I did a short party cruise years ago, but this was our first true cruise. I typically book all my own travel, but did use a TA for this trip. Our TA ask what 2 things were most important. I said food and service and she recommended Celebrity. She was spot on. We booked concierge class, deck 10, Stateroom 1203. We flew into Ft. Lauderdale the day before, highly recommend doing this, just in case. Embarkation took less than 15 minutes from door to ship and this included a small delay due to the facial recognition software not working. All staff were friendly and efficient. We enjoyed our welcome champagne and headed to our room. Being able to get our passes and drop our baggage is a great small detail.

We enjoyed our concierge lunch and explored this ship. Made was our room steward and met us at the door. It was his first contract with Celebrity and was the epitome of perfection. Every detail was completed and you never saw him do it. We spoke at least twice a day and his soft, kind personality shown through. Our room had plenty of room to relax, comfortable bed to sleep, good heat/air control. We had the air off and the balcony door open all night to hear the sounds of the sea. The location was perfect to reach any point on the ship and no noise at night. We enjoyed the afternoon snacks delivered to.our room. Food: I am in the food industry and by nature have a very high set of standards. We made the decision not to try any specialty dinning in order to make a balanced review of the MDR and other included food options. Raul was our MDR waiter and was excellent as well as his team. I am an "aggressive " eater and have very few things that I don't like. My wife is less so and more traditional in taste. All MDR options were very good to excellent. Do they hit Michelin Star levels, no. However, the overall quality, flavors, preparation and presentations are very, very good. (especially considering the pure volume coming from the kitchen). The MDR is run efficiently while giving as much intimacy as possible. Smallish little wish is I would like a bolder flavor to the hollandaise sauce....picky point I know. We never scheduled a time and the longest we waited was 5 minutes on Lobster night (of which I ate 3). The wine selection was excellent and our Sommelier had many good choices. This trip we had the classic drink package and were completely satisfied. We do have the premium for our next trip. Buffet: we ate 2 breakfast and 1 dinner in the buffet. Overall food quality was good to very good. I was pleasantly surprised at the Indian food, very good flavor. Could use some more heat, but that's just me. If you can't find something to eat from the buffet, well than your just not hungry. Cafe al Bacio: Great coffee and best desserts on the ship. We are HUGE coffee drinkers. Our favorite coffee shop is a 1.5 hour drive and we go for coffee often. The line, especially early, can be longish, but if you complain about a 5 minute wait then maybe you forgot your on vacation. Overall entertainment onboard was good. Not fantastic, but good. Topper was fun, but we had just been to see Cirque so it was hard not to compare. The Beetles band was very good as was the comedic act. We want to both the early and "adult" act and thought he was funny. The adult version was far from overly adult. The detail that stuck out the most to me was the excellent service and kindness of all members of the staff and crew. That and just how SPOTLESS the entire ship was. One other small thing was not seeing the Captain out an about. We had heard so many great things about Captain Kate and tou can feel that she is no longer on board. It is not any overly active ship in the evening. We like the silent disco, and the disco in the sky lounge. It is good and bad that you can walk the ship at 11:00 at night and not see many people. We would like a nice big deck party at least one evening. So did we like our trip...we certainly did and are now booked on the 11 night Southern Caribbean cruise in Oct. 2020. We were able to grab Stateroom 9237 with the large veranda and can't wait to enjoy the equinox once again.