Comments On Recent X Cruise by Experienced Cruisers

[dabear]

We've been on 25 cruises with about 15 of them on Celebrity, the most recent one before our 8/28/24 Silhouette cruise was in December, 2022. Many of our comments have been well said before on CC, but we wish to state our experience (recognizing some comments are subjective). 

The ship was in fine condition, entertainment was very good and most of the ship's employees were friendly & competent. Unfortunately our cabin steward (V-1 prime veranda) was not very good. Many items were not in our room and had to be requested including, umbrella, laundry bag & order forms, pen, paper, card holder, elite events list, ice bucket, etc. We found the food in the buffet good, specialty restaurants very good,  but  the main dining room food was of lessor quality & quantity than in the past. No nibbles in the bars to munch on. Prices for specialty dining, drinks, etc were overpriced, especially when adding tax & tip when you already are paying for food & drink not used included in your fare. We did not take a drink package this time as my dw is now barely drinking & I can't justify $140-$180/day for a few drinks, beside our HH benefit. A lot more promotions and some "nickle & diming" . Overall, a good, but not great cruise. 

[canderson]

Ah ... never mind.

Edited September 12 by canderson

[bigbenboys]

We have over 50 cruises and about 38 with Celebrity. Our cruise on X last year the Oceanview was getting better. The Prime Rib was good in the MDR. The beef in Luminae was bad. Our June cruise Oceanview was very good. Still the beef in Luminae and the specially Restaurants were bad. We are on Solstice right now and the Oceanview is very good. The beef in Luminae and Murano were very good.

[jlawrence01]

I was on the Solstice last week and the HAL Nieuw Amsterdam this week.

 

I was very disappointed in the food and the service in the Oceanview.  I thought that the scattered stations in the Solstice would be an improvement over the traditional buffet set up in the Millennium.  I was wrong.    The size of the buffet is grossly undersized for the ship.  You can walk around for 10 minutes trying to find a table throughout the breakfast and lunch periods.

 

Also, while there were some very good dishes in the buffet over the course of the week, there were really a good number of real misses at every meal.  It has always been my contention that there is a lack of supervision in the kitchen to ensure a quality product goes out.  

 

It was really not enjoyable to eat in the Oceanview.

 

It has been a nice change heading into HAL Nieuw Amsterdam's Lido Cafe and always finding a seat and having one of their staff members serving me my beverages.

[gold1953]

 pen, paper, card holder, ice buckets are no longer a thing in cabins. . You can request ice

[hcat]

1 hour ago, gold1953 said:

 pen, paper, card holder, ice buckets are no longer a thing in cabins. . You can request ice

yes, must request but we usually get the cardholders in room,  and ice bucket by request filled 2x daily and  the cheapo welcone wine on night requested .  no pens but the  unusual pencil with pad in room...can get pens at guest rel

 

The  tote bags are usually in the cupboards.

 

We are booked on Silho.. short cruise in Sept.. booked 3 nights Specialty Dining..one night mdr.

 

OP   How was Elite bkfst if you tried it?

[catspaw1]

JLawrence, please let me know how you liked the Nieuw Amsterdam vs Celebrity.  We are doing a TA on Celebrity in November on the Silhouette. We booked with HAL $1 deposit for a 2 week AK  cruise May 2026- OV as balcony & suite already sold out. Thanks 

[dabear]

1 hour ago, hcat said:

yes, must request but we usually get the cardholders in room,  and ice bucket by request filled 2x daily and  the cheapo welcone wine on night requested .  no pens but the  unusual pencil with pad in room...can get pens at guest rel

 

The  tote bags are usually in the cupboards.

 

We are booked on Silho.. short cruise in Sept.. booked 3 nights Specialty Dining..one night mdr.

 

OP   How was Elite bkfst if you tried it?

Elite breakfast fine. I don't care if pen or pencil, but find it careless not to be in the desk of a cabin.

On another's post, we were on a full cruise & it was very hard at times to get a table & some lines were very long in the Oceanview.

BTW, when we requested an umbrella, the cabin steward argued with me that it was already on the closet floor. It was not & his response was out of line.

Edited September 12 by dabear

[jelayne]

3 hours ago, gold1953 said:

 pen, paper, card holder, ice buckets are no longer a thing in cabins. . You can request ice

We have always had ice bucket, paper, pencil and card holder including last month.  The cabin attendant did forget to put the tote bag in the cabin on one cruise about 18 months ago.  

[marycruz]

12 hours ago, bigbenboys said:

We have over 50 cruises and about 38 with Celebrity. Our cruise on X last year the Oceanview was getting better. The Prime Rib was good in the MDR. The beef in Luminae was bad. Our June cruise Oceanview was very good. Still the beef in Luminae and the specially Restaurants were bad. We are on Solstice right now and the Oceanview is very good. The beef in Luminae and Murano were very good.

Were you on the Silhouette as well?

[bigbenboys]

1 hour ago, marycruz said:

Were you on the Silhouette as well?

No. Eclipse, Apex, and Solstice in the past year.

X has given cabin attendant and butlers more cabin to manage. Also X lost well trained staff like many business. It will take time for staff to get up to speed. 

[marycruz]

18 minutes ago, bigbenboys said:

No. Eclipse, Apex, and Solstice in the past year.

X has given cabin attendant and butlers more cabin to manage. Also X lost well trained staff like many business. It will take time for staff to get up to speed. 

Thanks for your response.  I've noticed the same as far as stateroom attendants with far too  many cabins to manage.  Mostly noticed after covid restart.

[thebutlerdidit]

My last Celebrity cruise was on the Reflection in February, an 8 night ABC cruise. I was introducing 7 other people to Celebrity. All but 2 had previously sailed on Royal Caribbean. We were scattered in 4 cabins throughout the ship, V1 and V2 cabins. We had 3 different attendants between our 4 cabins. They were a hot mess. Among the misses:

Having to ask for towels when we wanted to shower before dinner

Having to ask for robes - and never getting them

 No beach towels supplied in one of our rooms for the first port day

No beach towels supplied in a different cabin for use on the second port day

No Celebrity bags in any of our 4 cabins

 

Not to pile on, but the main dining room experience was sub-par too, and we gradually dwindled from a table of 8 to 4. They continued to seat us at the table for 8, maybe to keep us with the same servers, but we’d have welcomed a change, and one night we waited for over an hour to be seated. I’m not hard to please, and I’m patient. There were no temper tantrums, but I was embarrassed for Celebrity and embarrassed that I’d so highly recommended we choose them.

 

I had really talked up Celebrity and how they’d never want to return to RC. Only one of them preferred Celebrity. To be fair, after booking they started charging for room service. I had told them that of course they needed a balcony cabin - breakfast on your balcony is the best, and Celebrity includes room service for free! Oh! That reminds me that the one time I did order room service breakfast it never arrived. After repeated calls, I was eventually told that the hang tag never made it to the kitchen. They could have breakfast to me in 45 minutes, would I like to place an order? No, I would not.
 

Lesson learned - I’m not making recommendations any more. 

[marycruz]

35 minutes ago, thebutlerdidit said:

My last Celebrity cruise was on the Reflection in February, an 8 night ABC cruise. I was introducing 7 other people to Celebrity. All but 2 had previously sailed on Royal Caribbean. We were scattered in 4 cabins throughout the ship, V1 and V2 cabins. We had 3 different attendants between our 4 cabins. They were a hot mess. Among the misses:

Having to ask for towels when we wanted to shower before dinner

Having to ask for robes - and never getting them

 No beach towels supplied in one of our rooms for the first port day

No beach towels supplied in a different cabin for use on the second port day

No Celebrity bags in any of our 4 cabins

 

Not to pile on, but the main dining room experience was sub-par too, and we gradually dwindled from a table of 8 to 4. They continued to seat us at the table for 8, maybe to keep us with the same servers, but we’d have welcomed a change, and one night we waited for over an hour to be seated. I’m not hard to please, and I’m patient. There were no temper tantrums, but I was embarrassed for Celebrity and embarrassed that I’d so highly recommended we choose them.

 

I had really talked up Celebrity and how they’d never want to return to RC. Only one of them preferred Celebrity. To be fair, after booking they started charging for room service. I had told them that of course they needed a balcony cabin - breakfast on your balcony is the best, and Celebrity includes room service for free! Oh! That reminds me that the one time I did order room service breakfast it never arrived. After repeated calls, I was eventually told that the hang tag never made it to the kitchen. They could have breakfast to me in 45 minutes, would I like to place an order? No, I would not.
 

Lesson learned - I’m not making recommendations any more. 

As far as dining waits I've seen my time dining as the worst experience since they started out.  They used to just have scheduled time (either 6:00 or 8:30) and no waits for anyone.  However, people started coming in pretty late to the early seating so they decided to have anytime dining which doesn't mean you get the time you want.  I've seen long lines for that on both the Summit and the Constellation  all the way through the bar and into the foyer!

 

Having to ask for towels on Celebrity?   That's just horrible based on how they used to be.  I hope one of these days they start hiring more people and stop running the stateroom attendants ragged.   

 

Just to add we've been on almost 80 Celebrity cruises over the years and also remember how excellent all the food was.   Never had a bad meal back then.

[jelayne]

1 hour ago, thebutlerdidit said:

My last Celebrity cruise was on the Reflection in February, an 8 night ABC cruise. I was introducing 7 other people to Celebrity. All but 2 had previously sailed on Royal Caribbean. We were scattered in 4 cabins throughout the ship, V1 and V2 cabins. We had 3 different attendants between our 4 cabins. They were a hot mess. Among the misses:

Having to ask for towels when we wanted to shower before dinner

Having to ask for robes - and never getting them

 No beach towels supplied in one of our rooms for the first port day

No beach towels supplied in a different cabin for use on the second port day

No Celebrity bags in any of our 4 cabins

 

Not to pile on, but the main dining room experience was sub-par too, and we gradually dwindled from a table of 8 to 4. They continued to seat us at the table for 8, maybe to keep us with the same servers, but we’d have welcomed a change, and one night we waited for over an hour to be seated. I’m not hard to please, and I’m patient. There were no temper tantrums, but I was embarrassed for Celebrity and embarrassed that I’d so highly recommended we choose them.

 

I had really talked up Celebrity and how they’d never want to return to RC. Only one of them preferred Celebrity. To be fair, after booking they started charging for room service. I had told them that of course they needed a balcony cabin - breakfast on your balcony is the best, and Celebrity includes room service for free! Oh! That reminds me that the one time I did order room service breakfast it never arrived. After repeated calls, I was eventually told that the hang tag never made it to the kitchen. They could have breakfast to me in 45 minutes, would I like to place an order? No, I would not.
 

Lesson learned - I’m not making recommendations any more. 

Did you speak to the Housekeeping supervisor or Guest Services about the issues with the cabin attendants?  They can’t fix what they don’t know about or get help for cabin attendants that have more than they can handle.

[wrk2cruise]

On Apex in June/July I think our stateroom attendant had 22 cabins.  One area the staff cuts is pretty visible.   I think when they stopped the assistant stateroom attendant they then had 14 cabins.

[jlawrence01]

7 hours ago, catspaw1 said:

JLawrence, please let me know how you liked the Nieuw Amsterdam vs Celebrity.  We are doing a TA on Celebrity in November on the Silhouette. We booked with HAL $1 deposit for a 2 week AK  cruise May 2026- OV as balcony & suite already sold out. Thanks 

 

The food in the MDR on HAL has been consistently better although X had better service overall.

 

You can always get a seat at the HAL buffet as it is right sizes   On the Solstice, it was very difficult to get a seat unless you got their when it opened.  The X buffet had more variety but there were a lot of misses, especially at dinner 

 

Timing between dinner and shows was bad on Celebrity.  If you have early dining, you will NOT make the early show.  Going to the late show is tough when the port stop is at 0630 in Alaska.

 

The naturalists are much more geared to Alaska on HAL and they visit Glacier Bay.

 

In general, you get longer port stops on HAL.

 

Personally, I will return to Alaska next year as part of a 29 day cruise from Seattle  to Singapore on the Discovery Princess.   I would only sail to Alaska on HAL, Princess, or Cunard in the future.

[thebutlerdidit]

11 minutes ago, jelayne said:

Did you speak to the Housekeeping supervisor or Guest Services about the issues with the cabin attendants?  They can’t fix what they don’t know about or get help for cabin attendants that have more than they can handle.

No, each of us dealt with our issues individually with our stateroom attendants. 

[chemmo]

1 hour ago, thebutlerdidit said:

My last Celebrity cruise was on the Reflection in February, an 8 night ABC cruise. I was introducing 7 other people to Celebrity. All but 2 had previously sailed on Royal Caribbean. We were scattered in 4 cabins throughout the ship, V1 and V2 cabins. We had 3 different attendants between our 4 cabins. They were a hot mess. Among the misses:

Having to ask for towels when we wanted to shower before dinner

Having to ask for robes - and never getting them

 No beach towels supplied in one of our rooms for the first port day

No beach towels supplied in a different cabin for use on the second port day

No Celebrity bags in any of our 4 cabins

 

Not to pile on, but the main dining room experience was sub-par too, and we gradually dwindled from a table of 8 to 4. They continued to seat us at the table for 8, maybe to keep us with the same servers, but we’d have welcomed a change, and one night we waited for over an hour to be seated. I’m not hard to please, and I’m patient. There were no temper tantrums, but I was embarrassed for Celebrity and embarrassed that I’d so highly recommended we choose them.

 

I had really talked up Celebrity and how they’d never want to return to RC. Only one of them preferred Celebrity. To be fair, after booking they started charging for room service. I had told them that of course they needed a balcony cabin - breakfast on your balcony is the best, and Celebrity includes room service for free! Oh! That reminds me that the one time I did order room service breakfast it never arrived. After repeated calls, I was eventually told that the hang tag never made it to the kitchen. They could have breakfast to me in 45 minutes, would I like to place an order? No, I would not.
 

Lesson learned - I’m not making recommendations any more. 

I feel your pain…you recommend a product (cruise) to people you care about in good faith and then it is by far your worse experience and you almost can’t believe it…

 

We had one iffy Celebrity cruise some years ago and couldn’t believe how everything was just ‘out of sync’…We found out part way through the cruise they had experienced a massive staff changeover as we boarded…Fortunately we didn’t cruise with friends on that occasion. 
 

Followed your posts over many years and totally understand what you mean by not hard to please…

 

28 minutes ago, thebutlerdidit said:

No, each of us dealt with our issues individually with our stateroom attendants. 

My only thought is that was a clear pattern on board…too many new staff or staff overwhelmed…in hindsight perhaps you should have requested a meeting with the hotel manager…Probably wouldn’t have improved your cruise but it may have alerted the management team to issues.

Edited September 12 by chemmo

[markeb]

46 minutes ago, jlawrence01 said:

Timing between dinner and shows was bad on Celebrity.  If you have early dining, you will NOT make the early show.  Going to the late show is tough when the port stop is at 0630 in Alaska.

 

That's actually how the timing was always designed. Late seating was for after the early show and early seating was before the late show. It's been that way on our HAL (many years ago) and Royal cruises as well. 

 

I know that's not necessarily what people want to do, but that's how dining and shows are normally timed.

[jlawrence01]

30 minutes ago, markeb said:

 

That's actually how the timing was always designed. Late seating was for after the early show and early seating was before the late show. It's been that way on our HAL (many years ago) and Royal cruises as well. 

 

I know that's not necessarily what people want to do, but that's how dining and shows are normally timed.

On my current cruise on the Nieuw Amsterdam, dinner starts at 5 pm and the 1st show is at 7:30 pm.  That was my experience on the Eurodam and the Konigsdam.

[markeb]

16 minutes ago, jlawrence01 said:

On my current cruise on the Nieuw Amsterdam, dinner starts at 5 pm and the 1st show is at 7:30 pm.  That was my experience on the Eurodam and the Konigsdam.

 

Like I say, it's been more than a few years. When is the late show? We just don't do 5 pm meals unless it's a restaurant we really want to go to and that's all that's available. My memory is that early seating equated to late show, but if it's now 5 and 7:30 either they've changed it or my memory is wrong.

 

We've not done fixed seating on Celebrity. On Royal, there was a parade from the theater to the dining room after the early show. 7 pm show 8 pm dinner. That's how Celebrity seems to be set up as well.

 

We brought home the Celebrity Todays from our June Summit cruise, but looks like we recycled the actual schedule. I remember a time (maybe Royal?) where the schedule specifically equated the late theater show with "our guests with early dining". 

[phoenix_dream]

Just to add my two cents.  I sailed Reflection b2b last November, as well as in March of this year.  I experienced none of the issues mentioned and had great cruises.  I admit I was in a Sky Suite for these cruises which generally offers a step up in service, but I am really shocked by hearing some of the comments.  

[cheeseheads4ever]

I agree with many of the experiences fellow cruisers have had on Celebrity. Earlier this year we were on Beyond and Reflection. We had a balcony rooms and the same room steward experiences on both cruises.

Both times we got to our room, met our room steward and introduced ourselves.

We are easy going people with minimal requests. Just requested ice once a day at 3:30 pm and 4 towels and washcloths. We gave him a cash tip as well.

We like to have a drink in our room while getting dressed and getting ready for happy hour and dinner.

Both room stewards were not what we have experienced on any of our past Celebrity cruises.  We had to call every day to request ice. Sometimes multiple times. He just happened to be on break at the time we wanted ice. So disappointed.

Finally we had enough and met with head of housekeeping. We nicely explained the situation. We didn’t want to get him in trouble just wanted our towels and ice daily. Still wasn’t the best after that…Just plain bad…

 

[PhillyFan33579]

I don’t consider myself an experienced cruiser since I have only been on 89 cruises (Pinnacles and Zeniths are experienced cruisers in my book), but I have never had even one negative experience on every Celebrity cruise I have been on.