My wife and I have sailed on Celebrity cruises before but this was our first on the Summit. Overall this was an excellent cruise and we would not hesitate to sail on the Summit again. We are professionals in our mid-50s and I would estimate that we were at or slightly under the mean age of our fellow passengers. As expected on a 13 night cruise in January, there were few children aboard.

We flew from JFK to Long Beach on Jet Blue, which in my opinion is far and away the best of the low-cost airlines. Embarkation was problematic, not through any fault of Celebrity, but as a result of damage to the gangway at the Port of Los Angeles due to high winds. Since we sailed on a holiday (January 2nd) the port was not able to repair the problem and that resulted in long delays in boarding and in loading luggage. There was much complaining among the passengers but those complaints seemed to me to be directed toward the wrong party. Celebrity has no control of the port or the dock and once onboard we were treated wonderfully. If the Port of LA wants to increase cruise ship traffic, as is their stated aim, then they need to be more attentive to the needs of those customers. A delay that would not be a problem for a cargo ship is a big deal to passengers waiting to board their cruise. I hope other passengers did as I did and wrote a letter of complaint directly to the commissioner of the LA Port Authority.

Once on board the service was top notch: Friendly with out being familiar, professional with out being stiff. We are used to that from our waiters, but we found it true with all of the ships personnel. We also noted an abundance of supervisor personnel, at the buffet for example, and they not only made sure that things went smoothly they jumped in to help when it was appropriate. Read more