Fisherjs34

The Celebrity Silhouette MDR mantra: How are we going to disappoint you today! Let met count the ways. Slow service, poor menu choices ( No beef Wellington,Prime Rib or NY Strip), poor quality food, small portions. Congrats Celebrity you are the New Carnival budget cruise line but wait a minute why are your prices so much higher than Carnivals??? IDK

On 1/30/2023 at 1:28 PM, naples1 said:

We just got off the Celebrity Silhouette this morning.

 

A little history about us. We are regular Celebrity Cruisers and have cruised several other lines and just wanted to give a quick review while its still fresh in my mind. 

 

 

Embarkation was easy. Parked the car walked to the ship from the Garage and walked right in. We arrived at about 12:15pm to very little lines. We dragged our bags up to the room to find it was already cleaned and ready. Room was in pretty good shape. New carpet from the most recent drydock. What did surprise me was on the balcony, it was covered in salt and the railing was rather worn and needed maintenance. I know its a little thing but it was one of the first things i noticed. 

 

As far as the ships public areas, it was pristine. New carpet, everything looked in good shape and the crew was friendly like we have come to expect. 

 

So all the stuff we have read recently about the buffet being limited and cutbacks happening is definitely true. We dont like to complain and will make the most out of any situation, however when you pay a premium and they raise prices on items like drink packages or specialty dining, I get it, the company has to make money but by raising prices you would expect at least a perceived value of said price increases. Not a degregation of said services.

 

The crew we encountere were all excellent as usual. The problem we found is that the food and beverage staff are painfully understaffed. 

 

We were planning on upgrading from the classic to the premium beverage package once onboard once we saw a bartender walkikng around that we liked. Well unfortunatley we never saw any drink servers around the ship pretty much anywhere onboard. We started at the sunset bar and had to go to the bar to get served. Again, the crew were all friendly but they have made major cuts to the beverage staff particularly. 

 

If they want to sell premium drink packages at a premium price, we expect to be able to get a drink from a server at least every 45 minutes or so. this was not the case, nobody was walking around taking drink orders. 

 

For dinner, we opted to do specialty dining each night. We did the Lawn Club the first night and that was just fine. Food and service were good. To my surprise, the restaurant was at least 3/4 empty at 7pm. I figured it was just because it was the first night. It seemed odd though since on the app, there were no dinner times available. 

 

Second night Murano was great. We had a waiter that has been with Celebrity for 20 years and that restaurant was awesome. Again the restaurant was not even half full. 

 

Third night, Sushi on 5. This was as expected. Sushi was decent and service was fine.

 

4th night Tuscan Grill. This place I was looking forward to the whole trip. We have great memories going there on varius Solstice class Ships over the years. This time was different though. Again, the place was about empty at 6:30 pm which really surprised me.The other thing that we noticed is that they were way understaffed in there too. Our waiter no assistants, nobody doing drink service. The Somelier was in the restaurant but didn't even come to our table for 30 minutes. Food was decent but again service was friendly but completely lacking. 

 

Again if they want to charge a premium and advertise themselves as a premium line, they need to step it up. I understand making cuts but when it effects the guest experience, its not going to help. 

 

We will still sail celebrity in the future but by no means are we going to limit ourselves. We will definitely look at other lines including Virgin which I have been hearing alot of good things about. Hopefully Celebrity will get their act together and go back to what they are good at. 

 

This is not a rant, just our observation. 

Be glad you ate at the specialty restaurants and not the MDR. We also ate at Murano on our 1/30 cruise and it was like eating at Wolfgang Pucks compared to MDR cafeteria food.

Just came back from 11 day Silhouette cruise. Unfortunately the MDR food has gone down significantly since we cruised on Silly in Jan. Of 22 No beef Wellington, no prime rib, no NY strip. Just cheap tough sirloin. The service was extremely slow. Sorry to see the demise because I really enjoyed the food and service last year.

Just completed an 11day eastern caribbean cruise on Silhouette. The MDR food was average at best. I enjoyed breakfast in MDR but dinner was not good. Slow service, small portions and low quality meat i.e Sirlion. We had taken this ship a year ago and had beef wellington, prime rib ny strip with excellent service. The room and attendant were great. The mast grill and pool bar service slow. The ocean view cafe was decent for lunch. Overall Celebrity has lost a step in my view and I don’t feel inclined to give them another chance.