Review Silhouette 24/08/14 Stateroom 7108 BE AWARE

[nomad098]

Review Silhouette 24/08/14 Stateroom 7108 BE AWARE

 

This was my families first cruise on Celebrity and all in all in was a great cruise with a few minor issues and one quite major issue

 

I’ll start with the good:

 

The ship was beautiful

 

Absolutely loved the lawn area and molecular bar

 

The stateroom a Family Veranda was spacious with plenty of room for a family with 3 kids though with only 1 bathroom it could be a problem with 5 adults

 

Kids club was excellent the best so far in our cruising experience and I would recommend the kids club to any family. 350 kids onboard and except for the sea days we hardly saw any kids including my own

 

The cabin steward was brilliant Vivianna never intrusive but always there with a smile and very helpful

 

The majority of the staff on the ship were professional, polite and a credit to Celebrity

 

Upgrade from free classic to premium package was $11.50 with gratuity and the second best purchase we made

 

The not so good:

 

Bar and waiter service was spotty partly due to how busy they were and partly due to how some of the waiters were working, At one point 3 wait staff were following each other up and down 1 side of the pool deck for 20 mins it was quite comical to watch. In ocean view we saw 2 waiters going round in circles with a section of tables in-between them not receiving service I think they both thought the other was to cover them tables. Finally another waiter came over had a word with them both and they both started covering the middle tables.

 

The food, I know this is subjective but though the food was excellent in the Ocean View, we found the late night selection very limited, pizza or pasta

 

The bad

 

The noise in our cabin. After reading the sticky on the rooms we expected some noise when coming into port being right at the front.

 

Kotor not a problem as it was 2pm sail in and we heard all the noises we expected, we were in the cabin due to a heavy rain shower when sailing in

 

Santorini the same again some noise from about 7:30am we were already up so not a problem

 

Athens this turned into a real problem. At 4am someone started operating what sounded like a hydraulic winch inching it up and down continuously until we docked at about 6:30am. This was extremely loud in the room, causing the room to vibrate and woke everyone up with no possibility of us going back to sleep. This was not the same noise we heard in Kotor or Santorini or when we docked in Venice. We had a tour booked for 7:30 and due to the fact we were woken at 4am we were all very tired and cranky nearly spoiling our day in Athens.

 

Katakolo The winch started operating at about 6am and continued until we reached port 2 hours later at this point we abandoned our plans to tour Olympia as we all felt sleep deprived and settled for a relaxing beach day.

When we got off the ship we could see from the dock a platform sticking out both sides of the ship just below our cabin and below the cabin on the port side. On our side starboard you could plainly see a steel girder with a hydraulic winch attached to it sticking out of the opening.

 

I would not advise anyone to book this cabin or those near it.

 

The ports:

 

Venice we arrived and it was raining we went straight to the Hotel Arlechirro where they said we could store our luggage. When we got there the man at reception told us if wanted we could have one of the rooms in about half an hour. We left our luggage there and wandered around for an hour in the light rain taking in Venice. After an early morning flight we decided to let the kids catch a few hours’ sleep whilst they slept my wife and I spent the afternoon people watching out of the window. The sun came out and we spent the evening touring round Venice using the vapretto

 

Kotor the sail in was stunning, half way along we had a heavy shower but by the time we got to Kotor the sun was back out. We were not in a rush to get off so cued up late for tender tickets and got off about 5pm. There were quite a few people in front of me that were extremely upset when told that the estimated time for their tender tickets was around 5pm demanding that Celebrity refund them the cost of their private excursions.

Kotor it’s self was wonderful and a place we would love to go back and visit we had no tour booked and just spent several hours wandering around the town before settling down for a large glass of the local beer.

 

Santorini another stunning place to sail into for different reasons knowing that your sailing into what is effectively an active volcano was amazing. I went down early for tender tickets as we wanted to visit Thira (Fira) before we did the volcano and hot springs tour. We skipped breakfast and were on shore by 9am hardly any queue for the cable car and we were having breakfast on the edge of the cliff by 9:15am looking at the stunning panorama. We had a short walk around the town before heading back down for our tour again no queue. We made it halfway up the volcano before one of the kids said they were feeling unwell and queasy and he looked a bit green so we headed back down. We then went to the hot springs you have to swim about 30 yards to the springs and you could feel the water getting perceptibly warmer the closer you got. Several people could not make the swim back and the Captain sent out crew with a life ring to tow them back to the boat.

 

Athens this is where we made the best decision we could have, we booked a tour with PK travel they were absolutely amazing and the best purchase we made. We would recommend this company to anyone and everyone, what could have been the worst day of our cruise was saved by PK travel and the owner who took us on our tour. We saw everything we wanted to and more.

 

Olympia we had a change of plans here due to being so sleep deprived and took the tourist train to the little beach. Though we missed Olympia we had a lovely time relaxing on the beach and swimming in the crystal clear waters

 

Would I cruise with Celebrity again definitely but it would not be my first choice.

 

I would never ever book a family veranda on an S class ship due to the noise issue

 

Any questions just ask happy to answer

[ladylemondrop]

We have sailed in these cabins a couple of times, on Solstice, and Reflection, both times we did hear docking noise, but it was a minor issue compared to the amazing space offered by this cabin - it is huge compared to a standard cabin so we felt it was not a deal breaker for us, sorry you felt it spoiled your holiday hope it doesnt put you off cruising again!

[nomad098]

We have sailed in these cabins a couple of times, on Solstice, and Reflection, both times we did hear docking noise, but it was a minor issue compared to the amazing space offered by this cabin - it is huge compared to a standard cabin so we felt it was not a deal breaker for us, sorry you felt it spoiled your holiday hope it doesnt put you off cruising again!

 

Hi louise1809

 

The cabin is amazing but the noise was really excessive and we did not experience it docking in Venice only in Athens and Katakolo, both times the port side was against the dock not ours We heard other noises when docking but the sound of this winch stopped before docking each time.

 

We were well out to sea when the noise started not actually docking so I am not sure if it had anything to do with the docking procedure

 

Damon