A little background to begin, because I believe that all travel experiences (and reviews) are simply a reflection of the personality style, tastes, and expectations of each particular traveler. When we decided to book a 4 night, western Caribbean cruise on the Century for our anniversary it was with the expectation that Celebrity offered an experience a notch above the other cruise lines in terms of service, quality of amenities, and attention to detail. For us, it basically came down to a choice of this cruise, 4 nights at the Ritz Carlton in Tampa/St. Pete, or a trip to Las Vegas. And, I must say that my preference would typically have been a stay at a 5 star Vegas resort casino. But, we decided to try something different. Did we regret it? No, we did not. At the same time, we're not sure we'd do it again. Here's why.

First, here's a list of what we enjoyed: the public areas of the ship were very nice and taken care of quite well; the selection and quality of the casual dining options (buffet including pasta and sushi stations; pool grill) were very good; the bar in the Aft of the ship was a very relaxing place to hang out (and the drinks tended to be more potent there!); the service provided by the staff/crew was by and large excellent as most of them really tried to make a positive impact; the specialty dining restaurant (Murano) was superb and as high quality as just about any restaurant at which my wife and I have dined; and we found fun and relaxing activities at both of the ports of call (Key West and Cozumel).

Here's what did not work for us: the Concierge Class stateroom that we stayed in showed significant wear and tear including worn carpeting and rust in the shower; the cleaning of our stateroom was mediocre at best (used tissues left in one of the bathroom cabinets from a previous traveler; a pair of women's underwear left in one of the closet drawers); the types of people on the ship was not what we expected as we anticipated a classier group (this may have been a reflection of the cruise being for a short period of time over a weekend); there generally was too much of a summer camp, party hardy, gluttonous atmosphere including one day in which very loud, hip hop music was being played at the pool; the pools on the Century are much too small; the entertainment (i.e., shows) was of average quality at best even though we enjoyed spending time in the theater itself; we found the food in the MDR to be of about the same quality as a Denny's, and in fact enjoyed dinner more at the casual dining options; and room service for breakfast just didn't seem to work well as they made errors with our order twice. Read more