I have taken 25 cruises in my lifetime– about 1.5 a year since birth– and I had traveled with Celebrity about 10 years ago. I hated that cruise, and decided that I would try it again considering they have significantly improved. Well... that was a mistake. I would trade the $3000 we spent on this cruise for a $1000 Carnival cruise in a heartbeat because of how terrible it was! First, this ship is much too overpriced from the cruise ticket itself to the price of the beverage package and dining extras.
We LOVE good food. The food on this ship was horrendous. We even tried spending $100 eating at Murano and we had to send back two dishes because my meat was cold and my husbands was just plain disgusting. Every night in the main dining room we had at least one dish that was rendered inedible, whether it was undercooked, burnt, or just plain overpowering. It was like they are trying to be modern and upscale with fancy dishes, but they could never pull it off, and it left us having to suffer through the bad room service sandwich at 11pm because we were still starving. The wait staff just made the experience worse! Our head waiter never once said hello, never asked us how our day was, never told us anything about himself, couldn't speak much English and would only suffer through trying to describe the dishes before he would run back to the kitchen. The rest of the evening we never saw him and was served by the asst. waiter, who definitely didn't speak much English. We ended up relying on our sommelier for everything, and she was the only good part of the entire affair. No matter what money we spent, the food was always terrible at dinner. That being said, the lunch buffet was even worse! There was only ever sandwiches, nasty pizza and asian cuisine. When we went to the dining hall for lunch instead we were rushed through by the waiters to the extent that I had indigestion and couldn't actually taste the food.
We picked Celebrity because we were told it was the best for foodies.... well, it was the worst. My college spring break Carnival cruise had significantly better tasting food-- sure it was simpler, but it was at least tasty.
Best part of the cruise. It was a lovely cabin veranda even though it was partially obscured.