This is an older ship as has been reported. On the whole this doesn’t create issues as Celebrity has tried to keep the ship fairly tidy but it’s due for a major refit next year. Generally staff were all very cheerful (except the guy on the bar in the main dining room who was also very reluctant to give you a glass if you ordered a beer or a can)! The Captain seemed a really nice chap and we did a very good ‘backstage’ tour in which he told us a lot about his job.

As Aqua Class we ate mainly in the Blu Restaurant, with an excellent Maitre d’ in the form of Laurence, with Cathy very ably assisting her. Most of the dining room staff here were good too, although we did have a slight issue. Prior to leaving I had prebooked the extortionately priced internet package (over 287$) but had a bit of an argument with Celebrity’s U.K. office as I felt we had been misled over a few things, in particular poor information about the acquisition of visas for our trip. This caused us to pay significantly more than we needed to - I think over £300 for the 2 of us. Eventually we were given a voucher for a meal upgrade as an apology, which was supplied to us onboard. In the Blu restaurant one night, a waiter was obviously trying to ’upsell’ meals in these ‘speciality dining’ restaurants and we put our names down for one. Difficult to remember the conversation but I do feel we mentioned the voucher. He then said we were entitled to a ‘free’ lunch in one of the others’, which we took. When our ship’s bill came we had been charged for both meals. After showing them the invitation they had supplied, they removed the cost of one meal, but wouldn’t take off the other 50$. I saw the deputy manager responsible and made my feelings very clear! He said he’d get back to me later (after talking to his boss). They agreed to give us another free meal in another speciality dining room, rather than give us 50$ back. Reluctantly we agreed, but, what a shambles! As other passengers commented on frequently, the team are obviously trained to refund nothing and get what money they can out of you! The maitre d’ from Qsine asked which restaurant we wanted to go to and what time we wanted him to book us in. Surprise, surprise - we arrived and there was no booking! Luckily they had a table but we are still waiting to have it confirmed they’ve not charged us for it!

Whilst writing this I also see they did not apply our Captain’s Circle credit to our prebooked internet package either but the thing that really upset us was our one prebooked excursion. Read more