This was our first cruise in 15 years. The Alaska cruise was chosen because we we will be on the Solstice in February from Auckland to Perth and we wanted to see what Celebrity and the Solstice were all about. The Solstice and Celebrity met or exceeded our expectations. I have broken this review in sections and rated each category according. My overall cruise rating is 9 out of 10 and we have two more cruises booked on Celebrity.

Embarkation

Seattle traffic was a mess on Friday morning and we arrived at the Pier 91 parking lot at 11:20 am and waited for the shuttle buss for 10 minutes. Five minutes later we were at the cruise terminal. Cost for the week parking was $184 by the time all the taxes were added. Please tip the drivers since they work very hard handling those large suitcases. Our luggage was pre tagged with the tags that Celebrity had sent us. Before we crossed the street in front of the terminal a Celebrity representative directed us to dropped the bags by some baggage carts (no one was there and we assumed that the bags would show up at our cabin.) We went into the cruise terminal, up the escalator, through the security scan, then a short wait to get checked in and on to the Solstice. We were on the ship by 11:55. Being Aqua Class, we had a separate line with the concierge class. The non priority line was not very long either. Read more