My husband & I just returned from the April 25th sailing on the solstice to the Grand Cayman, Cozumel, Costa Maya and Roatan, Honduras. This was our first Celebrity Cruise, having cruised before on Princess and Carnival. The first cruise was Princess about 6 years ago and I was thoroughly pleased with this cruise to the Eastern Caribbean. The food, entertainment and service was excellent. The Carnival cruise was alittle less glamorous, however was quite adequate, not gourmet, but everything was good and the entertainment was fun. They had a late show, following the latest dinner seating and we really enjoyed going from dinner to the show and since my husband and I are nite owls that was a real plus. The shows were fun and very entertaining. Not true on the Celebrity, I'll tell you about that later. We were raising the bar a bit on this cruise, expecting Celebrity to be a step above, both Princess and Carnival. We were a bit disappointed. We had booked kind of late and the only cabins that were available mid ship were concierge class, We paid about $1000/PP and had a $150 on board ship credit through our travel agent. With CC we were supposed to get a pillow menu (choices on what kind of pillows you wanted) a bottle of champagne and fresh fruit, an expanded room service menu, plush robes, bigger towels and daily canapes in the afternoon. The upcharge was about $100 per person. I don't really know if it was worth it. The champagne was on the room service menu for about $25 and the fruit although nice was really not necessary as there was so much fruit onboard in the buffet. We never got the pillow menu, the robes were nice, but unnecessary, and I guess the room service was nice, but again, more food, how much food can you eat. The canapes sounded fancy, but after the third day were tiresome, as they were the same just about every day. So no I do not recommend the CC.

The best part of the cruise was the food. It was a bit better than our cruise on Princess in 2004 and a definetely a step above Carnival. Although the food was not bad on Carnival. We ate most breakfasts in the buffet, and all of our dinners in the main dining room. Ate one lunch and brunch in the main dining room and the rest of the lunches were off the ship. We found the buffet to be fairly good, lots of choices and you could definelty find something to satisfy you. The main dining room was excellent. We found no reason to go the upcharge restaurants. The menu each nice had the left side offering standards that were available everynite, the right side had nitely specials. The standards were things like shrimp cocktail( the shrimp were like 30-50 ct, a bit dissappointing) french onion soup, escargot(which my husband said were delicious), steak, fish, pasta and NY style cheesecake. The right side of the menu changed nitely and you would find things like lamb chops which my husband said were excellent, fillet, lobster (which was a large lobster tail served over risotto along with 2 large shrimp and two large scallops-- few people ordered seconds which I had seen on other cruises)They also offered interesting soups, some of which were fruit soups.

We did go and check out the specialty restaurants, looked at their menus and decor, but saw no reason to go there and pay the upcharge. The murano restaurant was like $50/pp and the cheapest wine was $100 per bottle, totalling $200 per couple. Although we both enjoy Asian food, Silk's menu did not excite us. The Steak house had an excellent view if you went on the early side, however our dining companions who did go, said it was not worth the upcharge. All in all, the food at the main dining room was excellent and we were very happy with it. Read more