Silkroad

Thank you for your review keesar! As you say, there have been some negative reviews of cruises on Silhouette recently, so I’m very happy that you had a great a experience:).

Taste is very subjective, but here’s our opinion. Only one of our three meals in Tuscan Grill was good, and the service was lackluster for all three. BTW our one good meal in Tuscan Grill was from the old menu. Of five meals in Murano, all were excellent with the exception of one meh seafood entree (mine) and one meh starter (DH). Service in Murano was always very good to excellent. We intend to dine in Murano on our next cruise, but won’t dine in Tuscan Grill unless it’s deeply discounted.

As I said anyone can dine in Luminae if your invited by a suite guest. Our friends were invited by a suite quest and they were in Aqua. Our cruise in Oct we plan on inviting our friends to dine with us one evening in Luminea or a lunch on a sea day. They are in Aqua.

However, it’s my understanding there is a fee for non-suite guests to dine in Luminae (perhaps $25pp).

Chrissit, post 16, stated they were able to purchase dining package via phone by calling captains club. I would not book individual specialty restaurants if what you want is really a package. Suggest you call captains club.

Many thanks to you Host Anne, as well as the rest of you who are posting about your impressions and experiences while on this cruise. May your good times continue:).

It does make sense, though with no wish to renew an interminable dress code discussion, I must say we felt more of a sense of occasion when everyone dressed more formally & we all dined together in one MDR. I was forgetting the dramatic beauty of the tiered, large dining room. I haven’t sailed on any of the ships that have multiple thematic dining rooms, so I was thinking only of the noise aspect in a large space like the existing MDRs.

Self disembark is getting ruined by having more groups get advance priority for disembark

 

Suite guests going ahead ( from their seated lounge) were understandable due to what they pay, but now apparently Concierge,,That should not be.. Perk not offered to E or E plus, or AQ guests who pay more than Concierge.

 

In my opinion, no valid reason Concierge should be given this perk other than that category offers so little in general.

 

Folks use self disembark to make early flights or to avoid the gen chaos that Celeb disembark has become,,,If the experience was improved

, the long snaking lines from dawn on would be shorter,...

Oh please. You said it yourself. Concierge gets very little, so spare us your moaning about what little they do get. Aqua passengers get Blu & Persian Garden for what they pay, and suite passengers get their benefits. I believe that Concierge has gotten priority boarding & disembarkation since it’s inception, so why is this an issue now? And had it occurred to you that some Concierge passengers may be trying to make early flights?

I was also on this cruise and concur with almost everything Keesar said. The musicians in the house band were good. The female vocalist, I thought, was a shrieker. It didn’t matter whether the band was indoors or outdoors, she was hard to understand because she was working it too much. Just my opinion.

 

I also saw Tenors of Rock and Uptown, who sing Motown. They were both great and highly recommend seeing them.

 

The ship was immaculate and every day, I saw crew cleaning glass, shining chrome, vacuuming. My encounters with all levels of staff were pleasant. Staff spoke to you enthusiastically and seemed genuinely happy.

Thanks for your informative post! I appreciate it. We’ll definitely avoid the vocalist if our hair stands on end lol. The shows sound great. Your description of the cleaning matches what we saw on Silhouette in 2013. She’s a lovely ship, so I’m happy to hear they’re taking care of her.

Did you happen to dine in MDR? If so, were you happy with the food and service?

Thanks for your review Keesar! I’m glad you had a great cruise. We’ll board her in June, so it’s lovely to read about your positive experiences;)

Ms. Anne,

 

You are making me very hungry. :p

I’m hungry too! DH will hit the waffle station. I’m heading straight to the nice person making omelets, after which I will hunt down a small mound of crisp bacon yummmmm:D

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Very interesting. Thanks!

I am afraid I am of the oldadage ‘ if it ain’t broke don’t mend it’. The speciality restaurants on Celebrity work. The MDR works. The buffet works. Blu works.

 

So why not just make the venues better - don’t complicate them.

 

We shall see tomorrow. I personally think Celebrity at this level needs more class and les Razamataz. They must consider their demographic and ensure they are catering to those with the disposable income instead of those who are young hip things- or at least have an acceptable compromise. I could be totally wrong and all the new ideas will be brilliant. It really is suck it and see- but at whose e pense.

I agree with you, to a point. Many think the MDR is broken, though we’ve not had many issues there. Though we’ve usually not been too bothered by the volume in MDR, less noise would make it a more classy environment.

IMO the quality of Tuscan Grill has declined (and I wouldn’t call it a classy venue) so I hope they improve their steak house concept. We typically celebrate special occasions in Murano, so I hope their French venue is at least as good. One of the best things in OVC is the Indian section, and many of the upper level chefs are Indian, so I’d love to see what Celebrity could do with a dedicated Indian venue. I wasn’t enchanted with the odd sea urchin dish demonstrated in the Eden video, but otherwise I am open to some new dining experiences there. If Eden turns out to be oh-so-precious trendy dining with ridiculous prices (you know the sort of place, one perfect radish, one hand rolled breadstick, and a small dab of infused (by monks from a tiny village in the Carpathians ) hummus on a plate the size of a tire for $40) I’m out of there lol. Best of all, as you say, would be an acceptable compromise.

Quick update to this. Called Captians Club this evening as I had two questions/items I was trying to resolve. I was able to book a dining package by phone and have received confirmation. Their thought is website glitch... hopefully they show back up online. I will say that other than a brief hold, it was a painless process.

Thanks for the update! It sounds as though you reached the real Captain’s Club, or at least an experienced rep, since your experience is similar to the ones I typically have with them:).

Thanks for trying ! It really is unbelievable that the customer facing staff don't know what is going on. Personally it would make me reconsider future cruises with Celebrity if the speciality restaurants were only available at the high individual prices. We find the food in the MDR has deteriorated to either poor or just acceptable over the last few years. We used the dining package for most of our dinners on our last three trips. We have used Aqua Class in the past but higher prices and a little boredom with the same menus brought us back to using balcony cabins combined with speciality restaurants. Even though we are now Elite Plus on Celebrity and do like the perks associated there comes a time when we have to look at other cruise lines or land based trips.

You’re welcome:). I suspect this is merely another IT glitch. I called Captain’s Club, by the way, but I’m not sure the person I reached was really a Captain’s Club rep. When they’re very busy, overflow goes elsewhere, probably to the main customer service group. I had planned to purchase a package for our next cruise (in part to celebrate our anniversary in Murano) but we’ll survive in the MDR and OVC if Celebrity doesn’t want our specialty dining dollars. The beverage package will help to ameliorate our sorrow lol:D. DH is still over the moon now that Guinness is on the Classic package.

Yup, you would hate us, we often have loud sex too, sometimes on the balcony:*

OMG you nearly made me spill my wine:').

If they do it right it can work. They have to find the right balance. Each of the 4 restaurants has to have an everyday dining section plus some generic daily specials that can cater to a variety of palates. Then the other part of the menu could focus on a particular theme. Based on the dining room names I am guessing French, Italian, Mediterranean and Continental cuisine?

 

What is bumming me out being in a suite is what seems to be not too many specialty restaurants for dinner. There is the steakhouse and Eden. Unless Le Grand Bistro is a full French dinner experience and not a reworked Bistro on 5. Hopefully the Luminae menus expand with wider variety.

 

Looking forward to the reveal this week to get more details.

There are areas that are still undefined, so hopefully a couple will turn out to be specialty restaurants. I’d love a good Indian or Thai restaurant!

I wonder if they’d be able to make four thematic menus work in the MDRs. It would be great to have the variety if they could provide quality meals. I think the risk would be that one MDR venue may become more popular than the others, and some people may become mulish about trying the others instead;).

I just spoke with someone at X who:

- said he hadn’t heard about the problem, and

- wanted my password so he could log in as me to investigate the issue.

I said no, thanked him for his time, and ended the call.

The last time I went through this sort of discussion with X, I spent a large part of an hour on hold, received no resolution to my issue, and had to create a new password for my account. Sorry, lovescarborough. I’m going to wait a day or two in the hope the packages will reappear. If they don’t, I’ll be spending less money on specialty dining for my next cruise!

BTW I don’t see dining packages for either my June or December cruise, regardless of whether I’m logged in or not. I’ve also checked using three browsers, Chrome, Firefox and IE.

Tried again today in case , as suggested, they mess with the website at the weekend, and still no speciality dining packages listed. The individual restaurants are listed with the usual price but no packages. Wondering if someone in the US might call Celebrity to find out if the packages are still available as it's a bit too expensive to call from the UK and the office here never seems to be sure what Miami are doing !

I will give it a go and report back here.

Thank you, Anne! I’m happy to know Murano still shines, since we intend to celebrate our anniversary there:). - Michelle

Thanks Silkroad, all kidding aside, we're very excited.

 

Rollie

I would be excited too. We had our only suite before the creation of Luminae and the inclusion of all the perks. We enjoyed the space, but couldn’t justify the cost for every cruise. It would be fun to try one with all the bells and whistles lol. I hope you have a wonderful introduction to the Suite Life:).

I agree. Never ever had a conversation with those types. Obviously when you're in Blu everyone else is AQ, too. But just hanging around the ship no one has ever asked what cabin we were in...how would that conversation even take place? (I also don't think it could ever, if it even happened, be "what cabin" because of security reasons - why would you give out your cabin number to total strangers? But even if it was "what cabin type" I can't imagine the reason for that question).

Based on the rest of the paragraph, I think he or she was referring to conversations in Michael’s Club.

If that is what they are going for, it would be great to dine in smaller venues. With the mistakes from the past they will likely format it differently than RCI. Hope it works (if that is the plan).

It certainly looks that way. The deck plans for decks 3 & 4 show what looks like a solid wall between the two venues. I also wonder if two of the four will be dedicated to set dining, and two to select dining. I guess we’ll find out:).

Thinking of canceling our first ever suite, for fear of being ostracized.

 

Said with tongue far in cheek.

 

Rollie

Enjoy your suite. I would! I shall toast you from my Veranda cabin with neither envy nor dislike:cool:. Cheers!

Said without tongue in cheek;)

SUCCESS!!! Finally got everything squared away from our cancelled Panama Canal cruise. Got the refunds, finally after 4 emails and 5 calls and several weeks of waiting. Am very relieved to be finished with that stuff! Now we can look forward to that frosty (those frosty beverages!!) and relaxing on a fantastic cruise!

Wonderful news! Have a great time:). Cheers!

Having four main dining venues, regardless of decor or menu differences, should at least allow a calmer dining experience. Many reviewers have said the noise and bustle in the MDR drove them to try Aqua or Suite classes specifically for the smaller dining venues. I hope X staff are able to make this dining concept work, and I hope MDR passengers board with open minds.