I have "lurked" on CC often in preparation for this cruise and others so decided to attempt to share my (and my husband's) latest experience in the hopes that it will provide some info for others. We were 6 travellers (2 have sailed Celebrity often) but for 4 of us, it was our first time on Celebrity although we have all cruised many many times over the past years. We have more often spent time on RCI, MSC, Princess, Celebrity (often for 2 of us) ships and enjoyed an Oceania Transatlantic crossing in October.

After spending a week or so in fabulous Hong Kong, we reached the port on Saturday,March 16th about 3 or so hours before departure. Perhaps we should have boarded earlier as it was not an especially good first impression for me - few staff to direct passengers and a confusing process to follow to get checked in at port and on board-not the usual warm welcome on board I expected.

However, things did look up as our Aqua class balcony was newly refurbished and we met our friendly and hard-working steward Efren who took wonderful care of us. As noted by others, the new decor is a bit bland but it was very clean and storage was ample although I am not sure how well it will keep up over the longer term. Luckily, there were no issues with the bathroom-the shower had strong pressure, there was lots of hot water and shelving was fine. The sofa was too really small for 2 persons to sit comfortably and one of us had to use the bed to read or relax or sit on the cold balcony! I'm hoping too that Celebrity will address the issue of not being able to hear any announcements in the room-I had to open the door and stick my head out to hear. Otherwise all good. Read more