Another amazing cruise with Celebrity! The crew, the personable Captain Kafetzis, the always exceptional Cruise Director Sue Denning, the outstanding service in the Aqua Class exclusive restaurant Blu, the great food, and on and on - a wonderful time! The ports of call were spectacular, though we were heartily disappointed that the the Celebrity shore excursions we’d booked in Livorno and in Ibiza were both cancelled. We’d booked the “Ibiza Coastline and Scenic Bike Tour” and were told it was cancelled due to inclement weather, but the day was warm, sunny, not windy. In Livorno, we’d booked the “Tuscan Countryside-San Gimignano and Volterra” excursion. All excursions from Livorno that were not going to Florence or to Pisa were cancelled as, we were told, the vast majority of all the cruisers were first time cruisers in this part of the Mediterranean and all wanted to go to Florence or Pisa. We’ve been to Florence, several times for lengthy stays and we were excited to do something different, and the ship offered several wonderful excursions into Tuscany - and all were cancelled! VERY disappointing, not good at all and will definitely make me think twice about booking a Celebrity shore excursion - I really hate to say that, as in the past we have had very positive experiences with the ship’s excursions, but to miss our full day Tuscany excursion was bitterly disappointing.

Entertainment was terrific - I love the new production shows, modern, up to date, definitely appealing to a younger (hipper) demographic as the oldsters age out. Love it! One of the most fun activities is the SILENT DISCO, offered twice on this cruise. I’ve never seen anything like it - everyone wears headphones, offering 3 tracks of music, which are color banded yellow, blue or red (or whatever, maybe one of the colors was green…..) Anyway, you are listening to whichever track of music you personally prefer so basically, everyone is dancing to different music - observers walk by and only see several hundred revelers dancing like crazy, to silence, but of course the dancers are truly dancing to their own drummer, LOL, through the headphones! It’s just fabulous!

The Celebrity Life Activities Team is terrific, young, full of energy, hysterical! The activities are perfectly timed during the days, evenings, nights, for maximal participation - and it behooves you to join in, as you really do have more fun, the more involved you get. A special THANK YOU to Sarah, Will and Debbie. Also, I had a celebrity chef sighting - the Iron Chef Simon Majumdar, very famous if you’re into the food shows, was on board as a guest - just there, like all of the other guests, on vacation. I was walking around one evening and I heard his unmistakable voice, I followed him around a bit, hoping to tell him that I was a fan, but there wasn’t an opportunity to talk to him that wouldn’t have made me look like a stalker, LOL! Read more