Our fourth cruise in four years and the second on Celebrity was on the new Celebrity Eclipse. We opted for Celebrity because, last year, our experience with Celebrity was superlative. Unfortunately, our experience on this cruise wasn't up to the previous year's standards. The Eclipse didn't seem to have as many on-board events going on and the events they had were not of last year's quality. With all the pre-cruise hype about the Eclipse being Celebrity's newest ship, maybe we expected too much.

The check-in at the dock went fairly smooth and we got to our cabin on Deck 12 (2103) which was one of the "Concierge Staterooms". We had booked a better stateroom package than previous years, so both the room and the balcony were a little larger than we've had in the past. In addition, there was a bottle of champagne in the room when we arrived along with fresh flowers, a fresh fruit basket every day as well as daily hors d'oeuvres.

Our stateroom's location was the best ever. We were portside and mid-ship. We were only about 50 steps from the swimming pool, 20 steps to the elevators, one floor below the Oceanview Cafe and 9 floors above the standard demarcation point of the ship when we were in port. Desmond, our stateroom attendant, did an excellent job and meeting our every need. Read more