I booked this cruise with my sister as a getaway to recoup and relax from our everyday stresses. It had a few moments of relaxation but far more moments of "What are we doing on this cruise?" At first glance, the Silhouette looks like a beautiful ship, but on closer inspection it fails to please in so many ways. Before I begin, I was one of the hundreds (yes, hundreds) of passengers that got the norovirus - a very nasty illness that begins most likely by unhygienic food handlers and spreads like wildfire on contact. Once you have it, Celebrity confines you to isolation in your room and basically writes you off from there. More on this later...

I am not foolish enough to expect the food to be on the level of the days of Michel Roux, but it seems to get more bland every time we book another cruise. It isn't terrible, and it is plentiful, and the service in the MDR is efficient, but nothing stands out as special, not even the desserts. However, the chairs in the MDR are another story. The seating is unbelievably uncomfortable. They are big, heavy, half round chairs with no back support or "movability". They are so heavy the waiters have to move them for you and even they struggle with them - what were you thinking Celebrity????

Now the artwork - all I can say is eeeyuk. Some of the pictures were downright garish with a heavy "blood-red" tone that was actually gruesome. Check out the pictures on the wall in the solarium which look like they are highlighting the runny brains of the back of ladies' heads. And another one by the center elevators (I think on the Oceanview Cafe deck) is a blood-red picture of a person called "Upon" that actually has devils faces in the corners! The pictures in our room looked like blood splatters under a microscope slide - try looking at that when your puking your brains out with the norovirus! Also, on the way to Michael's Club, there is an anteroom that looks like a rain-forest complete with bird twitterings. It wouldn't have been bad, expect it smelled like a sewer as you passed through it! In general, a lot of the seating was dark, uncomfortable and gloomy looking. Also, storage in cabins was sparce but the bathroom was nice. Read more