ailetoile

I'm on Connie on the 9th to Rome, so the 1st cruise that new pricing would affect on that ship.

 

Perhaps I'll grab a drink and a seat near guest services and watch the fun...

You'll probably want some popcorn, too, Curt. Popcorn is always a must when you're watching entertainment of that caliber. :D

Just as a point of clarity, my bill was not under my door. On the last night it was folded in an envelope and left in the mail container outside.

 

Wonder if those thinking they are not getting a statement, just aren't seeing it amidst all the junk mail and flyers.

 

I remove the junk daily so when something new is there, I can see it.

We always check that little box when we come back to our room and we do go through every piece of mail. There was definitely nothing resembling a bill/final statement in there on our most recent cruise.

did you miss this thread?:eek:

 

http://cruiseforums.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2190440

I keep hoping this thread is real! :D

How does this affect upgrading a perk (Classic to Premium) if you wait to do so on the ship?

I'd like to know how it affects upgrading a perk, period. Will the upgrade price between the Classic and Premium package be affected? I'd like to update the information in my beverage package thread.

Thank you to the Celebrity rep for letting us know.

SHIP: Silhouette

CABIN #: 9370

DECK #: 9

CLASS: Concierge (C2)

AREA: Starboard, near aft.

BED NEAR: Bath

QUIET?: Yes, very.

BALCONY VIEW: Good looking forward and straight out. Can't see towards the aft because the cabin is the last one on the starboard side.

BALCONY SIZE: Above average. There's a bump-out on one side of the balcony that gives one side a bit of extra space.

WIND A PROBLEM?: Not really (it was bad enough to whip my hair around when it was down).

SOOT A PROBLEM?: No.

PROBLEMS/COMMENTS: The shower leaked a little bit unless you were very forceful in turning it off, and the water pressure wasn't super. Otherwise, it was a standard Celebrity cabin. Definitely on the quiet side. Due to the location near the aft it wouldn't be ideal for anyone with mobility issues, but we enjoyed the extra bit of walking.

In addition to what you listed:

 

Mast Bar and Grill (one deck above pool). Open from around 11AM to 6PM. Has burgers, hot dogs and (sometimes) sausages.

 

Café El Bacio has complimentary pastries every day (even if you don't buy coffee). They are early (I think 7AM) and close late.

And in addition to what YOU listed, I think you can also count the Aqua Spa Cafe in the Solarium, which serves foods that are theoretically lighter than other eating venues (open until 3pm every day, so breakfast and lunch). :)

Ours was in our room on the night before our final night last month on the Constellation. Came with the customs form and disembarkation info. So, it didn't reflect anything we charged the second-to-last night or on the last day at sea. Kind of useless for reconciliation purposes post-cruise, so I don't know why they bother. Now the $2 question: wouldn't it be nice if you could download a statement from your online account? Don't laugh too hard! :D

I can't stop laughing. Darn you! :D

If anyone has a problem with their final on board account after returning home, you can call Celebrity, (or your travel agent) and request a copy of your final statement. Just in case you need to check it out to be sure the amount is correct.

Thank you for this tidbit. I actually didn't know that. :o

Glad you liked your cruise. We really liked the Top Chef menu we had on Silhouette in Nov. Could you tell us what you had and why it was so underwhelming?

None of the choices really just jumped out and appealed to us. That was not the case on any other night. There was always something that each person at the table was really excited about ordering. On Top Chef night we all picked from what was there, but no one was excited about the selections.

Most of us ordered the veal chop and we all agreed that it was more or less tasteless. Not bad, just really, really neutral. My mom got the barbeque chicken and that was nicer, but she was still pretty underwhelmed. None of the other entrees sounded any more appealing than those two.

Maybe it would be better to say that the food on the Top Chef menu seemed to pale compared to many of the menus on other nights? It just felt really plain without anything that was a special treat to order.

Still got the statement under the door on the last night earlier this month on the Constellation. No, I don't think Celebrity has discontinued this practice. It was even mentioned in the Celebrity Today that we received the second to last night of the cruise. Room attendants are sometimes "lax" in the delivery of these statements.

Interesting. We had a number of other problems with our room attendant (mostly small, but they added up). I wouldn't be surprised to learn that this is what actually happened.

Thanks for posting. :)

We thought of you when we saw the waffle station on the last morning!!

Thanks ailetoile

 

You confirmed the entertainment on board.

DF was on the Silhouette and said the entertainment was something of a disappointment compared to our Refllection/Summit cruises.

 

Celebrity really needs to work on this.

 

Did you go into Quasar? Disco / Dance Club?

Well, I'm pretty easily entertained but I'd say it was more that the shows didn't capture my attention very well. We've seen the Broadway productions several times before or we might have been enticed to go to that one.

We didn't use any of those venues, unfortunately. Most evenings we hung out in the card room and played board games or card games.

Your bill can now be accessed on the tv in your room. There's an account section on the main menu.

We did try that, but the TV told us that it was not available later in the day on the final day of our cruise. I suppose we should have checked earlier.

It's not a huge deal, just something of a surprise based on my past experiences! :cool:

I wrote up a full review about my recent cruise on the Silhouette in another thread, but I wanted this to be a top-level question. In the past, we have always been given a paper bill of our onboard account activity on the final evening. That was not the case this time. Did Celebrity do away with a summary of purchases made on board? And if so, does anyone know why? :confused:

Thanks for your wonderful review.

I will be sailing on the Silhouette this coming Sun.

 

Sorry to hear about the luggage confusion.

Did you book the flights yourself or was that arranged with Celebrity?

It was a Southwest flight that my parents booked themselves.

I wrote about it in my review because people really should know that this is how Celebrity conducts themselves when the luggage valet program goes sideways, but aside from the immediate frustration of having it happen and having to lug their stuff off the boat it turned out okay. They made it home before we did! :D

I hope that you have as much fun on your cruise as we had on ours!!!

Well, that is because they had to run someone up to the Mast Grill to get his hamburger. The $10 you paid covers the cost of sending someone to run the burger back :D Might explain why it was cold :D

Funny, we were speculating about exactly that! :D

Thanks so much for your comprehensive and well written review. We have sailed on the Solstice and Reflection, and will be on the Silhouette for the first time in a few weeks.

 

One quick question - you mentioned you were able to go to your cabins as soon as you boarded. How did you know you could do this? We usually grab lunch at the Porch, and wait for the announcement, but if we could go directly to our cabin that would be great. Did they tell you as they handed you a Mimosa? :)

 

We were told we could go right to the cabins at check in. I've never had that happen before; normally we also wait for the announcement.

 

We bank at the Royal Bank, and we always used to let them know when we were going to be travelling (in later years you could do this online), but within the past year they announced that it is no longer necessary to provide them with any information about travels abroad. Just an FYI.

 

We have finances in both the US and Canada (we're weird, I know!). In this case, the major problem was with my Chase credit card, which had no way of fixing it online. Thank you for the tip about RBC; we'll be looking for alternative cards on future cruises, I think!

 

Thanks again!

See my answers above in blue :)

Yikes!! We go for the crepes, can you remember which they kept? Cowboy and French is/was our standard order. I'm going to be really sad if I can't get something similar. Thanks for posting

The only savory ones that were left were Mediterranean, Hot and Spicy, and I want to say maybe the Buffalo?

We didn't get to the sweet crepes (the service was actually so bad that we declined dessert at all) but I THINK Spanish, French, and Italian were still all there.

Looking at the menu that was posted here, I will say that what we were offered was many fewer choices for a higher cover charge.

I'll just reiterate my disappointment. I love crepes and I'm usually pretty forgiving when it comes to mediocre food and service, but Bistro was not a good value for either our money or our time. :(

We just got back yesterday from our 7-night Western Caribbean cruise on the lovely Celebrity Silhouette. I did write up a review for the site, but I thought I would write one up for this message board, too, since those seem to be well-received.

Before I write this review, I'd like to preface it by saying that we had a GREAT time and that we have two more cruises booked before 2017. Our traveling companions also booked future cruises onboard, so obviously our overall experience was a really good one despite some of the negatives I'll be writing about here.

We were in cabin 9374 for anyone who wants to know.

ABOUT US

We were traveling in, for all intents and purposes, a group of five. The group included me and my husband (both in our early 30s), a friend of ours (early 30s), and my parents (60s). I'll be writing more about my immediate family than the friend since he did his own thing a good portion of the time. We are all reasonably easygoing and we were definitely there to have a good time, so I will say that some of the negatives that could have turned into a Thing rolled off of our backs pretty easily. This was not the first Celebrity cruise my husband and I have taken, but it was the first for the rest of our party.

EMBARKATION

For us, embarkation was a breeze. We arrived on a hotel shuttle at around 12:30 and we were able to more or less walk right in despite my parents having no paperwork and no luggage tags. We wrote out luggage tags for them at the dock, and they were able to show their passports instead of the express check-in documentation without any problems at all at security.

We were in Concierge Class, so we went to that check-in line and were able to see an agent right away. I did notice a small line at the standard check-in, but it wasn't very long. My parents took a touch longer than we did to get all set up with their sea passes since they had not done any of the check-in ahead of time, but within maybe five minutes we were stepping onto the ship!

A funny side-note regarding the welcome aboard drinks: My mom wanted orange juice and I wanted a mimosa. I was given a very hard time about whether I was old enough to drink (seriously?!) and my mom was given a hard time about not wanting the alcohol. In the end we both ended up with a mimosa, although if I had realized what was happening I would have taken the orange juice and just switched with her!

The staterooms were ready to go when we got on board, so we were actually able to go right up to our rooms to drop off our carry-on luggage. The whole process was ridiculously smooth and perhaps the best embarkation experience that my husband and I have had to date.

OUR STATEROOM

As I said above, my husband and I were in 9374. It's a C2 that has a bumped out balcony right near the aft of the ship. My parents were in the C3 9370 right next door, and our friend scored the C1 9380 that was just a few steps away. We were able to get the balcony divider between our stateroom and my parents' room opened, which was just lovely for the whole sailing. We referred to it as "The Wormhole."

The cabin itself was nice enough. It was quiet and there wasn't a lot of foot traffic in our area since we were so far away from the stairs and elevators. The bed was near the closet, which was a new configuration for us. We enjoyed the footstools but we did not enjoy the way that they crowded the balcony. Our shower didn't like to turn off all the way and didn't have fabulous water pressure, but it was a shower and it did its job. We found the bed to be comfortable if you ignore the ridiculous curved bottoms!

We are some of the seemingly-rare people who kind of like the afternoon canapes that come with Concierge Class. They were different than what I recall from our last cruise a few years ago, but I'd actually say that I liked the differences for the most part. The food seemed a bit more substantial, and as long as someone in your room liked olives then the small bites were tasty.

Our cabin attendant was Jack. He mentioned an assistant once when we met him, but we never saw him or heard from him the entire time. Jack was one of the disappointments on our trip. I'm sure that he was exceptionally overworked as many of the Celebrity employees often are, but all three parties involved individually came to the conclusion that he was cutting a lot of corners. A few small examples are that my parents actually ran out of toilet paper, and that Jack refused to comply with the simple request to NOT leave the curtains open in our friend's room.

FOOD. ALL OF IT.

We didn't do much specialty dining, but we did eat in more venues than I realized. I'll just cover this here in different subsections:

ENTERTAINMENT

We only went to one of the evening shows, the one with the contortionists. We all agreed that it was enjoyable, but that none of the remaining shows really spoke to any of us enough to carve out the time in our evening to attend them. I should say here that in the past my husband and I have gone to more of the shows and we have liked them very much, but in this particular case it seemed more important to spend time with my family (they live in the US and I'm in Canada so we don't see them too often).

The only Celebrity Life activity that we participated in this time around was the officers vs guests bocce ball tournament. We had a really nice time, and the officers that we played against were quite gracious and fun to talk to! Again, we have traditionally participated in many other activities but on this cruise we ended up just hanging out with family.

One thing that was new to us was that on some nights performers came into the MDR. I have mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, it was neat to watch them. On the other hand, it really disrupted the flow of the meal. I imagine I would have felt a bit more positively about the performances if I had been seated at a table of strangers instead of with family and friends.

PORTS OF CALL

We had (for us) a fairly port-heavy itinerary. Here is what we did in each of the ports of call:

DISEMBARKATION

Okay, so after an overall fabulous vacation here's where things started to go downhill, unfortunately. My husband and I were flying out the following morning so we were not eligible for the luggage valet, but my parents were. They thought that it was a wonderful idea, so they signed up. Celebrity gave them the standard spiel about how they would do their best and if they could not get into the program for whatever reason they would receive standard luggage tags. Their onboard account was charged.

Fast forward to the final night of the cruise. My husband and I have our luggage tags and our disembarkation process is proceeding as normal. We get back from dinner with the intention of putting out our bags and then helping my parents with theirs, but even at 10:30 at night (an hour and a half past their check-in time for their flight) there was nothing from Celebrity waiting for them regarding disembarkation. We kind of shrugged our shoulders and sent my parents into their cabin to call guest services and find out what was up, and then we went into our cabin to do our last minute packing and get our suitcases out.

By the time we got our suitcases out at 11, my parents had learned that there had been a "snafu" with the check-in process for Southwest, but they were told they shouldn't worry and that luggage tags would arrive soon. My husband and I hung out for a while waiting for some resolution, but eventually we gave up and went to bed.

When we woke up the next morning, my parents were beside themselves. Guest services had basically just kept brushing them off until they finally gave up and went to bed around 1am. When they woke up there was STILL no communication from Celebrity and no luggage tags. Another call to guest services earned them a really snotty "Well, there was a problem and it was Southwest's fault, but now you're too late to get regular luggage tags so deal with it yourselves." No apology for the situation, no refund for the service, no apology for their failure to let my parents know that they had not been checked in (we would have done it ourselves if we had known there was a problem), no offer to help them get their luggage off the ship... Nothing. At that point, there really was not an alternative but to deal with it!

Fortunately, there were four of us to juggle five suitcases (their four plus our carry on). We ran to the buffet to get some breakfast and then we made it work with the huge bags, but it was hard to not feel resentment that we were put in the situation of having to haul four very heavy bags off of the ship ourselves. The disembarkation process was SLOW with lots of long lines that were constantly being cut through by passengers in wheelchairs. US customs was a breeze, though, so aside from the luggage valet program failing my parents completely and utterly it wasn't too bad.

Just to follow up on that story: Once they got off the ship and through customs, my parents did call Celebrity's customer service line. The lady that took my mom's call did apologize and she gave them a $40 refund to their credit card to reimburse the cost of the program, so that seems to be a resolution that satisfied them.

OVERALL THOUGHTS

We had a good time, the problems with luggage valet notwithstanding. It was a relaxing trip, although I would hesitate to book active excursions for three ports in a row again! The Silhouette is a great ship, probably our favorite out of all of the ones that we've been on, and the staff really were overall amazing to deal with. We did our best to take advantage of our last hurrah with the Molecular Bar, and now we're excited to see what Celebrity does to replace it. All in all, we're already looking forward to our next cruise.

Thanks for reading! :D

Sad to hear about the Bistro experience - seems like the big cry around here. Are they trying to compete with Mast Grill with the hamburgers?

$10 may just tip the scale in making the choice.

 

Does anyone know if The Porch also went up in price?

Thanks

The Porch remained $7/pp our whole cruise. We didn't eat there, so I can't comment on the quality of the food or service :)

We were also on this sailing. I'll be writing my review to post today. It was a really nice trip, though. :D

Just got off of Silhouette as Rhonda was getting on. They debuted the new Bistro on Five menu late in the week. The new menu has more food and only six crepes (three savory and three dessert). The charge was definitely $10/person, and while our food was good it was NOT worth an extra $40 for a family of four. The service was awful, too. My husband got the hamburger and while it was not bad it took something ridiculous like a half hour to get to us so that it was delivered cold when the rest of us had finished our meals. We were not impressed.

I'll be writing up a review when I've had a chance to get my bearings... I just got home yesterday and had to go go pretty much right from the airport to curling :D

I'm not sure what Gift Boutique you mean, but any alcohol bought at a gift shop not on the ship will not by the rules be allowed to be brought onboard except for the 2 bottles of wine at the embarkation port only. What happens in practice can and will vary. Any alcohol purchased in the onboard gift shop will be delivered to you at the end of the cruise and is not able to be consumed onboard. If you want a bottle of alcohol in your cabin it has to be purchased from the bar set-up service.

 

Happy sailing,

Jenna

You guys totally caught me while I was out on my own cruise! :D

Just to add to this, if you meant Gifts By Celebrity then yes you could bring two additional bottles of wine aboard per stateroom. The IS a corkage fee for wine you bring aboard yourself but not for wine from Gifts By Celebrity.

There's always a chance your additional liquor won't be confiscated at the port where you purchase it but I wouldn't count on it.

I have some updates to make to the pdf when I get caught up in real life so I will make sure to clarify this.

Jenna, thanks for being awesome :) :) :)

Thank you for the review! I'm disappointed in the changes to the dining room resulting in such a mess of people, but I can't say that I'm surprised. Ah well, it's a vacation and if a little bit of bumping is necessary then so what. :rolleyes:

We also board Sunday and I'm so excited. Can't wait!

Hi, I can't wait to meet you in 3 days. We travelled on the Eclipse last year during March Madness and they showed some of the games on the TV at the Casino bar, and also occ. in the cabin. We are big UNC Tarheel fans and hope they make it far and we can watch.

Hi! Fancy meeting you in a place like this! :D Thanks so much for the answer. I'll pass that along to her :)