On February 24, 2012, my wife and I left on a 10-day Celebrity Equinox cruise out of Ft Lauderdale. We stayed in a balcony room overlooking one of the lifeboats. We knew about the restricted view so that wasn't really a surprise. Before I go on I'd like to state that overall, the cruise to St Thomas, St Kitts, Barbados, Dominica and St Martin was mostly nice. While this was our eighth cruise, it was our first on Celebrity. With the exception of two items, one serious and the other cautionary, I'd have recommended Celebrity and the Equinox wholeheartedly. In particular, the entertainment was better than we'd experienced before on Royal Caribbean, Princess and Oceania. The food in the main dining room was as good as we've experienced on other cruises with the exception of Oceania which is a class above the other ships we've sailed. Our cabin was larger and more comfortable than we've had in the past although we've mostly opted for the cheapest cabins so we may not have a good basis for comparison.

Nevertheless I feel compelled to write about a few items that should give one pause before booking on this ship. As is usually the case, we had a muster before we left port. Certainly, given the recent incident with the Costa Concordia, it would be reasonable to expect that Celebrity would want to make sure that this activity would instill confidence in the passengers. This was unfortunately not the case. We were told to gather without our life jackets in one of the common areas of the ship. As we entered, our names were checked off a list of those who sere supposed to be at that station. In our case it was "B" which we were told was shown on the back of our stateroom door. We then listened to a presentation on wide screen displays around the room. We were packed pretty close together. After the presentation, we were told to wait until told to leave. At that point, some names were called out but no one gave us any instructions on what was happening and why we were waiting. The crew didn't appear to know what it was doing nor did it have any answers to questions we had about what was going on. One can imagine how this would have played out if this was a real emergency. Finally we were dismissed. The experience was not a confidence builder.

It was interesting that we were told during the muster that if there was an emergency we should take directions from the crew and not use our cell phones. As you may recall, the fact that there was something wrong with the Costa Concordia was only known on shore after someone was alerted by a passenger's cell phone call. In this day and age, for passengers to be instructed not to use their cell phones in a time of emergency is simply delusional. Read more