sarh

To add to the food debate - I think it depends on the comparison you are making. For us, the main dining room was far superior to Celebrity Connie last year but inferior to Celebrity Galaxy the year before. We found starters, fish and meat dishes (particularly steaks) perfect, but veg and puddings (except for a fantastic bread and butter pudding) weren't so great. But at least it meant we didn't put on weight! There was some good Indian and Chinese in the windjammer - it was also handy that you could pop to the cafe for a sandwich or to the pizza place instead of a full lunch during the day.

Towels were great - everything's new. People were actually talking about the beds - in fact we're going to get a memoryfoam topper as a result. A common conversation was - "I was going to have a swim but lay on the bed and the next thing I knew it was time for dinner..." Yes they were Brits refusing to pay. In fact there were hardly any non-Brits on the ship.

You could get on the ship from 11-ish but we had terrible traffic - took over 4 hours from St Albans. Meant we arrived at a busy time but no problem - you drive up, offload your bags, park just along the road and then a very short walk back. They seemed to have a separate queue for those who had filled in all their luggage labels (we had) and so it's worth doing that. Re the sports pool, I didn't see much sports going on - very busy with kids swimming. My son said he saw some water polo in there at one stage. Re the adult whirlpool - great place to spend some time, especially when it gets chilly heading home (I was in there yesterday!). It's 16+ so you do get some teens, but no problem. Only problem is getting loungers in the adult area when the weather is good - lots of towels enjoying their sunbathing. By the way, if anyone is into their nails, the salon does great infills/French manicure! Only problem now is my typing is slowed down as I have these great nails in the way!

Hi Laura, hope you had a good trip back. We loved the ship too. Service was fantastic. Our head waiter said that they have a group called "The 100" who are the 100 top rated waiters,bar staff etc and they get the new ships ready and stay with them until they move to the next new launch. She is moving on to the Oasis next Feb. They go to Finland to get it ready. Sounds as if the cruise director wasn't the usual one of "the 100" - it's usually Ken Rusk (?) someone told me but I presume Graham Seymour did it for the British audience. I've never really noticed a cruise director before (but then we were on Celebrity previously...) but you couldn't miss him!!! Really got everyone in the party mood. I'm not sure what the effect of tipping will be - I met a couple of people who said they would not be tipping and one woman was creating a scene this morning and complained to Guest Relations that her attendant was following her round asking for a tip and she'd "already paid enough for this trip and for all the drinks so why pay more now". Perhaps she should have had fewer drinks...We decided to add some to the normal tips in the hope that the good staff won't be put off by penny pinching types and move back to the US dominated ships. I think that the agents selling cruises need to make clear to their clients how staff remuneration works on the ships.