2calgarycruisers

We too had a horrible experience with the “sommeliers” in the anytime Dining section of the MDR on the Silhouette last November in the Med. Despite having the premium drink package and regardless of what we were eating we received the same response “if you want white, order this - if you want red, order this”. Cellar Masters however was a completely different experience.

 

 

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Just to clarify it was always the same two wines

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We too had a horrible experience with the “sommeliers” in the anytime Dining section of the MDR on the Silhouette last November in the Med. Despite having the premium drink package and regardless of what we were eating we received the same response “if you want white, order this - if you want red, order this”. Cellar Masters however was a completely different experience.

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We spent a couple of weeks in Aruba about 5 years ago then visited via cruise two years ago. Diving and snorkelling is wonderful. Our dinner recommendation is Two Fools and a Bull - book way way ahead.... amazing interactive experience. We also really enjoyed a horseback riding tour which included galloping along the beach. Moomba beach bar for a fun night.

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I asked the same question before our cruise last year - it was suggested we us the life jackets from under the bed - worked great!

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So.... no, not always available based on our Silhouette experience in October, while it was always available on previous sailing on Oasis. Yes, asked, then asked again to another "behind buffet cook" , who checked again, and we were told "not again today"

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We were also there in October - had an amazing visit - one of the highlights of the trip - when things settle down I'd like to go back and see more of Turkey. Our Turkish tour guide, when I asked him in private about the situation in Turkey, shared with me that the situation is very serious but the trouble is focused in the North East. He is very concerned about the future of Turkey with the current leadership in place. Not to get into too many details but this was a person with a four year archeological degree, his mother is a teacher and his father is a doctor and was articulate and clearly intelligent. He also said that a couple of years ago there were about 380 cruise ships that came into Kusadasi whereas there were less than 40 scheduled to visit in 2017, and this was before the most recent trouble. We never felt unsafe anywhere on our day trip however people that stayed onboard said there were armed military boats circling the cruise ship all day. Its very very sad as tourism supports many people in Turkey and because of an unstable leader (dictator as he was described) their livelihood is in jeopardy.

The other thing I didn't really think about until Hubby brought it up part way through the cruise was the lack of interaction with the MDR staff at any meal. We have only been on two cruises before, both on RCL and while still doing select dining we found amazing service teams early in the cruise and asked for their section each night - even the hostess recognized us and knew where we wanted to sit (these were both seven day cruises). This was a fourteen cruise and I cannot remember the face or name of any server. When we tried to engage in conversation we got one word answers. We finally gave up except for asking for recommendations - again one word answers. Maybe it was because it they were too busy? The exception to this was during our stops in Jerusalem. During those three days there was no set dining times so we ate in the areas where are reserved seating and had great, great sommeliers - not only were they knowledgeable and genuinely were looking to enhance the dining experience they were also funny and engaging. This was not our experience throughout the ship though - Martini Bar, World Class Bar (how Kayla balanced everyone on her own I'll never know), Specialty dining, especially Dragon in Tuscan were so friendly and I do believe, genuinely cared to ensure we had a good time.

We tried breakfast in the Aqua Spa Cafe - for a light healthy breakfast it was a great choice. We did try a variety of smoothies throughout the cruise (we had the upgraded beverage package so it was included) but didn't find any we really liked, I'm sure it's just personal taste. We have smoothies at home on a daily basis and load up on fruit, veggies, yoghurt seeds etc and just didn't find those on board had much taste. Nice fruit selection, enjoyed the fresh figs. Hubby had the Bircher muesli and cleaned his bowl and a I had a mango blackberry yoghurt parfait which was very tasty. It was also nice and quiet in there, I think it's an overlooked spot. We spent some time by the pool, had a tough time finding a spot in the sun but once we settled in it was great although quite windy. Pool was a great temp for me as I had cold water but we found the hot tubs (a sentiment made by many) were not hot tubs, but warm tubs. We had a couple of chillier days at sea and it wasn't worth getting in the hot tub for as it just wasn't hot enough. While there were some activities around the pool, primarily dance classes that we could see there wasn't anywhere near as many activities as on RCL. We went for lunch in the MDR with the people we were touring with the next day in Malta - company and conversation was great, food wasn't so good. I had the mozza sticks (tasted like the frozen ones from Costco) and a very dried out BBQ Pork Knuckle and Fontina Panini - tasted like it had been sitting in a warming drawer for awhile, fries were cool :( Yes, I know I could have sent it back but when sitting with a group I didn't know, I didn't feel comfortable eating after them. We did some trivia in the afternoon with a family we had met on our shared shuttle from Rome, had a ton of fun and won! We were looking forward to the first Chic night, and with the exception of one, we organized our speciality dining so as not to interfere with these. We of course started in the martini bar (by the end of the cruise I think I had tried the majority :D), I believe this was the night for the ventriloquist, which we enjoyed then we headed into the dining room with no wait. I had both the chicken parfait and the salmon tartare, both of quick I enjoyed, hubby had frogs legs for the first time (said they tasted like chicken - of course). Since I had filled up on apps I decided to skip the lamb (why oh why I say - lamb is my favourite meat) and had the shrimp scampi pasta, only eating the shrimp, leaving the pasta - it was good. Hubby had the duck and enjoyed it. As I had mentioned earlier we were never impressed with the sommeliers who take care of select dining - this was our fist experience with who hubby described as a female attila the hun - no humour, no expression - really seemed like they just didn't enjoy their jobs. Saw her bussing in the buffet one morning, same sour face. We had had a long day so headed off to bed to get a good nights sleep before our tour of Malta the next day.

In terms of the production shows we didn't see that many but the ones that we did see we thoroughly enjoyed. The ventriloquist was hilarious, the magician/illusionist was very good (I was the one who ended up on stage for the card tricks - volunteered by my hubby :eek:), but found it was too card trick heavy not much of anything else. We saw a couple of shows from the celebrity team that we thought were great. We aren't much into violinists, singers etc so skipped those ones. The ones we saw were definitely worth seeing although we were told by someone who had seen both of them before that the show, down to the timing of the jokes, was exactly the same as he had seen several years ago.

Thanks so much for taking the time to do a review. We are considering a sailing on the Silhouette next month. How was the live music on board? This is something we really enjoy.

 

 

 

 

Marie

I'm sorry but we are not much help here. The only live music I remember was centre ship before dinner. I don't remember anything really standing out except one night when we looked over as we thought it was a bad karaoke contest (!). That being said please don't take my advice as being anyway accurate.

cruiserke;51563786']I just noticed new multi-day dinner packages in the cruiseplanner section of my upcoming cruise. In addition to the previously available 3 day' date=' 4 day and 5 day packages, they now have additional packages for 6 through to 12 days:

 

 

 

 

 

So they kept the pricing for the old 3 to 5 dinner packages and for the new packages (as of 6 dinners) they start at $32 a day with $1 less per day for each higher category. Which is good reasoning but it's a bit strange that the

 

"old" packages are still priced as before, which makes the 4 dinner package a comparatively good deal and the 3 dinner one a lousy deal.[/quote']

 

 

We paid $176 cdn, or about $130 us for a five night package last month - quite a bit less than this

 

 

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The activities team were great. We like to do activities, especially on sea days and while there wasn't as many as on RCL we still kept busy. Enjoyed bocce ball, cornhole deck toss, the 8pm activities to mention a few. We also did some trivia but it was crazy, and took away from the experience, how competitive some people were - to the point of cheating and using their phones to get answers (we ended up leaving two different teams for this reason). Its for fun people! We enjoyed the silent disco and a few different competitions in the Sky Bar. The team worked very hard and were unfailingly upbeat. We also enjoyed the photo scavenger hunt and reigned supreme :) Many people thought that "picture of a man in high heels" needed to be someone they saw on deck but we hoofed back to our cabin, slid my hubbies big feel into my small high heel sandals and that put us enough ahead to win! Boy did we burn a few calories racing around the ship that day...

Thanks, I'm starting to see more positive than negative about Tuscan, especially on Silhouette. We have 2 weeks to check out all the restaurants. So much food & wine to try and so little time. :D

Lucky you! I'd love to be back on board. We enjoyed all the speciality restaurants (didn't try sushi) but found MDR hit or miss.

There have been a number of not so great reviews of Tuscan lately, both food and service. Have you had a chance to try it, and if so, what are your impressions?

While I was a little wary of Tuscan based on previous reviews we did try it on the cruise on the Silhouette right before this one and we had a fantastic experience. Dragon was our server and he was the best we had, hands down, all cruise. We are pretty adventurous so asked him to choose for us. Just keep on coming till we give up. We also had great wine pairings. We were too full for dessert and he invited us back another night for dessert and port which we took him up on. Ask for him if you can.

Jim, could you let me know if they are offering the Reidel wine class? We did this a couple of times, once on Summit once on Silhouette but it was a couple years ago. Thanks!

 

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We were on the Silhouette on the cruise right before the TA and while we didn't take it they did offer the Reidel class in Celebrity Today on a sea day.

I sounded like such a whiner in my last post about Oceanview I wanted to say that while Oceanview wasn't my favourite I think it dimmed more than it probably would because everything else on the cruise was amazing. Our cabin was in top shape, lots of storage, more than we could even use and we had four suitcases (two big and two small). We did have some pretty horrible pillows in the room but finally asked if we could switch them up mid cruise and were given great memory foam ones, just wish we had asked earlier. I haven't compared, but the cabin seemed much more roomy, and the bathroom bigger than the same level cabin we had on Explorer of the Seas. We were on the Explorer on the last cruise before the refurb and it did look tired and needed it. We did try room service breakfast on the first day in Israel and it was a pretty epic fail - based on conversations we heard it was an epic fail throughout the ship. I don't think we got one thing we ordered apart from coffee but lots of what we didn't. The coffee is undrinkable (a feeling mirrored by many) but maybe that's planned, if it was good everyone would order it in the am - what a nightmare for the RS team. While we didn't complain at all to anyone we came back to chocolate covered strawberries and a bottle of Celebrity sparking wine and a note saying "compliments of the Room Service manager".... We loved our roomlocation as it was a hike from everything and we were trying to get in steps to work off all that booze and food and it was nice and quiet. We took the advice of others on CC and used the life jackets containers for foot rests of the balcony. I knew we wouldn't have body wash in the room so I collected some from the hotels in Rome to bring onboard. When I ran out of water in the room I would use the big bottle of Evian in room that comes with a charge and then just replace it when I hit the bar (big bottles of Evian are included on the premium plan). I must have timed it right as we were never charged. Don't forget your bottle of Downey Wrinkle Remover - a lifesaver when you have no iron.

Thanks for reviewing. Sounds like a busy time pre-cruise!

It was crazy busy but loved it. It took us so long to get there to we figured we might as well take advantage of being there. This trip, including the cruise, was a trip which in order for you to experience it to the max you needed to be in good physical health, there were some days when we walked over 20km and walked up over 30 flights of stairs (I wear a fit band to track). We saw many people, and heard many complain on tours on how much walking there was and were unable to do and see as much as they wanted. I'm so happy (and blessed) that we were able to do this trip at 110% while we are still able to.

We had several lunches in the MDR, two with others on some upcoming port tours and one with friends. Service was great and prompt, food came out hot and as ordered. I've looked for menus and can't find any. I had a disappointing sandwich (tasted like it had been held in a warming tray for awhile as the bread was very dried out and not much meat on it) but had a great tuna salad and I can't remember the third. Much, much better than Oceaniew IMHO.

We also ate breakfast in there were the same success, no problems. We even ate in the there on disembarkation day and they did a great job of feeding the masses and getting them out in a timely manner.

Dinner for us was hit and miss. We had the best ever prime rib we've ever had in our whole life, and a huge portion. I can taste it now.... but an absolutely inedible leg of lamb that we literally could not cut with the knife. Enjoyed the chicken liver parfait, duck terrine, pate, duck quenelles, tuna nicoise (you get the idea what I like). We rarely ate desserts but did enjoy the creme brullee.

We had Celebrity select dining and while we were always open to eating with others we were always seated on our own. We never had a wait unless we requested a window seat (which we often did) so the wait was fair. We generally ate after the activities at 8pm so around 8:30 to 8:45. We did not like either of the sommeliers that serviced the select dining area - felt they were a quite bossy and not really interested in pairing - "White or red?" was the only question asked when we told them what we were eating - and very rushed. We gave up and ordered our own. Then.... when we were in Israel for 3 days all seating was open and we ended up in the general dining room and had consistently fantastic sommeliers! They were not only knowledgeable and caring, but also friendly and funny. What a difference it made.

All in all we were very happy that we made the choice to purchase the 5 night speciality dining package. While the food in the MDR, and the choices were more than adequate the speciality dining venues were for us, what made dining on the cruise very special.

While we didn't eat dinner here, we ate breakfast and lunch several times and also some late afternoon pizza. I generally found the experience disappointing. Starting with breakfast - there was often long lines to get both eggs and toast, and if you walked away at the toast station while your toast was cooking, if someone came up and requested toast and yours was ready it was given away :mad:if you waited, then what was already on your plate got cold. If you got the food after your toast was cold (yes, I know first world problem). I have a serious issue with eggs that are not done well, they make me queasy to even look at. I tried twice to get eggs benny stressing eggs done very hard both times - and both times they came out with the white barely set. Breakfast over for me. I did like the english bangers, english bacon, smoked salmon (although I struggled to get cream cheese, there was a line of about 10 of us waiting for us, it wasn't even out on the buffet at that point). Lunch offerings I found were okay, some of the Indian was very good. I just can't think of one thing that stood our for me the whole time. Hubby was less critical and enjoyed his meals. And yes, we were the bad people who held a table while getting food as we found that if we didn't do that our already lukewarm food would be stone cold before we could find a table. We also found that by the time we received drinks, including breakfast our food would be done so by mid cruise, when we remembered we got our own drinks at the bar before getting our food. Servers were very pleasant and tables were cleaned quickly. I just think they need more servers. Maybe, as many upscale brunch places do, they should take toast and egg orders at the table, but again they would need more staff.

I wish I had kept the Celebrity Today flyers and pictures of the MDR menus. As I'm trying to plan the posts going forward things are not clear on a daily basis so I think going forward I won't do it on a daily basis but rather highlights.

After the muster drill which for us was hosted in Qsine, we hiked around then picked up a glass of Chandon to enjoy while we got ready for dinner (turned into a nightly ritual). After we cleaned up we headed to the Martini Bar for a pre-dinner drink (again, turned into an almost daily ritual). I decided to turn dinner backwards and ordered a Creme Brûlée martini - yum.... I had read about it on CC and the bartender was surprised when I ordered it as they said it hadn't been on the menu for a couple of years. We then headed up to the deserted Lawn Club Grill for 8pm. As everywhere we asked for wine pairings and they did a lovely job of pairing with all wine items. We did fine a lovely red, Atalon that we fell in love with but ended up being out at many venues (including Cellar Masters where it was out of early in the cruise) later in the cruise. Although it was $14 a glass we were never charged any extra for it. While we were reluctant to have a flatbread (fancy name for pizza) as we didn't want to fill up on this we were persuaded to give it a try as I was promised they had real buffalo mozzarella. The margharita pizza was good but to us, nothing special. We picked at the salad bar but were trying to hold out for the star of the show - protein! While we didn't want to cook our own meat, hubby did want to learn from a real chef how to bbq a steak properly. As the restaurant was very quiet we received lots of great attention. The Chef was very helpful and spent lots of time with us. While we had just wanted beef (filet for me and ribeye for hubby) we were also persuaded to try lamb chops and a seafood skewer. We also ordered the lobster mac and cheese (just because we could). Hubby is still raving (as he did onboard to anyone that would listen) how much he loved his ribeye but the portion size was just too much. My filet was also fantastic, but again too big. Also really enjoyed the lamb chops but didn't really like the scallops. I thought I would never meet a scallop I didn't enjoy but it appears they were all residing aboard the Silhouette.

We missed the Beatles tribute show and wished we hadn't as we had heard after that it was really good. After dinner had a walk around then headed to bed.

Thanks for your review. Was Captain Dimitrios Kafetzis still in charge? I try to figure out who will be board for our upcoming cruise. Thanks!

 

 

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Yes he was and he did a great job both as Captain and as entertainer!

Thanks for posting this - I booked our excursion (Zipline) on Labedee at a 20% discount today!!!

This is so fun! We did it on an RCL cruise a couple of years ago.

I had been pretty nervous as I had read a few posts where it had either been a big deal or denied so I was quite relieved!

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I did put this in my trip report but for those of you who may be wondering about flexibility in the dining package we had no issues at all. We had pre bought the five night package and when we boarded we headed straight to MDR to make our reservations. Our first request was to switch out an additional Murano for Sushi on Five. After a quick call we were told no problem. We also said we did not want to eat at either Murano or Tuscan on the first night - would we be able to switch to Lawn Grill? Again, no problem. No explanations asked, no push back - easy peasy!