We have just returned from a 14 night cruise to the Azores and Canary Islands on board the Celebrity Eclipse. This is not our first time with Celebrity, having previously cruised on Zenith and Summit. Overall it was a good cruise, but we do have some reservations about sailing on this class of ship in the future.

Stateroom: Excellent "sky suite" level stateroom (no. 7356) on the aft starboard corning of the ship, with wrap around balcony. Everything very clean, light and very well maintained and serviced by our cabin attendants and butler. We had everything we needed for a relaxing 2 week holiday and could not have asked for anything more. There were sliding patio doors onto the balcony and additional, large porthole window to the side near the sofa. Two poles as described by previous reviewers, but these didn't cause us any problem. We found no evidence of soot on the balcony, as described by previous reviewers. The stateroom was spotlessly clean and well equipped and the bathroom had both bathtub and over bath rain head shower (plus shower wand which is always useful). Good lighting and mirrors but no magnifying mirror. Great nightlight feature in the bathroom, which we found really useful. Plenty of hanging and drawer storage in the room for a 2 week cruise. Hairdryer provided, which although noisy, worked fine (and you didn't have to hold the button down!). Only downside we can think of is the walk to the nearest stairs/escalator, which could be a bit tiring for those with mobility limitations, but didn't bother us. We ate breakfast in the room on a few days and our butler delivered it on time every time. However, we did find it difficult to complete the breakfast request form when each of us wanted something slightly different, as the form doesn't really lend itself to this, but all in all it was preferable to the "rugby scrum" that was often in evidence in the Oceanview Café at peak times (more of that later).

Food and Dining: The standard of the food was, by and large, very good. The Oceanview Café serves a variety of food over a very long time period of the day and manages to do it very well, considering the number of passengers who must use it. There was always something tasty to choose from, whether it was breakfast, lunch or snacks. The Murano speciality restaurant was superb and we chose to eat there twice. We also ate at the Tuscan Grill speciality restaurant once and enjoyed our meal, although the Murano was more to our taste in terms of ambiance, food and service. On other evenings, we ate in the Moonlight Sonata restaurant, on the early sitting. The food was nearly always excellent, with just one or two nights where we felt the main course dishes weren't up to the usual standard. However, we enjoyed our evenings there and our table companions were good company. We were lucky to get a free Classic Drinks Package with our cruise booking and found that this worked well for us. We tend to drink wine rather than beers or spirits and although you can only order it by the glass, not bottle, it was never a problem for us. Our sommelier at dinner (table 238) was a frequent visitor to the table, topping up our glasses and we never ran short. Read more