As it was our first cruise (we are seniors from the UK) we did a fair amount of research before deciding on Celebrity's Eastern Caribbean option. We had been told by friends and family who had used Celebrity that they offered up-scale cruise facilities at reasonable prices so we chose them for our first cruise and we were more than satisfied with the experience. We chose Aqua class as this seemed to offer something special and we were not disappointed with our choice. We opted out of the automatic gratuity scheme, preferring to give gratuities at the end of the trip to those who had served us well. In most cases we gave more than the recommended amounts are we were so pleased with the service. We also did not take any of the beverage packages as they did not seem to be good value for moderate drinkers and this proved to be a wise move.

We had a week in a timeshare near Fort Lauderdale before the cruise and this allowed us to become acclimatised to the warm sunshine after a long cold winter back home. We spent the night before the cruise in the Embassy Suites before getting the shuttle bus from the hotel to the cruise port. The Embassy Suites was absolutely full (it was President's Day weekend)so we were glad we had booked well in advance. However we were not impressed with Embassy Suites - it was like a zoo with so many people around and there were long waits for the elevators, especially around breakfast time. The room was adequate but in need of some refurbishment as the fittings were looking well used and we thought they were well overpriced.

We arrived around 1 pm for a sailing at 16:30 and although there were already lots of people already boarding the process was quite smooth and efficient although we did not get our suitcases until well after 5pm which made us a little late for dinner. Read more