I'm looking to be as honest and balanced as I can in this review so that it helps prospective cruisers who are considering Celebrity.
I'll do this in 3 parts... Summary… the Good… the Bad.
Summary
My view is that Celebrity is living off its reputation (& messaging) of ‘premium’. My experience is that they are looking for ever 'sneaky' ways to drive up revenue (as any good business ...
An outstanding cruise which combines a repositioning with multi country/culture adventure. Seeing Alaska, Russia and Japan all while gaining extra sleep every other day made this relaxing. This ship (like all the Viking cruise ship) is as near perfect as you can get. Comfort, food, service, public spaces, what’s included and what’s not ( no casino, kids, photos, auctions, crowds, etc) makes it a ...
We choose this cruise to visit Japan and Alaska and we liked that there were a lot of sea days when crossing the Bering Sea. The embarkation in Kobe was a little slow, but not bad. we were in cabin V705, on the same floor with Seabourn Square, which was convenient for getting morning coffee and snacks.
As one cruiser said in her review, the ship was clean, but the decor snd furnishings are a ...
We chose this cruise for the interesting ports and had a terrific time. The newly refurbished Jewel is beautiful and we much prefer the smaller ships.
We had quite a few Sea days and Ncl had many activities scheduled. Trivia multiple times a day, dance classes, cake and cooking demonstrations, etc.
One thing I found difficult to get information on before the cruise was how Ncl would ...
Great ship and great weather were the highlights, but too many boring sea days. It could have been much better with some more speakers and better entertainment on those long sea days. The best part of sea days was a geology professor guest lecture. Embarkation was much slower than disembarkation. Nice cabin with reasonable bathroom. Too cool for pool and sunbathing on this route. Port in Japan ...
This was the first time on Norwegian Cruise line and was very impressed with the service, food and the entertainment.
There was never any waiting for a table in any dining rooms, the staff were very attentive.
I have cruised with a lot of other cruise lines and you always feel you are being push into a paying speciality restaurant in some form or another like serving crap food in main ...
The Jewel has been refurbished but not to the extent that it needed.
I have never seen a harder working general manager (still hotel director to me) than Stephen. His problem is he can only deal with the staff he has been given.
I certainly understand that all the employees from the Joy needed to be dispersed throughout the company but the lack of a clear understanding of English is a ...
Loved the idea of a repositioning cruise and that part was great. Could sail forever. However, the service on board was indifferent, to say the least. The people who ran the "kid's club" were fabulous and my grandchildren had a great time. This was the best part. Ebarkation and disembarkation were flawless. Food was another matter. It was, to say the least, somewhat strange. Clearly it was mostly ...
Well, here we are back on the Jewel (sailed Sydney - Singapore in February), but this time in the Haven. Why? We wanted to see Japan and we wanted to do Alaska and ‘transpacific’ helped complete our journey around the planet (although, technically, the Bering Sea may not actually be the Pacific). Anyhow, this was a repositioning cruise and we decided to take advantage.
Unlike our last cruise ...
I have always wanted to go to Alaska and my husband wanted to go to Japan, so on this cruise we got to do a bit of both! Boarded in Yokohama Japan. We stayed at Sotetsu Fresca Inn Sakuragi-cho in Yokohama. This was fine and we were able to walk to the port from here - although was a good 25 minute walk. Embarkation was a little unorganised and long, but we were also quite early! Once on board, ...