The following is a review of the Celebrity Solstice, which I took on its Western Caribbean voyage from January 22-29 from Ft Lauderdale. I don't post much on CC but I'd been reading it religiously for so many months and remember how much I looked forward to these detailed reviews, so I wanted to take the opportunity to give back. In particular I think a few parts of my experience will be different ...
This was the first Solstice sailing after a one week dry dock. It was just what was needed after the problems shown in previous reviews with NoroVirus. Thankfully, we did not see or hear of any of those issues on the ship this cruise.
The cruise overall was excellent. Because the ship came out of drydock, there was no delay boarding, and, the cabins were ready as soon as you came on-board. We ...
We have cruised on Norwegian Cruise Lines once and on the Celebrity Millenium,twice in Concierge Class Staterooms. We have enjoyed all of our cruises but our experience on Solstice was one of the best
Embarkation/Debarkation:
All went very smoothly. We arrived for our cruise and our first embarkation was a breeze. We were on the ship before noon and found a nice place on Deck 12 to relax ...
My wife and I truly enjoyed sailing to the Western Caribbean with the Solstice. The service and attention to detail made this trip all the worthwhile. From the food, activities and great customer service all contributed to a most enjoyable time. From the time we boarded the ship we could tell the staff of the Celebrity were very organized and well trained in handling the crowds.
We stayed in ...
Let me start off by saying a little something about myself. I'm a solo traveler. This was my very first cruise with Celebrity, since I am a Platinum member with Royal Caribbean, Celebrity recognizes me as a Select member so I got to enjoy all the perks that the Captains Club had to offer Select Members. I have been on quit of few cruises before. Carnival, NCL and Royal Caribbean and now I can add ...
A little about "us": We've been cruising for 30 years on Cunard, Regent (long gone), Royal Viking (long gone), Seawind (long gone), NCL, Windstar, HAL and Celebrity. This was our 5th Celebrity cruise and the line remains our favorite. In October 2010 we cruised on Solstice and believing it to be the most beautiful ship we have ever sailed, I came home and booked this cruise to celebrate what I ...
For those who want a brief review:
This ship is beautiful. It was tastefully decorated and as an artist, I appreciated the use of Modern and Contemporary art to decorate the stairwells. I've also traveled on Princess and I found Celebrity to be very similar. There are some things that one line does better than the other, but it was a similar experience.
Now the more detailed ...
Embarkation was a nightmare. You would think they had never done this before. We had received advance notice via e-mail saying that the boarding time was delayed until 2 pm as a result of a norovirus issue. However, we arrived at the Fort Lauderdale port at 2 pm and stood in a line, outside, in the sun for 3 hours. It's clear from prior cruise reviews that this was not a new issue. They had ...
We have cruised more than twenty times on three different cruise lines, and this cruise was the worst one we have ever been on.
We arrived at the pier via Taxi from our hotel before noon. A sign at the terminal said "return at 2:00pm". We couldn't leave and return because we didn't have a car and we had no place to go. Apparently we need to check our email more than once a week because others ...
We are veteran cruisers of more than 75 cruises on a variety of lines, including being Elite members with Celebrity.
We received notification a few days before the cruise of delayed boarding due to the need for deep cleaning of the ship because of a norovirus outbreak on the Transatlantic crossing. We arrived at the pier about 3:15pm thinking we would miss much of the chaos only to find ...