Celebrity Solstice Review
Exceptional service, fantastic food, hygiene A1, great experience
Rating by category
Additional details
My wife & I chose Celebrity Solstice for a 18-day Tahitian cruise to Hawaii, as my wife's birthday coincided with the cruise being at Bora Bora on that day. Generally speaking, the cruise was very enjoyable and strongly recommended for the following reasons:
1. This is a floating city with 5-star amenities and is very stable, even when 4-metre waves were encountered.
2. This ship is clean to perfection and even our bath towels were changed twice a day.
Cabin Review
Deluxe Veranda 1A
Our cabin was very clean and well-appointed, particularly the bathroom. Our cabin attendant Rudiyanto was exceptional and made our cruise even more enjoyable with his attention to detail. The only minuses would be:
(1) the balcony outdoor furniture needs to be refurbished and
(2) a couple of bottles of drinking water need to be provided in the cabins free of charge, as it is a necessity of life. Water should NOT be an extra! Celebrity Cruises could add this extra water cost on to the cost of the cruise and no one would ever notice.
Port Reviews
Sydney (Australia)
We experienced a very efficient embarkation process in Sydney.
Auckland
We chose to do our own thing in Auckland and used public transport to mix with the locals as well as doing a little shopping in the city. We found Auckland to be just another city.
Tahiti (Papeete)
In our experience, Papeete is a low socio-economic lovely country-type town. The people are very friendly but the infrastructure needs a lot to be desired. The famous market at Papeete is huge and probably worth seeing, but there was nothing there we were interested in buying, e.g. tourist gifts and fruit and vegetables. We hired a taxi and asked the driver to take us around the main parts of the city and a little bit on the outskirts and was well worth it.
Moorea
We took an island tour of Moorea for $50 US per person. Highly recommended.
Maui
1. US immigration boarded our ship at Lahaina and took many hours to go through 2800 passengers. This caused a lot of angst, especially amongst the elderly, and shortened our stay in Maui. This delay occurred even though passengers were divided in groups. In the end, there were no groups, it was just one big line meandering through the whole ship waiting to be processed.
2. We hopped on a local bus in Lahaina and went to Ka'anapali Beach intending to go for a swim, but there were no vacant umbrellas and it was very hot, so we didn't bother. Instead, we had lunch at one of beach restaurants, which was very expensive.
3. Front St, Lahaina, is very touristy, e.g. T-shirts, etc, a place where you could pick up a few gifts to take home, but it didn't impress us as Surfers Paradise, Gold Coast, Australia, is very similar, which is near where we live.