This cruise was taken in January and was allegedly the first such cruise Celebrity offered, with several new ports to them, so problems may have been anticipated. I chose it because of the itinerary, having thoroughly enjoyed our previous cruise to the more northern Northern Oriental Asia. Being January I was expecting a ship full of Australians with their families in the Australian long summer holiday season, but although there were quite a few one didn't at all feel overwhelmed by it. The cruise commenced and ended at Singapore, and I also expected loads of Singapore nationals on board, but we didn't meet a single one, although there were many ethnic oriental passengers mainly of Canadian and American nationality. I suspect they would prefer going on the Star Cruise Line where the food would be more geared to their taste and entertainment and lingua franca would likely be Mandarin rather than English. Although the ship did not break down the nationality of their passengers as has happened in previous cruises I have taken, I would say Americans and Australians dominated. The majority of passengers appeared to be in the 55-75 age range.
January is in the middle of the monsoon (wet) season for Indonesia and to a lesser extent Singapore. For Penang and Phuket however, it is in the dry season. As most of the cruise was in the monsoon areas the weather wasn't the best with lots of overcast skies, and occasional downpours. Predictably, there was lovely sunny skies for Phuket and Penang. If you are doing this cruise, you'd be wise to take a plastic disposable raincover you can quickly put on if caught in a downpour in a port. The Millennium has an umbrella in the cabin - I assume for this purpose rather than a plumbing leak from the cabin above. There are no self-service laundry facilities, but they will do your laundry and dry-cleaning for you for a sliding scale charge depending on the item. Whilst they provide some cheap shampoo and hand lotion in the cabins, like other American cruise lines, there is no shower gel so again I had to bring my own.
I thought the on-shore Celebrity office abysmal when it came to obtaining pre-cruise information for planning our trip, and it put me off the Line before I even started the cruise. I had requested pre-cruise documentation e-mailed to me on three occasions and nothing ever happened on this front. Also, trying to get information about where the ship was to tender to so that pre-arranged drivers could meet you on shore was equally impossible. Basically they lied about Phuket, but my driver there was able to confirm himself that the ship would discharge its passengers to the pier on Patong Beach, not some harbour on the east of the Island many many miles away as Celebrity repeatedly claimed.