We had a great cruise, the Celebrity Solstice is a beautiful ship, the itinerary was amazing, the staff was efficient and friendly. Our veranda cabin on deck 7 was quite big, but it was rather narrow and long, so we had a small balcony. The bathroom was very well designed with many shelves to store things and there was enough storage in the cabin. The best part: the cabin was very quiet, I believe it was at least partially because there were no internal cabins on the other side of the corridor.

The organization was quite good with smooth tender boats operation. However the embarkation was quite chaotic, with one older lady having difficulties controlling the crowd. And we were told to check-in not later than at 3 pm while the departure from Auckland was at 8 pm. On the other hand the disembarkation was the smoothest I have ever had. The emergency and lifeboat drill was half an hour long - longer than on any of my previous cruises. Since only half of its time was devoted to the drill I felt that it was inconsiderate to the older passengers who had no choice but to stand in the crowded room without a place to sit. The last weak point was in Picton where there was a long line (approximately half an hour) to get off the ship because the shuttles were unavailable. It would have been nice to hear an announcement about estimated waiting time at the gangway instead of the usual "you may now proceed to the gangway".

The Cruise Director Rich was excellent. We had a different show every day and the quality was impressive. That includes the Maori performance in Tauranga. The Solstice ship's star aerialists were amazing. I would say that other ship's star performers were second only to NCL performers. I was glad to attend some lectures about ports of call, but some of them were before we returned to the ship and conflicted with our excursions. So the timing was inconvenient. Also there could be more activities for the days at sea. Read more