Just off the Solstice!!!!!

[ken987]

2nd trip for us. Still love the ship.....BUT. Couple of silly flaws...

 

Concierge Class Service has gone down. I'll post more details later...

 

Express walk off was a mess. We had to zig zag through the

Epernay with luggage and go down one level with all our luggage. They did provide help for the elderly but the stairs were packed. I'll post a pictur when I get home.

 

on the plane will post more later.

[paulsang]

Waiting breathlessly....

[katiebeth]

Hi Ken,

 

Hope you had a great time on the Solstice. We sailed her the week of Nov. 21 thru the 28th and had a great time, with a few little disappointments, but mainly very enjoyable.

 

Disembarkation in FLL was a total mess. I do believe this is due to the actually port itself and not the cruise lines. We had 9 ships in port that day, and while we have cruised many many times, this was definitely the worst disembarkation, very very crowded and chaotic. There were 6 of us with lots of luggage and not near enough porters. I had to wait in line to get a porter for close to 30 minutes. I got the impression they are overwhelmed with the sheer number of passengers disembarking on the same day. The Allure of the Seas was in port that day and that was at least 6,000 passengers alone.

 

Anyway, have a very safe trip home and hope you had a TERRIFIC cruise!

 

Nancy

[gregjm]

Disembarkation was a mess. We were in cellar masters at 8 am and finally had to find someone....they "forgot" about us. Very disorganized.

[paulsang]

The disembarkation alone will make me try another ship. Less is more when it comes to the ships in port. We were fortunate in October when Solstice was in the Allure/Oasis terminal. Those days are gone.

 

Our Friends said the same for Norwegian. Nightmare!

 

We don't like nightmares!

[ken987]

Waiting breathlessly....

 

sorry to make you wait so long. Had to fly from FLL to BOS through Newark!!!

 

 

Ok....I followed the directions and used picasaweb from Google and my Gmail.>>why didn't my picture work???

[gregjm]

I posted earlier about this morning disembarkation mess. It really was a pathetic and it wasn't the port that was the problem---it was the Solstice staff and their bungling of the process.

 

Now that I am home and can more than a cryptic response on a cell phone, I will elaborate.

 

First of all, when we left our room (11th floor) the elevators were "locked" and wouldn't stop at our floor. We trudged down to the fourth floor, deciding that waiting over 10 minutes for an elevator was long enough.

 

We used the Luggage Valet service (which is a great service). We were told to be in Cellar Masters at 8:00 and were given stickers that we were told MUST be worn on our shirts. If we weren't in Cellar Masters at 8:00 AM with our stickers properly placed we wouldn't be able to participate in the Luggage Valet service (it actually said that in the letter received with the Luggage Valet confirmation)

 

We arrived at 7:50---stickers on. The room quickly filled and there was no Celebrity staffer as 8:00 a.m. approached. 8:10--no Celebrity rep and no announcement. Finally, I took matters into my hand and tracked down three officers who were standing talking to each other. I asked about the group in Cellar Masters and was told that they "forgot" about us. They then said that they thought the group in Cellar Masters were those who were on back-to-back cruises (made no sense). Finally, one of the officers got on his cell phone and called someone. I heard him say "we forgot about Cellar Masters".

 

A few minutes later a Celebrity rep. came running in and said "OK..you can leave". By then it was a mess in the stairwells. I mentioned the fiasco to the Activities Director (can't recall his name) and he said "we didn't forget anyone". He actually started shouting at me.

 

By this time we were all glad to simply get off the ship. Talk about a terrible way to end a cruise.

 

It shouldn't surprise me, though, since the attitude of many of the Solstice staff sucked this cruise (it's our fourth X cruise). I'll do another post on that later.

 

This may have been our last Celebrity Cruise.

[natshala]

I love Solstice and my 7 November cruise was great EXCEPT for disembarkation. You're right--it was a mess. I don't know how the elderly folks with and those with physical limitations were able to wait in the long lines. I've never seen such a disorganized disembarkation before. It was a bad way to end a cruise. I'll carry my own luggage off next time, but there are many who are unable to do this.

[eastoftheboston]

I'll write a review later, but I was also on this ship. The debarkation was tough, it zigzagged thru the MDR (that was my waiting area lounge), but honestly it had to do with the sheer number of people who chose self-assist, and many of those people I saw doing self-assist should NOT have been doing it. Example, old men and women who were dragging their suitcases behind their WALKERS, seriously!!!! When they started calling the actual groups, there were only a handful in each of the first sets of groups called because so many had crowded into self-assist.

[smoosh21]

I'll write a review later, but I was also on this ship. The debarkation was tough, it zigzagged thru the MDR (that was my waiting area lounge), but honestly it had to do with the sheer number of people who chose self-assist, and many of those people I saw doing self-assist should NOT have been doing it. Example, old men and women who were dragging their suitcases behind their WALKERS, seriously!!!! When they started calling the actual groups, there were only a handful in each of the first sets of groups called because so many had crowded into self-assist.

 

I would agree on this. It seems that some people also were in different areas of the ship. We were green one and were all the way at the back of the theater. We walked quickly to the mid ship stairs and they were already backed up to deck 4. Not sure where so many people could have come from so quickly.

Anyway, once we got down to 2 we were off the ship very fast. Our luggage was right out in front and the lines through customs were not that bad. I have had much worse lines at airport customs locations. I knew that we would not be getting off the ship before 8 AM, and since I was expecting bedlam I think I was surprised that things weren't as bad as they could have been

 

We were at the airport before 9 and I know we were through airport security at by 9:30 AM

 

Port Everglades needs to go to Homeland Security and request more Customs agents. If they want to have 9-10 ships disembarking 25,000 plus passengers on a Sunday Morning they need to do more to make this work.

 

There was also a lot of chaos for the taxis and shuttle vans trying to get in and out of the port. The road structure at the port is just not set up to shuttle that many passengers in and out efficiently. The size of the ships has grown much faster than the infrastructure at the port.

[katiebeth]

Gregjm,

 

Interesting you should comment on the attitude of many of the staff on the Solstice. We are elite with Celebrity and have cruised many times on their ships and have raved about the service. We were on the Solstice on Nov. 21st thru the 28th. and in many instances quite shocked by the attitude of the staff. Our family is not at all demanding and generally go very well with flow. However, the many of the staff were downright rude and seemed to resent all of the passengers. I commented to my husband that seems to be a serious morale problem on the Solstice. We have never experienced it before on any Celebrity ship and I did mention it on our comment card.

 

I am rather worried as I talked some of our closest friends into switching from Holland America and trying the Celebrity Solstice instead for their Christmas cruise. (prior to our Nov. cruise). I haven't gotten up the nerve yet to fully disclosure our disappointment in service to them.

 

All of that being said, the ship is beautiful, the food is good to excellent, and everything is very clean and tidy! We had a great cruise, in spite of some of the staff.

 

I posted when we first got off the ship, so I won't go into detail about the specifics as I have already mentioned them in a prior post.

 

Nancy