once at Murano, but the food was nothing special; we should have saved our money.

On the downside, there were some significant deficits from the service that we have previously experienced on other Celebrity cruises. We had a VERY loud clanging of a loose ladder outside our cabin that took three days to get fixed, in spite of assurances twice that it had been fixed when it hadn't--a clear breakdown in communications between staff members. We found the Customer Service staff mostly followed the complaint response "script" without really being able to get anything done--both for this problem as well as a poorly executed shore excursion at Hobart. The Captains Club rep just shrugged it off! They did move us to an inside (lower classification) cabin so that we could get some slee--not a very sastisfactory solution. Also there was a very rough tendering into Akoroa port because of high waves and rain, and Celebrity did offer a free drink to everyone the next evening--a nice touch.

The ship seems to be showing its age, like the loose ladder. The tender boats were in poor shape, so that there was only one remaining seaworthy boat by evening, which resulted in delays of over two hours (waiting on shore in the rain). Read more