We are in our early 70's - this was our 40th cruise - but only the 2nd with Celebrity (usually we cruise with either Princess or NCL) - We choose this for the itinerary - always wanted to see Hong Kong ! We are spoiled, and have cruised in suites for the last several years. The Room - we had a Celebrity Suite - #9096 - yes - we did hear chairs scrapping, etc. noise from Deck 10 above (but this was the last Celebrity Suite available) - and the noise was not so bad that it actually woke us up from sleeping or anything. The floor to ceiling windows were wonderful, and the extra space with the dining table were great. The balcony was indeed, narrow - but no problem - just turned the chairs sideways ! The totally negative part about the room (which we had read about, and were fore-warned) was the bathroom - very small - and the HUGE step in and out that you had to take to get in and out of the tub or the shower (combination tub and shower) The ship did show a little wear and tear - but nothing all that horrible (or worth reporting as far as I am concerned) The service and the food in the Luminae Restaurant was absolutely outstanding ! - You could pretty much ask for anything that you wanted. You could always order from the menu from the main dining room if there wasn't anything on the Luminae menu that caught your fancy. The wait staff were beyond great - welcomed you by name whenever they saw you. Our meals were, without a doubt, the highlight of the trip ! We did eat in the Italian Restaurant one night - it was OK - expensive wine. We found no reason to venture out of the Luminae after that. The entertainment was hit and miss. The production shows with the ship singers and dancers were very, very good - and very well attended. The other entertainment were things like jugglers and harmonica players (!) - not so good, and not so well attended. (of course, there were a couple of ports that the ship overnighted at, so passengers may have stayed ashore on shore excursions later than normal. Read Less

We enjoyed our cruise win this medium sized ship - it was easy to navigate, even if that meant not having some of the facilities of a larger ship e.g. a climbing wall. The staff and crew were all really friendly and helpful, more so than on our previous cruises. The Excursions Desk were really good; before we sailed I had booked a load of shore Excursions, but after a couple we found that they were too limiting and it was easy to cancel them and get the money refunded. This cruise went to the places we wanted to visit, especially Japan , Shanghai and Hong Kong. The range of stops in Japan was good Kobe, Kyoto, Osaka, Nagoshima and Okinawa. The visit to Shanghai was too fleeting, but we enjoyed our two days in Hong Kong. The price was good for a 14 day cruise, a night in Tokyo and a classic Drinks package included. The food was generally good, but not as special in the main dining room as we had hoped and expected. The range of food in the Oceanview buffet was good, but i found that some dishes were bland. We would sail with Celebrity again if the price was right, but I don't think that they are any better than Royal Caribbean. Read Less

A well organised experience supported by excellent staff made it a great cruise to very different and interesting places. The small tours and experience of travelling around on our own was great fun. We also joined four Cruise Critic excursions, which proved as usual to be well organised with great people and good value for money. Embarkation and disembarkation were the easiest that we have ever experienced. Although having to queue in the open for over an hour and a half at one of Japan’s final ports, was not great. We did not use any of the specialty restaurants as we didn’t feel the need, although would suggest that Celebrity should aim to be more adventurous in the main restaurants. More emphasis on local cuisine of the ports visited would be good. Visiting acts for the onboard entertainment were of high quality, there was definitely something to meet all tastes. Although the Millennium is looking a little worn around the edges (refit scheduled for January 2019), it must be said that it was spotlessly clean at all times. All staff presented as being efficient, well trained, helpful and friendly. Read Less

Older ship getting an upgrade. Ships is older but well maintained! I will start with the cons; main dining room was ok for dinner. Escargot and French onion soup where excellent but with so many food options on and off the ship for this cruise, you can pass on the main dinner for most of your trip. The buffet is excellent with different options each night and great food. Looking for late night, hit the pizza bar. Room service is good but limited. Specialty restaurants where all great, get the 3 night package before you arrive, quality and amount of food where excellent. I really like the sushi restaurant. And Q cuisine with lots of options, try the lamb and also the escargot. I was a single passenger and had ocean view room on the third floor and room was great with no issues and a great view. I also did the premium beverage package which basically gives you anything you want to drink on the vessel, except anything in your room. On that note go to any bar and get a few bottles of avian and put them in your room fridge. Off the ship I did my own thing, from taking and car to riding the train system which is excellent in China and Japan. I tend to travel in the fall for the great weather and change of season and this trip did not disappoint! See photos. Read Less

We took this cruise from Shanghai to Tokyo on Oct, 2018. The cruise started out on a bad note. On the check in at the Shanghai port, passengers were made to wait in line out in the sun, with only a couple of portable toilets. This may be the fault of the Shanghai port or the Chinese immigration, but we certainly started off with a bad taste. The bad vibe continued once we were on the ship. On the safety drill we were told to go to the wrong gathering spot. This lack of or wrong information continued several times on board. The ship itself was old (this ship was going to be retrofitted soon). There was no self-operated laundry on board. On a 14 day cruise this is unacceptable. The worse part of this cruise was the food quality. It was just average, or sometimes below average. After about 10 days (with 3 days at sea), this became quite noticeable. Finally, when we disembarked at Yokohama, there was not enough taxis available. We waited at the taxi line for close to an hour, and finally gave up and walked to the subway station. A long line was still waiting when we left. Read Less

Well, picking a cruise is always a mixture between: destinations, length, mixture between Seadays and poets, cruiseline and of course rates. We always like to go with Celebrity and we do like smaller ships. This cruise had China and Japan, both were on our bucket list plus South Korea which was an addon (and a pretty nice surprise). Millennium is an older ship, however we red before in other reviews that it is well maintained and we can confirm. We stayed in Shanghai for three days upfront, which was sufficient to see a lot, for the trip to the port we took a taxi, it’s the easiest way, cost was as far as I recall about 20 USD. Embarkation was good organized, as the ship was a little bit late in disembarkation and it took longer before we could board they offered for ConciergeClass (and above I assume) a free shuttle to a nearby hotel, because the port of Shanghai has not good waiting areas. We nevertheless decided to sit and wait and in the end we waited only additional 30 minutes. For Concierge Class they offer lunch in main restaurant at embarkation day, which was nice and more relaxing than in the self service. The port of calls were all very interesting, although especially for Beijing it is a pretty long 3-4 hour drive from the cruise terminal (depending on whether you go straight to the city or to the Great Wall first, as we did) so it is a really good idea to stay at least 1 night in Beijing. We’ve stayed 2 nights together with a small group we found through cruisecritics, which was less than half of what celebrity charges for such an excursion. Everything we visited could have been done in 2 day/1 night, however having 2 nights is a little bit more relaxing, as I said it is a long drive. Doing it in 2 days/1 night would bring you back to the ship probably middle of the (second) night. Service on board was fine as always with Celebrity, we did have some minor shortcomings which we mentioned and - as usual - they were very responsive and took prompt care to solve all issues. That’s something I really like with Celebrity and which I did miss on other cruiselines where even real complaints were handled less responsive. Food quality in the main restaurants was good, however over the years I have the impression that at least the selection and diversity of the meals getting slightly worse. Another disappointing point was the drink package, we had the classic one and had to found out, that they lowered the included wines from 11UsD per Glas to 9 USD, well as they do not really tell you upfront what is included in the package, nothing really to complain, although we knew from prior cruises. However we found out that they do not nickle and dime on the orders, so we sometimes did get drinks from premium package without paying the 1 or 2 dollars extra, seems that staff does have some flexibility. Regarding the ship, as mentioned above, it’s an older ship, but everything was pretty well maintained and clean. There is a good ratio between nu,bei of guests and public areas, so we always found a nice quiet place to sit and relax. However, the ship will be completely renovated in January 2019, when it stays in dry dock for more than a month. We only had one shore excursion with Celebrity for visiting Hakone national park and Mount Fuji, which was disappointing (although we had a great view because of very good weather conditions) the tour included a short boat trip (“cruise” on a lake), the ship was so overpacked that we hardly could move around to enjoy the tour, actually I am sure there were more people on board than allowed. We mentioned this to the cruise excursion desk and they actually reimbursed us partly, which was not our goal, we rather want them to change this for future tours. However our experience is (with all cruises and cruiselines we have been with so far) it’s always better to organize something on your own or with a group from cruise critics . All together: we very much enjoyed the cruise, we were absolutely lucky with the weather, we had fabulous service, seen many interesting places, gained some pounds and are looking forward to the next cruise with Celebrity in January. Read Less

We chose this cruise because of the ports of call, China, South Korea and Japan. This was also our first cruise with celebrity after previous cruises with P&O we were looking forward to the "step up" in the cruise experience. The ship herself was a little tired but nothing to put us off . Our cabin was 9027 ,deck 9 forward and was on a par with our experience with P&O,the main difference was the lack of tea and coffee making facilities. There was room service of course and you could book a time for the coffee to arrive,we used it about four times but decided the coffee and any food delivered ie toast was pretty grim by the time it had traveled from the kitchen to our cabin. We were using anytime dinning,this proved to be very useful and well run,we eventually booked a particular table at a set time because of the service team for our table. The food itself was,well,ok,just ok. We had expected it to be something really special after reading reviews and actually talking to to a couple of friends who had traveled with celebrity several times. Our group of 6 decided the food was pleasant enough but certainly not any better than we experienced on our previous cruises with P&O and sometimes was in fact, not as good We used the buffet at times , mainly occasionally for late lunch. Like most buffet's it was a bit of a bun fight and the selection of food was fresh and well presented. We used the speciality restaurant once,quisine,it was superb,it quality, service and suprise delivery was quite wonderful. Our group had various drinks packages,they worked well,it was just as well as the drinks were hugely expensive with a 18 percent service charge. The shows in the evening were of a good standard,but the was a definite lack of entertainment other times of the day,most other entertainment was designed to sell you something. A running joke was ,at least breathing was free. There seemed to be a constant effort to sell you something. The crew were absolutely brilliant,their interaction with customers was second to none, every member of the crew seemed to be working hard to please us. Overall a nice cruise,the ports of call superb even with the security and long waits to get off the ship. Would we sail with celebrity again? Probably not, unless there was a particular part of the world we wanted to see. One of our group has decided for her 60th birthday,it's a cruise to the Carribbean but with P&O. Read Less

The Millennium is going in for a redo in January. It should have gone in already. Celebrity should never have sailed it. The ship is in terrible shape,the food especially at night in the main dining room is poor. From the salads to the main courses it tastes like they've been on the plate for a long time and just reheated. I have never sailed Celebrity before and won't again. We should all get a refund. Having sailed on other ships it was very disappointing to have to spend 2 weeks on this ship. The only place to get a decent diner was the buffet where at least they had they fresh food cooked on the grill. There were not sufficient servers in the dining room at peak times and the waiting time at the tables was bad. Also there were people smoking in areas around the pool at most times. Read Less

Having travelled inside, we wanted to cruise around Japan. Sailed with Celebrity x 2 previously, our expectations were high - but we were sadly disappointed. Adverse weather plagued the trip however the skill is in how adversity is managed. Firstly, the Millennium, our Aqua cabin showed some signs of expected age but was fine. It was the speciality restaurant Blu that disappointed. Half the meals were at a high expected level, 25% were satisfactory, 25% poor, I mean 'meatloaf' you are kidding! The Blu staff however were at their attentive best, We were told we had one bottle of water per trip, not per day, water was for sale when leaving for excursions. WiFi was US$25/hour or US$65/day - fortunately free at the port terminals. The iPhone sessions US$60 for 4(the first one was free). A drinks package was US$40/day/head We started to feel emphasis on the boat had changed (from our first cruise) from passengers/guests to $$$. Second - the itinerary change, meant that the typhoons were avoided but two destinations were not visited, no redress was offered for this. There was redress of one day for the day missed ie shortened cruise. Many guests travelled from Tokyo to Yokohama only to return the next day, then return to Yokohama the next day - possibly unavoidable - but time wasted. The seemingly endless queueing for South Korean immigration at Kobe then repeated at Busan was unnecessary and annoying. Thirdly - excursions, the demographics would show a significant number of older, mobility impaired, some wheelchair bound, wheely-walker or walking stick guests. While there were copious warning notes, of the 65 excursions two were classed as 'Mild' all others were 'Strenuous' or 'Moderate', even the 5 Private Journeys included 3 strenuous and 2 moderate. Attempts to organise excursions for the mobility impaired were unsuccessful. This demonstrated very little care and insight! Read Less

We picked this cruise because it was going all arund Japan and it was the only one with this itinerary, Unfortunately we had 2 typhoons and many modifications so we never did a circumnavigation of Japan, ports had to be adjusted in order to avoid bad weather. We were disappointed but because of the excellent Captain Alex, we had interesting ports lined up even if the itinerary was greatly modified. You have to be open to changes in order to enjoy cruises !!! The service remains excellent on Celebrity but the Millenium is in great need of a facelift ( in January), also the food is just ok, the desserts are awful, tasteless with a few exceptions and the coffee at the buffet is undrinkable. Having cruised on many different lines (30 cruises) I try not to compare but Celebrity used to be known for the cuisine, not any more.... The cruise director was new, Liam, and he tried his best but he was very dull and the activities were very few. The Entertainment was mediocre except for Andy Joy who was fabulous. Celebrity is catering to the upper crust, Luminae, Blu, and neglecting to renew the venues for the little people. We had many sea days, more than planned and a good Entertainment team might of made a difference. The ports were fabulous and so was Japan and we will go back, just not with Celebrity. On our way back we heard many passengers complain about the lack of atmosphere on the ship, it was good transportation for the ports but not an experience into itself still good value for the money. Read Less