Celebrity Constellation Review

Celebrity Constellation Immersive Wine cruise

Review for the British Isles & Western Europe Cruise on Celebrity Constellation
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Thaumas
First Time Cruiser • Age 70s

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Sail Date: Nov 2012
Cabin: Sky Suite 1

This cruise was somewhat blighted by the outbreak of norovirus which, as another reviewer mentioned, caused a major dislocation to the ship's procedures. Small examples: the library was closed for a couple of days because all the books were being sterilized: items such as glasses in cabins, kettles etc disappeared on the last day at sea - again to be sterilized. The worst disruptions were in the self service restaurants - they were no longer self service: we had to ask for everything. We weren't permitted to just pick up the bowl of melon sitting there in front of us, we had to find a member of staff to hand it to us. The combination of staff shortages and communication problems made getting breakfast/lunch in these restaurants a bit like Russian roulette. Definitely not a pleasurable experience. In fairness, the staff were doing their best under very difficult circumstances.

I don't know whether the same problem was having an impact in the San Marco Restaurant, but as Celebrity Select diners, I would say that this was probably the worst flexible dining experience we have had on any ship. And we have been on an awful lot of ships on different cruise lines. In fact, as I said to my wife on our 2nd or 3rd day, if this was our first experience of Celebrity, we probably wouldn't do it again. However, we do have "previous" on the Eclipse in Aqua Class, an altogether better experience. To be specific, we frequently had to queue at the dining room entrance, once for ten minutes or so. Then if we wanted a table for two, there was a 50/50 chance of having to wait, up to 15 minutes. In contrast with other cruise lines who have got this better organised, there were no pagers - we just had to sit down and wait in the adjacent Cellar Masters. Once inside, the staff were just on the edge of coping, but sommeliers were so rare it sometimes took real persistence to even get a wine list before our main course was served.

Whilst still on the subject of dining, we had two complimentary cover charge dinners, one at the Tuscan Grill and one at Ocean Liners. In the former, in addition to signing for wine, we had a $10 "service" charge to sign for. There was no equivalent charge at Ocean Liners. Curious, I queried the charge with Customer Relations.

Cabin Review

Sky Suite 1

Cabin S1
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