Our family has been on 17 cruises with most of the major cruise lines. We have also sailed with the now defunct Cape Canaveral Cruise Line, an older ship similar to the Regal Empress that did 2 and 3 night Bahamas cruises, and enjoyed our experiences on that old tug immensely. It is with that background that we decided to book a 2 day cruise on the Bahamas Celebration in January, 2010 for me, my wife and our 15 year old daughter. We booked the cruise, even though we had mixed feelings about it from reading some of the reviews here. We have decided that many of the cruisers overly critical of the ship may have had too high expectations from cruising with the major cruise lines. Although, it should be noted that some of the criticism you will find about this cruise line on this site is justified. The most unjustified criticism I have read concerning the ship is the food. Also, some people have booked the timeshare promotion at the greatly reduced rate expecting to get a regular cruise ship cabin and were disappointed at their coach cabin accommodations. This criticism is also unfair. You get what you pay for. I have also read some reviews critical of the staff. We found no reason for complaint about any of the staff. Of course, we are all human, so there may be instances where an individual staff member provides less than perfect service, but we did not observe anything like that.

We found out about the Bahamas Celebration through TV advertising, with offers of a free cruise, which is used as an enticement to bring people into time share presentations. During the booking process we were told the cabins offered through the promotion are very small and were offered an upgrade to a larger cabin for an additional expense, which we readily agreed to do. The coach cabins are very small and most people would find them uncomfortable. I overhead one passenger speaking on his cell phone saying, "I'm sure there are larger prison cells" than the coach cabins. Our cabin, an oceanview category 4 on deck 7, was average size and comfortable for 3 people. Although it had a lower bed and 2 upper bunks, 4 people in the cabin may have been uncomfortable as one person in the lower would have had the upper berth just inches above them when folded down. The other berth folds out over an open space in the cabin, so does not cause a comfort issue. I think the lower bed could be moved to make it more comfortable for 4 people in the room, though. The air conditioning in our cabin worked perfectly, though we did hear one passenger say that theirs did not work properly. Some other reviewers here have complained about the a/c, so it could be a problem in some cabins.

The ship was originally built to be a ferry, transporting semi trucks and passengers for short duration trips in European waters. It wasn't built to be a multi-day cruise ship, so keep that in mind when you book. One of the ships major limitations is that it uses 220 volt electricity. Each cabin has a converter on board to power cell phone chargers. The cruise line will provide a hair dryer or curling iron that plugs into the 220 volt system on request. Do not attempt to use an iron with the converter. We did and the converter smoked. Read more