We have sailed Celebrity a lot and this is one of their poorer efforts. Even when we sailed Infinity a couple of years ago, it was better. The sad thing is that I don’t think they realize how their niggling little economies and deteriorating customer service are taking the Celebrity experience from “Celebrity” to “No name.”

Embarkation was sub par at 45 minutes. These things can happen. What I will complain about is the usual chaos once on board. Why does every sailing start off like the crew has never done this before? It seems to be the standard in the industry and I think I have figured out why. The reason you never get assigned to the right dinner seating time and size of table, and why the bed configuration is usually wrong, is that they don’t even look at your requests, just sign you up for whatever is handy and you can change it if you want to bother. This isn’t just Celebrity, it’s every line we have sailed. If there is a line that gets these things right (and it shouldn’t be so hard) I would love to sail with them. Infinity got all of these wrong, beating the industry average in a negative way. The maître de, however, was “unable” to correct our seating on the first day. What the heck? Is nobody able to fix a simple error? So, on the second night, we showed up not knowing where our table was, though we knew the number by then, and had to wait almost twenty minutes while the girl at the deck talked on the phone and didn’t admit a single customer. We gave up in disgust and went in and found our own table. Not very professional, Infinity.

There were some wonderful things about this ship. The heating and air conditioning worked perfectly which is always a nice surprise. The bed had a sheet above the duvet. The bed and pillows were quite comfortable. The steward, Esther, was excellent, as was the waiter, Charlie. There were some live plants around the upper decks, a nice touch. There were more and better choices on the tv. There was live classical music. (Also some unfortunate vocalists!) Since the nightlight is so bright, I appreciated the adjustable closer on the bathroom door. These factors would have made a big success of most cruises, but Infinity found other ways to go wrong. Read more