Coffee and Tea on Celebrity

[lisaland]

I am a past RCCL cruiser. I enjoyed the food (first cruise) onboard the Grandeur last year, however, the coffee and tea were horrible. I am looking to book a Celebrity cruise for next year (Century after refurbs). I have heard that the food is great on Celebrity Cruises. I was wondering if they use the same "recipe" for tea and coffee that RCCL uses. Of course, it won't make a difference as to whether or not I choose Celebrity. Just wondering.

 

Lisaland

[smolt]

Hello lisaland;

 

We cruised on Celebrity Century about 18 months ago (Jan 04). It was a wonderful experience, I hope you enjoy the ship as much as we did. I found the coffee in the formal dining room to be very good. On the other hand, I thought that the coffee in the self-serve stations and in the cafeteria tasted rather like "freeze dried instant" coffee. I asked our waitress about the difference at dinner one evening. She was very surprised to hear that I could tell a difference, then she told us that the coffee in the dining room was freshly brewed while in the other machines a liquid concentrate was used. The self-serve machines mixed the concentrate with hot water as it dispensed. In essence it WAS an instant coffee. I know this is a very small thing to most people but it seemed like the only place where Celebrity took the cheap way out. The only other disappointment to me was the lack of Guinness stout but that is just my favorite brew. By The Way, there are extremely few public announcements so be sure to read the "Celebrity Today" you will find on your pillow each evening. That is your source of day to day information. Enjoy!

[peug]

I found the same thing with the coffee on Celebrity two years ago. The ice tea was also from a liquid so I made my own using the great assortment of tea bags offered. I have had enough of cruise coffee so on my upcoming cruise which is 25 days I will take a coil to heat water and a one cup filter thing to make my own in the cabin.

 

Just as an aside - Walt Disney World used to use that coffee syrup even in its upscale restaurants. After the hurricanes last August the big wigs from California stayed at Animal Kingdon Lodge. Two days later AKL had real coffee machines and when I went back in January everywhere in WDW they served "real" coffee. I was staying at AKL at that time in August and a waitress told me why they got the new pots. Maybe the cruise line big wigs should have to drink their own coffee for a couple of days!

[smolt]

Now that's an interesting observation. A number of years ago (perhaps 15 years?) we took our children to Disney World for a week's vacation. While there were many happy moments for the children, one of my favorite memories was how very good the coffee was. I always thought "Disney knows how to do it right" and even compared cruise line coffee to the high standard I had experienced in Orlando. I'm glad to hear they have remembered again what they knew then.

[peug]

That's right about Disney coffee. Many years ago they served 100% Columbian coffee and it was excellent. Then Nescafe got the franchise and they switched to "coffee" syrup. I was told that Nescafe still has the franchise but now provides ground coffee. During the coffee syrup years the only place to get decent coffee was one of the international pavilions in EPCOT. As you can tell I had many searches for good coffee the last 8 or 9 times at WDW.