First the Celebrity Silhouette is great. Food, entertainment, on board activities, relaxing poolside, all very good. Nothing is ever to much trouble for the hotel staff, the waiters are very attentive, the restaurants are clean, and kept so constantly. All staff greet you with a happy smile and greeting. Wherever you are on board, coffee shop , bars etc, all service is excellent. Entertainment was all top class, speakers very engaging, the Ship even went so far as to show the World Cup football on the large screen in the theatre, as well as on all in-stateroom televisons.Great service. If you didn't want or like football, there was so much going on on the rest of the ship it didn't matter.

But we wanted to visit St Petersburg to see the Hermitage and to see the ballet. The shame of it was, and the reason for the three stars, is that St Petersburg visit didn't happen. Apparently the Celebrity Silhouette, and I would suspect all Solstice class ships apply, at slow speeds could be badly affected by crosswinds over about 20mph. The transit to St Petersburg is via a 100 meter wide deep water channel. The speed in this channel is limited to about 8-10 mph. At this speed, the wind sheer force on the side of the ship, with the ship at 40meters wide, would have made the ship crab, and possibly hit the sides of the channel. The Captain at a meeting, said he didn't want to be in tomorrows headlines and the safety of the ship and all sailing on it were his primary care, which is fair enough. Celebrity cannot control the weather, yet.

But this has happened before, the Captain was asked this and said he had experienced this failure to transit once before, about 2 years ago. Also he was asked if any other ships had managed to reach the port and he agreed that smaller ships had docked while we rode at anchor for two days. Read more