If you overnight in Seattle before the cruise, take a cab to the pier versus the local shuttle if your hotel is not on their normal list of stops. You can get the cab from the Pike Place area for the same $12 as the shuttle service charges from their normal hotels. Schedule a pickup from a hotel not normally serviced and you will be charged over $30.

Embarkation and the walk-off disembarkation was easy. The Solstice is a beautiful new ship. The dining room seemed chaotic. I was not given my requested size table and asked for a change after the first night. Only 2 other people showed up at that large table. Finally no one showed, and I made my own change. The second table was at the entrance to the dining room's lower level and next to a staging area where waiters were constantly bringing trays etc. One of our waiters needed better personal hygiene. Those running the dining room operations were constantly on their cell phones, chatting, and looking at the seating diagram well after the dining time had begun. The menu descriptions often did not match what you were served. Spinach salad had 4-5 leaves of spinach and had mostly mixed greens. Dishes had what seemed strange ingredients like black pepper in chocolate mousse. Pasta dishes had no garlic seasoning. It seemed they tried to be too "fancy" and tried to offer too many cuisines. As someone else stated, there was a limited standard menu if you did not want the offerings of the day. The brunch was the best effort. They had quiche for the brunch, but I never saw it offered on the menu on another day. Never saw a baked potato offered.

This was my second Celebrity cruise and my second disappointment with dining on Celebrity. I expected better on their new ships. Victoria was a disappointment as the stop began at 6:30pm and the excursion I wanted that I saw offered online was not offered by the ship's excursion desk. I guess this was due to the brief evening stop. No one even believed I read about it on the Celebrity website or could explain.