Celebrity Silhouette March 22-29 Review

[ailetoile]

We just got back yesterday from our 7-night Western Caribbean cruise on the lovely Celebrity Silhouette. I did write up a review for the site, but I thought I would write one up for this message board, too, since those seem to be well-received.

 

Before I write this review, I'd like to preface it by saying that we had a GREAT time and that we have two more cruises booked before 2017. Our traveling companions also booked future cruises onboard, so obviously our overall experience was a really good one despite some of the negatives I'll be writing about here.

 

We were in cabin 9374 for anyone who wants to know.

 

ABOUT US

We were traveling in, for all intents and purposes, a group of five. The group included me and my husband (both in our early 30s), a friend of ours (early 30s), and my parents (60s). I'll be writing more about my immediate family than the friend since he did his own thing a good portion of the time. We are all reasonably easygoing and we were definitely there to have a good time, so I will say that some of the negatives that could have turned into a Thing rolled off of our backs pretty easily. This was not the first Celebrity cruise my husband and I have taken, but it was the first for the rest of our party.

 

EMBARKATION

For us, embarkation was a breeze. We arrived on a hotel shuttle at around 12:30 and we were able to more or less walk right in despite my parents having no paperwork and no luggage tags. We wrote out luggage tags for them at the dock, and they were able to show their passports instead of the express check-in documentation without any problems at all at security.

 

We were in Concierge Class, so we went to that check-in line and were able to see an agent right away. I did notice a small line at the standard check-in, but it wasn't very long. My parents took a touch longer than we did to get all set up with their sea passes since they had not done any of the check-in ahead of time, but within maybe five minutes we were stepping onto the ship!

 

A funny side-note regarding the welcome aboard drinks: My mom wanted orange juice and I wanted a mimosa. I was given a very hard time about whether I was old enough to drink (seriously?!) and my mom was given a hard time about not wanting the alcohol. In the end we both ended up with a mimosa, although if I had realized what was happening I would have taken the orange juice and just switched with her!

 

The staterooms were ready to go when we got on board, so we were actually able to go right up to our rooms to drop off our carry-on luggage. The whole process was ridiculously smooth and perhaps the best embarkation experience that my husband and I have had to date.

 

OUR STATEROOM

As I said above, my husband and I were in 9374. It's a C2 that has a bumped out balcony right near the aft of the ship. My parents were in the C3 9370 right next door, and our friend scored the C1 9380 that was just a few steps away. We were able to get the balcony divider between our stateroom and my parents' room opened, which was just lovely for the whole sailing. We referred to it as "The Wormhole."

 

The cabin itself was nice enough. It was quiet and there wasn't a lot of foot traffic in our area since we were so far away from the stairs and elevators. The bed was near the closet, which was a new configuration for us. We enjoyed the footstools but we did not enjoy the way that they crowded the balcony. Our shower didn't like to turn off all the way and didn't have fabulous water pressure, but it was a shower and it did its job. We found the bed to be comfortable if you ignore the ridiculous curved bottoms!

 

We are some of the seemingly-rare people who kind of like the afternoon canapes that come with Concierge Class. They were different than what I recall from our last cruise a few years ago, but I'd actually say that I liked the differences for the most part. The food seemed a bit more substantial, and as long as someone in your room liked olives then the small bites were tasty.

 

Our cabin attendant was Jack. He mentioned an assistant once when we met him, but we never saw him or heard from him the entire time. Jack was one of the disappointments on our trip. I'm sure that he was exceptionally overworked as many of the Celebrity employees often are, but all three parties involved individually came to the conclusion that he was cutting a lot of corners. A few small examples are that my parents actually ran out of toilet paper, and that Jack refused to comply with the simple request to NOT leave the curtains open in our friend's room.

 

FOOD. ALL OF IT.

We didn't do much specialty dining, but we did eat in more venues than I realized. I'll just cover this here in different subsections:

 

Room Service (Breakfast)

We really enjoyed the expanded Concierge Class menu, although I will admit right here that we brought our own maple syrup on board instead of settling for the colored sugar that Celebrity serves with room service breakfast. Our orders ranged from small to ridiculous and I won't say that they got everything right (my dad couldn't seem to get ham delivered to his room, but salami kept mysteriously appearing whether he wanted it or not), but when it was delivered everything seemed to be the appropriate temperature and was mostly yummy. I did not enjoy the blueberry pancakes (two sour blueberries per pancake?!), but I LOVED the berry and granola yogurt.

 

Room Service (Non-Breakfast)

We definitely noticed the cutbacks in the room service menu more than ANYTHING else on the ship. Compared to where the room service menu was previously, Celebrity has just slashed it. This was probably my single biggest disappointment of the whole trip. In fact, after seeing how limited the menu had become I just went up to the buffet to grab snacks. My husband did order room service a couple of times, and the food that arrived was at the appropriate temperature and reasonably tasty. There's just no longer much on the menu that I would personally order on my own.

 

Bistro on Five

I had never been before, but after seeing the mess of people in the Oceanview Cafe for the brunch on the final sea day my family fled to something quiet. They were previewing their new menu for $10/pp instead of the old menu for $7/pp.

 

Frankly, we were not impressed overall. The menu only had six crepes, three of which were sweet and three of which were savory. The rest of the offerings seemed like they didn't belong in a specialty restaurant with a cover charge -- Ceasar or Cobb salad and hamburgers or sandwiches. The service was excruciatingly slow even though the restaurant was empty, and the waiter was really rude to my family.

 

My husband ordered the hamburger and waited for almost 40 minutes before the lukewarm burger arrived. The rest of us had already finished our meals. We had better luck with the french onion soup and the two savory crepes that we sampled. The shakes and floats were really good and definitely the highlight of the meal for all of us who tried them.

 

The food was good, but not worth an extra $10 per person. I don't think that any of us are in a hurry to go back, which is really sad since I had been waiting for years for the chance to try it.

 

Mast Grill

The food was really really good, but there were service problems here, too. The waits of 10-15 minutes for a hamburger while the line piled up down the stairs seemed a little bit ridiculous, and we had a few incidents where my mom tried to get something simple like fried onions on a burger without success.

 

Oceanview Cafe

We didn't really eat here very often, which is different than mine and my husband's usual MO. We popped in for sushi a few times (it was good, the same as it's always been), and there was one point where I enjoyed a scone from the afternoon tea. We did eat breakfast here on the final morning (I'll get to that in a little bit) and we found it to be a fully comprehensive buffet. No complaints at all here, but no major compliments, either!

 

MDR

We had a fixed seating time at 8:30. There was a weird seating snafu on the first night -- the first I've ever experienced on Celebrity -- where the table next to ours had been seated at our table because they said the wrong table number. The people refused to move or to provide their seating cards (which they were seen looking at later; they were jerks), and there was an awkward 10 minutes where our table got to stand there uncomfortably while the dining room staff figured out how to address the problem. Eventually the other table was moved and we were seated. It turned into a running joke for our little group for the remainder of the cruise.

 

Our team at dinner was probably the best I've ever had on Celebrity. Our waiter, Valentin, was really funny and charming, and always seemed to have a few moments to chat with us. Our assistant waitress, Jannell, was a bit quieter, but she never hesitated to jump in and joke around with us whenever she was nearby. She really opened up during the course of the cruise! The sommelier, Star, was the real MVP of our dinner experience, though. We ran into her all over the ship and even at the port of call, and no matter where she was she never hesitated to come over with a smile to share a few words. Her stories were the best!

 

The food itself was standard Celebrity fare which my family seems to find more than good enough for the most part. We enjoyed every menu except for the final night, which was the Top Chef menu. I had read about that menu here on Cruise Critic, but I hadn't realized just how unimpressive it was. In the future I would keep an eye out for that particular menu and consider making alternate eating arrangements... I'm easily pleased but the Top Chef menu was THAT underwhelming.

 

ENTERTAINMENT

We only went to one of the evening shows, the one with the contortionists. We all agreed that it was enjoyable, but that none of the remaining shows really spoke to any of us enough to carve out the time in our evening to attend them. I should say here that in the past my husband and I have gone to more of the shows and we have liked them very much, but in this particular case it seemed more important to spend time with my family (they live in the US and I'm in Canada so we don't see them too often).

 

The only Celebrity Life activity that we participated in this time around was the officers vs guests bocce ball tournament. We had a really nice time, and the officers that we played against were quite gracious and fun to talk to! Again, we have traditionally participated in many other activities but on this cruise we ended up just hanging out with family.

 

One thing that was new to us was that on some nights performers came into the MDR. I have mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, it was neat to watch them. On the other hand, it really disrupted the flow of the meal. I imagine I would have felt a bit more positively about the performances if I had been seated at a table of strangers instead of with family and friends.

 

PORTS OF CALL

We had (for us) a fairly port-heavy itinerary. Here is what we did in each of the ports of call:

 

Cozumel, Mexico

We booked a private snorkeling tour that ended up taking about four hours when it was all said and done. I'd highly recommend it; we went into a national park to enjoy the reefs there and ended up seeing tons of really neat marine life. It was a pretty physically demanding excursion, which wasn't really a big deal to us but might be for others.

 

A note about Mexico: This is where I discovered that neither I nor my husband had remembered to call the credit card company and let them know that we would be on a trip. Don't forget to do that if you'd like to buy any souvenirs, folks. :rolleyes:

 

George Town, Grand Cayman

Another private snorkeling tour. This time we went to Stingray City, snorkeling on a reef, and then to a sandbar with starfish. It was much less physically demanding than Cozumel, and I have to say that the stingrays were absolutely incredible.

 

Falmouth, Jamaica

This port turned out to be a total hidden gem. We booked a private food tour that turned out to be about four hours of wandering around the city learning about its history and sampling its food. We all had a blast and sampled many foods that were completely new to us. We would definitely recommend the walking tour to anyone who was looking for something a little bit different to do in Jamaica, although I WILL say that everyone in my family regretted eating breakfast that morning.

 

Labadee, Haiti

Of all the ports that we went to, this was the one where we had the fewest preconceived notions of what was going to happen. We decided at the very last minute to book an over-the-water cabana, which turned out to be a great idea given the horrible sunburn that I was nursing at this point in our trip! The weather was hot but clear, the water was the perfect temperature, and the cabana was the perfect escape when we didn't want to be out in the sun. We enjoyed using our beverage package to indulge in frozen drinks while we floated around in the water, and I do have to say that getting to enjoy the suite buffet was a nice perk to the cabana.

 

DISEMBARKATION

Okay, so after an overall fabulous vacation here's where things started to go downhill, unfortunately. My husband and I were flying out the following morning so we were not eligible for the luggage valet, but my parents were. They thought that it was a wonderful idea, so they signed up. Celebrity gave them the standard spiel about how they would do their best and if they could not get into the program for whatever reason they would receive standard luggage tags. Their onboard account was charged.

 

Fast forward to the final night of the cruise. My husband and I have our luggage tags and our disembarkation process is proceeding as normal. We get back from dinner with the intention of putting out our bags and then helping my parents with theirs, but even at 10:30 at night (an hour and a half past their check-in time for their flight) there was nothing from Celebrity waiting for them regarding disembarkation. We kind of shrugged our shoulders and sent my parents into their cabin to call guest services and find out what was up, and then we went into our cabin to do our last minute packing and get our suitcases out.

 

By the time we got our suitcases out at 11, my parents had learned that there had been a "snafu" with the check-in process for Southwest, but they were told they shouldn't worry and that luggage tags would arrive soon. My husband and I hung out for a while waiting for some resolution, but eventually we gave up and went to bed.

 

When we woke up the next morning, my parents were beside themselves. Guest services had basically just kept brushing them off until they finally gave up and went to bed around 1am. When they woke up there was STILL no communication from Celebrity and no luggage tags. Another call to guest services earned them a really snotty "Well, there was a problem and it was Southwest's fault, but now you're too late to get regular luggage tags so deal with it yourselves." No apology for the situation, no refund for the service, no apology for their failure to let my parents know that they had not been checked in (we would have done it ourselves if we had known there was a problem), no offer to help them get their luggage off the ship... Nothing. At that point, there really was not an alternative but to deal with it!

 

Fortunately, there were four of us to juggle five suitcases (their four plus our carry on). We ran to the buffet to get some breakfast and then we made it work with the huge bags, but it was hard to not feel resentment that we were put in the situation of having to haul four very heavy bags off of the ship ourselves. The disembarkation process was SLOW with lots of long lines that were constantly being cut through by passengers in wheelchairs. US customs was a breeze, though, so aside from the luggage valet program failing my parents completely and utterly it wasn't too bad.

 

Just to follow up on that story: Once they got off the ship and through customs, my parents did call Celebrity's customer service line. The lady that took my mom's call did apologize and she gave them a $40 refund to their credit card to reimburse the cost of the program, so that seems to be a resolution that satisfied them.

 

OVERALL THOUGHTS

We had a good time, the problems with luggage valet notwithstanding. It was a relaxing trip, although I would hesitate to book active excursions for three ports in a row again! The Silhouette is a great ship, probably our favorite out of all of the ones that we've been on, and the staff really were overall amazing to deal with. We did our best to take advantage of our last hurrah with the Molecular Bar, and now we're excited to see what Celebrity does to replace it. All in all, we're already looking forward to our next cruise.

 

Thanks for reading! :D

Edited March 31, 2015 by ailetoile

[SeaCBear]

Thanks so much for your comprehensive and well written review. We have sailed on the Solstice and Reflection, and will be on the Silhouette for the first time in a few weeks.

 

One quick question - you mentioned you were able to go to your cabins as soon as you boarded. How did you know you could do this? We usually grab lunch at the Porch, and wait for the announcement, but if we could go directly to our cabin that would be great. Did they tell you as they handed you a Mimosa? :)

 

We bank at the Royal Bank, and we always used to let them know when we were going to be travelling (in later years you could do this online), but within the past year they announced that it is no longer necessary to provide them with any information about travels abroad. Just an FYI.

 

Thanks again!

[ailetoile]

Thanks so much for your comprehensive and well written review. We have sailed on the Solstice and Reflection, and will be on the Silhouette for the first time in a few weeks.

 

One quick question - you mentioned you were able to go to your cabins as soon as you boarded. How did you know you could do this? We usually grab lunch at the Porch, and wait for the announcement, but if we could go directly to our cabin that would be great. Did they tell you as they handed you a Mimosa? :)

 

We were told we could go right to the cabins at check in. I've never had that happen before; normally we also wait for the announcement.

 

We bank at the Royal Bank, and we always used to let them know when we were going to be travelling (in later years you could do this online), but within the past year they announced that it is no longer necessary to provide them with any information about travels abroad. Just an FYI.

 

We have finances in both the US and Canada (we're weird, I know!). In this case, the major problem was with my Chase credit card, which had no way of fixing it online. Thank you for the tip about RBC; we'll be looking for alternative cards on future cruises, I think!

 

Thanks again!

 

See my answers above in blue :)

[kenevenpar]

Thanks for the review. Sorry to hear about the Bistro; it does not sound like we will go again anytime soon.

[Queen of Oakville]

Great review!

[Feelin' Nauti']

Thanks for your wonderful review.

I will be sailing on the Silhouette this coming Sun.

 

Sorry to hear about the luggage confusion.

Did you book the flights yourself or was that arranged with Celebrity?

[ailetoile]

Thanks for your wonderful review.

I will be sailing on the Silhouette this coming Sun.

 

Sorry to hear about the luggage confusion.

Did you book the flights yourself or was that arranged with Celebrity?

 

It was a Southwest flight that my parents booked themselves.

 

I wrote about it in my review because people really should know that this is how Celebrity conducts themselves when the luggage valet program goes sideways, but aside from the immediate frustration of having it happen and having to lug their stuff off the boat it turned out okay. They made it home before we did! :D

 

I hope that you have as much fun on your cruise as we had on ours!!!

Edited March 31, 2015 by ailetoile

[Feelin' Nauti']

It was a Southwest flight that my parents booked themselves.

 

I wrote about it in my review because people really should know that this is how Celebrity conducts themselves when the luggage valet program goes sideways, but aside from the immediate frustration of having it happen and having to lug their stuff off the boat it turned out okay. They made it home before we did! :D

 

I hope that you have as much fun on your cruise as we had on ours!!!

Thanks ailetoile

 

You confirmed the entertainment on board.

DF was on the Silhouette and said the entertainment was something of a disappointment compared to our Refllection/Summit cruises.

 

Celebrity really needs to work on this.

 

Did you go into Quasar? Disco / Dance Club?

[ailetoile]

Thanks ailetoile

 

You confirmed the entertainment on board.

DF was on the Silhouette and said the entertainment was something of a disappointment compared to our Refllection/Summit cruises.

 

Celebrity really needs to work on this.

 

Did you go into Quasar? Disco / Dance Club?

 

Well, I'm pretty easily entertained but I'd say it was more that the shows didn't capture my attention very well. We've seen the Broadway productions several times before or we might have been enticed to go to that one.

 

We didn't use any of those venues, unfortunately. Most evenings we hung out in the card room and played board games or card games.

[Texed]

Thanks for reading! :D

 

Thanks for posting. :)

[ailetoile]

Thanks for posting. :)

 

We thought of you when we saw the waffle station on the last morning!!

[TeaBag]

Glad you liked your cruise. We really liked the Top Chef menu we had on Silhouette in Nov. Could you tell us what you had and why it was so underwhelming?

[Texed]

We thought of you when we saw the waffle station on the last morning!!

 

Thanks for thinking of me. :)

[ailetoile]

Glad you liked your cruise. We really liked the Top Chef menu we had on Silhouette in Nov. Could you tell us what you had and why it was so underwhelming?

 

None of the choices really just jumped out and appealed to us. That was not the case on any other night. There was always something that each person at the table was really excited about ordering. On Top Chef night we all picked from what was there, but no one was excited about the selections.

 

Most of us ordered the veal chop and we all agreed that it was more or less tasteless. Not bad, just really, really neutral. My mom got the barbeque chicken and that was nicer, but she was still pretty underwhelmed. None of the other entrees sounded any more appealing than those two.

 

Maybe it would be better to say that the food on the Top Chef menu seemed to pale compared to many of the menus on other nights? It just felt really plain without anything that was a special treat to order.

[gergles]

As said friend in this review, yes, the Top Chef menu was super sad. It was uninspired and there was basically nothing that appealed to me, nor to anybody else at our table. I can't even remember what the appetizers were, that's how sad it was.

 

I found the broadway show (on the final night) fun. It's just a mishmash of show tunes and dancing, and is entertaining.

 

My favorite spot on ship was the Solarium, with the molecular bar as my second favorite. The solarium was wonderfully relaxing, as a combination of the pool, setting, and music - all just a lovely oasis.

 

As ailetoile said, I had the aft balcony room and the balcony view was quite nice -- but I actually preferred the view from her balcony and the wormhole. If you're thinking about paying the extra cash, I don't know that it's worth it.

[4Grandcats]

Thanks so much for your honest and informative review.

SeaCBear - how was The Porch for lunch? I heard that was also slow service.

Don't know if $20 for lunch at Bistro is worth it anymore.

Thanks!

[hvsteve1]

We waited months to try Bistro as we love crepes and have been to some pretty good creperies (especially in Canada) and were disappointed that what they called a crepe was really only an approximation.

 

When we started reading Celebrity review Bistro was $5. When we ate there it was $7. Now I see it's $10. Considering what's available for no extra charge, I can't see dropping $10 for that.

[brigantiner]

Too funny.....We had Jack in 9370 from 3/8-15......we both commented that he was the best attendant we had to date. Ship was great too!

[ailetoile]

Too funny.....We had Jack in 9370 from 3/8-15......we both commented that he was the best attendant we had to date. Ship was great too!

 

He didn't do anything that was outright upsetting or WRONG to us. Something about him just rubbed the two of us the wrong way. I think we've just been really spoiled in the past.

 

My parents, on the other hand, had a big problem with him. Aside from the toilet paper incident (which I don't blame them for), I could never QUITE figure out why.

[need2bespoiled]

See my answers above in blue :)

 

Thanks for the great review. The answer in "Blue" above was in reference to the Chase Card travel notification. I have found the link online, but from onboard, I guess it would be painfully slow online.

 

I'm sorry you had some issues on your cruise but still enjoyed it.

 

Happy sailing,

Jenna

[ailetoile]

Thanks for the great review. The answer in "Blue" above was in reference to the Chase Card travel notification. I have found the link online, but from onboard, I guess it would be painfully slow online.

 

I'm sorry you had some issues on your cruise but still enjoyed it.

 

Happy sailing,

Jenna

 

We actually burned through 20 minutes of Internet finding and clicking that link only to have the stupid card still not work... :(

[rob12782]

Thanks for your review! I believe my wife and I were on the snorkel trip with all of you with Cozumel H2O...definitely a great time! If you are able to upload all the great pictures you were able to get, we would love to see them. Thanks!

[ailetoile]

Thanks for your review! I believe my wife and I were on the snorkel trip with all of you with Cozumel H2O...definitely a great time! If you are able to upload all the great pictures you were able to get, we would love to see them. Thanks!

 

Once I get them uploaded, I will post them to our roll call. It'll probably be over the weekend!

 

Our roll call is here:

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1952405&page=38

Edited April 2, 2015 by ailetoile

[rob12782]

Once I get them uploaded, I will post them to our roll call. It'll probably be over the weekend!

 

Our roll call is here:

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1952405&page=38

 

 

Thank you! I don't think anyone believes me when I tell them how big that lobster was!

[ailetoile]

Thank you! I don't think anyone believes me when I tell them how big that lobster was!

 

We went through the pictures on Tuesday night (we only got back on Monday), and I have to tell you... It was huge and we have a clear picture to prove it. :eek: