My family of 4 spent $10,000 to embark on the Alaska Family Adventure Cruisetour (#9a, Northbound), which left Vancouver on June 24 and reached Anchorage on July 4. We are deeply disappointed in our experience onboard the Celebrity Millennium for one reason: the 1,000-member religious group from India that was booked at the same time. We were given no advance notice about the presence on board of this cult-like Masti Group or any of the ways the crew and staff would unfairly accommodate only half of the people on the cruise. Celebrity did a tremendous disservice to the other 1,000 people on board the ship as well as their travel agents, who will lose business because of this disaster with the Masti Group.
We were unable to access many of the amenities on board the ship, including the adults-only pool, one of the restaurants, and the theatre, because of this group -- amenities that we were excited about and definitely influenced our decision to choose Celebrity for our first cruise. The crew and ship officers catered to this group throughout the trip and left the rest of us to fend for ourselves. The ship’s rules were not enforced, non-Masti Group passengers were neglected, and staff were overwhelmed and struggled to deal with the problems created by the religious group members. The worst issues were:
1. The pool in the solarium is for passengers 16 years and older at all times, except for from 4pm - 7pm, which was clearly posted. The Masti Group allowed their young children to swim in the pool and hot tubs all day and night, unsupervised, often wearing diapers (never allowed in the pool). I asked Guest Relations to deal with this problem every evening of the cruise so that my husband and I could swim; not once did they clear the pool. By the end of the trip, Rati at Guest Relations told me that “Captain George” said those children could use the pool at any time. However, this was not announced or posted to the rest of the passengers, so my children were never allowed to swim there. In fact, my teenager was asked to leave the pool, which is unthinkably unfair.