We chose this cruise, our 11th with Celebrity, because we had never visited South America and it seemed a good opportunity to visit three countries. We had previously booked the Rio Carnival cruise for the previous year, but postponed it for personal reasons. We changed to this cruise because it was slightly longer being 14 days rather than 10, it was a terribly long way to fly and so we wanted as long there as possible. We also chose this cruise because it was on the Solstice class Eclipse rather than the Millenium class Infinity. We had previously been on a cruise on Celebrity Millenium and prefer the Solstice class ships.

The Celebrity Eclipse is lovely, its the second time we have sailed on her and the staff were all excellent. However, every time we travel with Celebrity we notice cost cutting, there is always something missing or costing extra since the previous cruise we did although the prices of their cruises are rising rapidly. The food in the main dining room is not as good as it used to be, the variety is more limited and food is often not very hot. The sommelier's have more tables to look after too.

The problem with this cruise was the ports visited. Embarkation day was chaotic, it was done through a convention centre rather than the cruise terminal. The actual check-in was perfectly ok, but then we had to wait for around an hour to be taken to the ship by bus - there was way too much hanging around. Having left home at 2.30pm on the Friday afternoon for Heathrow and flown at 10pm that evening, we landed at 9am Saturday morning and we were not onboard the ship until around 2pm on the Sunday (we had been put up in a hotel in Buenos Aries on the Saturday night). Read more