I looked forward to sailing on Celebrity because I had understood from people I had met on other ships, reviews I had read on-line and Celebrity's marketing material that Celebrity was a cut above the rest. Our experience was so disappointed that we do not intend to sail with them again. We found that we were not alone in this view. Indeed, one of our fellow passengers compared it to being on an overcrowded cross channel ferry!! This description was harsh but we could understand what he meant. There were too many people and some had too much to drink so you could say that it did resemble at times the old P&O Pride of Bilbao which sailed from the UK to Spain and back. The following is our experience of the cruise.

We sailed with Celebrity Infinity from Vancouver to Alaska on 28 June 2015. It took nearly three hours to get on board mainly because of the need to get through US immigration. Our oceanview cabin was not as spacious as other ships we had sailed on. My husband had commented on the lack of wardrobe space and that the bathroom was small. It certainly was small and dangerous having no shower door just a step which I tripped over twice. On both occasions I had my back to the shower and was trying to pick-up something from the floor and I ended up on my back banging my head on the shower floor. I am not sure whether being below average height meant that I was more prone to trip over the step backwards but whatever the reason it was dangerous and very painful.

The food in the main restaurant was generally over cooked. White wine was often served warm in the restaurant and, when ordered for a starter, sometimes arrived very late or not at all. We sometimes took a bottle of still water into the restaurant to fill-up our water glasses only to find that the water waiter - who we had told we would be drinking the water from the bottled still water - would appear to top up our water glasses with iced water from his water jug. The dress code was not enforced on formal nights. People wearing jeans, loud shirts and baseball caps were allowed in much to the annoyance of some like my husband who was wearing a dinner suit. We got the impression that the staff did not want to offend those who had not dressed-up, particularly those who had had more than a few drinks. We gave up having breakfast in the restaurant because service was very slow. On one occasion our breakfast was nearly an hour late. When it arrived it was cold and half my order was missing!! When I drew the waiter's attention to this, he said he would get the missing items and after another delay, he returned to say that the items had all gone. Not surprisingly, I did notice a few times that the waiters would get into a huddle to receive what looked like a ticking-off from a senior waiter. The downside of going to the buffet for breakfast was that it was very crowded and there was not enough tables or chairs. Read more