To start, this was my wife and I's 3rd annual cruise (my 4th overall). We take a Caribbean cruise every march so it coincides with my wife's spring break. We had sailed with Carnival the last 2 years and while we really enjoyed Carnival, we wanted something more "sophisticated". We were recommended to Celebrity by friends and called our cruise travel agent and she also highly recommended Celebrity. We did find out that there was going to be a large group on board. Some 900+ people from the Abraham Hicks group were doing seminars and workshops all week. While I was initially concerned that a large group could impact general activities on board, we felt zero impact and wouldn't even have known they were there if they didn't have name-tags on.

We booked through her and we asked for our usual port side balcony. We were not aware of the different types of balconies that celebrity offers (there are surprisingly very few interior cabins). She recommended the basic veranda stateroom on the "hump" (Solstice class ships have slight bulges on the sides) and this ended up being a huge deal because we were one of the few totally unobstructed balconies on the 6th deck as lifeboats are hanging off of deck 5. We got 3 perks with our cruise and we chose, $300 OBC (can be used for excursions), Classic beverage package, and pre-paid gratuities. The perks are my favorite part about booking with Celebrity. When I added up all the perks with the price of the booking, we actually came out cheaper than we would have on the Carnival cruise + the alcohol and money we would have spent on excursions.

Embarkation- Super easy and quick. This was night and day different than what I experienced at the Port of New Orleans with Carnival. We never stopped moving through the lines and were on the ship before we knew it! Celebrity even hands you a glass of Champagne when you get on board, very nice introduction! Note: We were not "priority" as we were not Concierge class or above, but this hardly slowed us down. We went up to the top deck to meet our family who were joining us and immediately went and got a drink and a burger at the mast-grill. Celebrity does push pretty hard on the upgrade to premium drink packages, but once we set sail we weren't asked again. Our rooms were ready at 1PM and our luggage arrived shortly after. We had gotten accustomed to seeing our room steward and having them introduce themselves pretty quickly with Carnival. On Celebrity, our steward was in charge of all the luggage for the rooms he was in charge of, so it took him a while to stop by. Read more