The wife and I live on the West coast, and as such are as we say "cruise starved". We found this cruise 1.5 years ago and jumped on it, anytime we can go on a cruise and not involve an airport we're in. Being mostly Princess customers, but having sailed RCI and Carnival until now, decided to give Celebrity a try and also went for aqua class. As I had heard we were met with a glass of champagne, and proceeded into our ship. I was a different style of build than we were used to, but quite elegant...the artwork was unusual I will say. Overall the condition of the ship is OK considering it's 16 years old, though much of it's furniture should be replaced. Our cabin was just what we had been accustomed to, the bed was comfy, nice linens, though honestly if you can see your hand through a washcloth I'ts pretty thin. Loved the shower, we had an extended balcony due to cabin location and we loved it. Our cabin steward we had yet to meet after two days, then we passed her in the hall, her name was Lin and she works tirelessly throughout the day...I really think they might require too many cabins to maintain, each time we saw her she seemed really tired and frantic, we tipped her extra I felt badly for her.

Now on to food.....we were happy to have the Blu option, we liked most of the food and only had one morning breakfast incident to report. It just took forever to get my food the second morning. My head was exploding, while my wife was eating her meal. I got my plate and finished way later than my wife. Other than that time, service was very good, most seemed very happy and friendly. We found food in the buffet was quite typical of what we've seen on other lines. The gelato bar seems to be a complete waste of space in our opinions. The ice cream is so good in the buffet nobody was getting any, the girl had nothing to do anytime we looked....we tried one time and it was OK but nothing to go back for. Speaking of wasted spaces.....what about that "Sushi on five"...? We never got to go try it however it was on our "to do" list all week. Never many people there the many times we went by. Loved the salmon in the Spa cafe, it was right above our room so it was easy and healthier if we ate there. A few things I wish....I wish they'd put ice in the smoothies did not like warm, I wish there were an ice machine no way to ice down drinks. We used the Persian gardens three times enjoying the experience but it is a "cave" in there. Entertainment was great overall, we found a newly formed band called the Brian James band and thought they were the best band on board, each time we heard them crowds were large and their music for us had the best sound. Speaking of which, if you have a chance to get to a "silent party" by all means do. They pass out headphones each of which has three channels to listen to your style of music, each channel has a different color ear lights so it's a room full of folks dancing with no sound, the looks you'd see by folks walking into it was great. We had a conga line, this is in the martini bar...it was a hoot. Movies up on terrace we watched only one all week, they had lots of sci-fy stuff did not interest us. I was able to smoke my cigars up on deck 11 port side, the space on 10 portside had sitting areas with furniture so low it was hard to get out of your seat, heard many complaints. Luigi our CD did a good job, the theater shows are good. Overall we figure we'd sail Celebrity again, but not Infinity class. We'd like to sail the Solstice class and if we can group our status with RCI and get a good deal might. Blu is nice having more personal service for sure, Fernando the wine guy is great, we had lunch twice in the dining room it was OK and the noise and chaos we'd hear going past made us happy to have our quiet. Having the drink package was great, I did upgrade to premium but most likely would not again, I had two martinis and better liquor but in my case I don't really need to. My wife did not upgrade so we took it as an experiment to see it's value. Traveling up the California coast we enjoyed unbelievable weather, no marine layers anywhere, San Francisco was warm and clear sailing under the Golden Gate, sea day woke up to bright sunshine, the only clouds we had were in Ensenada in the morning.

Hopefully we can get more cruises to come out here to the West coast, we heard on board the Infinity had not been here since 2013. One little thing I noticed that Celebrity does I've not seen until now, there are linen hand towels in the public restrooms that was a nice touch.