We chose this cruise because we had never cruised Celebrity before and my bucket list says I have to cruise every cruise line at least once before I die. This was my tenth cruise overall.

I felt like this cruise deserved an 8 out of 10. Perfection is hard to attain and really my only complaints for this cruise involved our head waiter, Tuscan Grille and our waiter there, and the weather - which the cruise line cannot be held responsible. I'll start with the negatives: First, we had asked for a table for 2 when we first booked and knew it would not be guaranteed but once aboard we found the Maitre d' and asked about it. He told us to go to our dining room and sit where we had been placed and then he would try and find us a table for 2 for the next consecutive nights. So night one we were placed with at an 8 top. Very nice people that we met and the head waiter introduced himself and all was fine. Except that dinner took 2 hours and 20 minutes...which is why we prefer a table for 2. Honest, we aren't antisocial. The next night we got our table for 2. Yippee. Only our waiter was AWFUL. He never introduced himself. We had to ask his name half way into dinner. Then, every time we had a question, he had to call over his assistant and ask him. Huh?? Every night was the same. He also had crazy eyes every time he tried to say something funny. And I mean crazy eyes...like Nicholas Cage in Face Off! He never once asked us our names, never tried to learn our drink preferences and made his assistant do most of his work. Crazy! Not used to that from any other cruise line I've been on. Overall I don't blame Celebrity but I do hope that they take into account the review I make on the questionaire they send out. We had early traditional dining and the first 2 nights we thought the food was outstanding! Then we felt it went down hill a bit after that. Much more to say about our waiter but I won't go into it here as I don't have the time to write a novel. (We even opted to eat in Tuscan Grille the final night of the cruise because we couldn't bare to see our wacky waiter once more!) So that brings me to Tuscan...everyone aboard said how wonderful it was so we were anxious to try it. It was difficult to get a reservation so we opted for one of the last seatings of the night because that was all that was available. We arrived and were seated by a window. Only it was dark outside. Oh well. So our waiter came over and had such a thick accent that my husband and I only got about every tenth word out of his mouth. Half way through his spiel he spilled his bottle of water all over the table and our feet when his try went sideways. He continued going over the menu but half way through he just walked away!!! What??? We waited a long time for him to come back but in the mean time the bar steward came over and asked if we wanted anything from the bar. My husband did not, I wanted a Diet Coke. SEVERAL minutes later, our waiter came over and finally took our order. 3 other tables came in right after we were seated and by this time they were already eating. Once our appetizer was placed in front of us, he was gone again. Probably 25 minutes went by before he came back and I still hadn't gotten my Diet Coke yet I saw the bar steward shooting the breeze with other tables. I made a comment about the drink and also had he forgotten us...I ordered the Lobster Alfredo which was good and my husband ordered the Spaghetti and Meatballs because he just wanted a good plate of spaghetti. He said it was ok. He only ate one meatball. (Should have gone with a steak I guess) Dessert was just ok in our book. The Creme Brulee was awful. It was Pistachio and tasted burnt. The main dining room had regular Creme Brulee available nightly and it was much better in there. Overall, we weren't impressed with Tuscan Grille when you have to pay a huge upcharge to eat there. And finally, the weather was pretty bad the last two sea days - rain, wind, high sea swells. No fault of Celebrity but it does put a little bit of a damper on the overall cruise. OH, and one more negative...the chair hogs were out in force! These cruise ships have got to come up with some system to change this! I felt so bad for one lady who had been waiting for 2 hours to get 3 chairs together with her family but so many seats were saved that she couldn't. Finally she asked the pool butler to help her and she also complained. The pool butler got our her papers and started tagging the chairs that were in the vicinity and wrote the current time and said that their items would be removed in 30 minutes if no one returned. ALL the ships should start doing this! I got up at 9:00 the first sea day...no chairs at all. On the San Juan day I got up at 7:45 and looked for 10 minutes to find 2 chairs together. I watched a section of chairs - maybe about 7 chairs total - all saved together. No one showed up to sit in them until 10:30. And that was just one person in their party. A guy with a Tennessee cap! Then the rest of his party started showing up over the next hour. So rude! I have no problem with grabbing a chair and going to get breakfast or lunch but not going back to bed!

Now for the positives...the port days for St. Martin and St. Kitts were great. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves each day. (San Juan day was a waste! Why they stop here at 3:30 in the afternoon is beyond me. Everyone else I spoke with agreed. We also got rained on that day out in town.) We didn't do an excursion through the ship but we did do our own each day. No problems at all. Wish we actually could have had 2 days in St. Martin instead of half a day in San Juan! Read more