A group of ten Rotarians signed up for this specialty cruise. We had a good time but spent our "debriefing" meeting talking about all of the things that went wrong. My wife and I flew to Seattle and took a shuttle bus to Vancouver. We stayed at the Century Plaza Hotel on Brarrard Street in the downtown area. The hotel was near a very good Thai restaurant and a wine shop. Embarkation was a disaster. There were three ships in port and theMillennium crew did not seem to know how to process large numbers of people. It took over an hour from the time we were dropped off at the pier until we boarded the ship. This was our 25th cruise and our first with Celebrity. The boarding procedure for the Millennium was the most disorganized of all of our cruises.

Once on the ship we managed to find our stateroom. There were no crew members standing at strategic places to guide or direct the passengers to their staterooms. The balcony stateroom was large and well furnished. The bathroom shower was larger than we were used to. The bed had a good quality, firm mattress. The designer of the stateroom put the closets opposite the bathroom door so that it was inconvenient to open both doors at the same time. The amount of shelf space was minimal but adequate for an 8 day cruise. Apparently as a cost cutting move, there was no paper or pen in the room. Our room steward was polite and efficient. We saw very little of him.

The wait staff were very well trained. They were polite, attentive and courteous. I would rate the wait staff as superior. We selected any time dining so that we met a number of waiters and assistant waiters. However we had one assistant waiter who did not ask first before refilling our wine glasses and my wife had had her fill of wine. I had the feeling that the assistant waiter was trying to empty the bottle as quickly as possible rather than pour us what we wanted. We normally finish a bottle over several meals. Read more