Our Celebrity Reflection Experience

[SuperTrooper00]

I will post this in the other appropriate places, but wanted to post here as well:

 

This was our first Celebrity cruise after previously sailing on NCL and HAL several times each. We were incredibly excited to try Celebrity as we have heard so many great things. We are a couple in our 30's. We went with a group of friends our age or younger.

 

Ship:

The Reflection is a beautiful ship. The pictures posted on here have captured her pretty well, as she really is a sight to behold. I found the ship average to fair to get around on, but didn't love the layout personally.

Several things about the ship that stood out for better or worse:

- We agree with most that the Lawn is a complete waste of space. Celebrity really needs to just swallow their pride and move on. Because of this, the pool was simply packed on all nice days. We have been on several ships and have never found it so difficult to find a chair to lay in. The lawn just eats up too much space in our opinion.

- We loved the Sky Lounge. We never saw it before it was limited in size due to the Suites…but boy is it still plenty big. Definitely big enough for what it is used for (more on that later). We always love venues at the front of the ship.

- The cabins were terrific. The bathroom layout was one of our favorites yet. Like others have said, our first reaction to the cabin was, "where is all the storage?". And, yet, like others have said, we found space to spare when we were done unpacking.

- We were Aqua Class, and the Spa area is terrific. The Persian Gardens are great and the Relaxation room was my favorite room on the ship. What an incredible place to watch the ship come into port. An important note (Celebrity secret?) that has probably been mentioned but I had not seen on here…if you are staying on the 11th floor, and just head forward on the ship down your hallway, you will see a door that is not marked. In fact, it says "Emergency Exit" on it. Just open that door and you are looking at the Relaxation Room. This is a great room to read, nap, etc.

- The bars on this ship are the best we have experienced at sea. There are so many options, and most of them have different bar menus. The Martini Bar, Molecular Bar, Ensemble Lounge, Michaels, etc etc. All of them are great.

- Overall, Reflection is one nice ship. And its positives FAR outweigh its negatives.

 

Food:

We thought the food was a solid 8 out of 10. Blu was very good most nights for dinner. Plenty of choices, plenty of food, and plenty of quality. We only tried the buffet for breakfast, and didn't enjoy that much at all. It was fine and would work for most, but unless you wanted to wait 10 minutes to get an omelette or fried eggs, the scrambled eggs on the buffet were the worst I have ever had.

We also tried Tuscan Grille and were not very impressed at all.

I would say the dining room (blu for us) was on par with HAL, and a couple of steps better than NCL. However, we found the NCL specialty dining to be far better.

In fact, one of the things we think Reflection lacked was a choice of options for dining. Outside of the few specialty pay restaurants…it was either your dining room, buffet, or a hamburger/hot dog at the Mast Grill. We love that NCL has other options for free.

- We did try the Porch for lunch one day. For the $5 pp cost, it is easily worth a try. The ambiance itself is worth the cost. We made that choice because we went to the dining room that day, and because they were only using one half of the dining room, there was a wait. And then Celebrity pulled out the worst question you can possibly ask someone who has just asked for a table for two, "We are out of tables for two, would you mind joining this couple right here?". Awful question putting you on the spot. I get that question if we didn't ask for a table for two but boy was that awkward. Anyways, to the Porch we went for no wait. Good food. Terribly slow service. We would eat there again though.

- Final comment about food/bars…Cafe Al Bacio is a genius idea. If you have the drink package like we did, this place was fantastic. Kudos to Celebrity for this one.

 

Service:

Overall, the service was good. We had always heard great things about Celebrity service, and I would not agree that it is better than any other line. Maybe our week was "off". Maybe service has gone down since that reputation. Maybe all cruise lines have suffered with cutbacks. Maybe it was a little of all of that. But, we have had just as good, if not better service on NCL and HAL.

Our service in BLu was pretty good. No problems with the Sommelier's like I had read about. Our service at the bars were hit and miss. The attitudes of all with the drink package were terrific, so no worries there. But I definitely noticed a lack of hands at the bar or taking orders. If you want a drink, you have to go get it most of the time. And then you have to fight for the bartenders attention. Not a lot different than a busy bar at home, but different than we have ever experienced. Of course, with the drink packages, I would guess they are busier than they have ever been. We had a couple of awkward run-ins with staff. One staffer refused to tell us where he was from. Another took our cigars (we weren't smoking, they were in their package) as a joke and refused to give them back. We asked about 5 times, needed to go, and waited about 15 minutes. Finally, my friend had to get a little testy before he finally relented. Small stuff, but odd.

 

Entertainment:

Ouch. Not Celebrity's finest area. The juggler was good. The other shows we walked out on. Cruise ships sure could use some people in marketing who ask the question, "If people don't pay to go to this crap in real life…why would they want to see it on a ship?". Most ships are the same, but man they need to improve this area. It all feels like a Lawrence Welk show to me…which for many is probably fine. Not for us.

Outside of the stage shows, the ship lacks other options. The most noticeable difference for us was there was rarely ever two options at once. This was most notable with the Sky Lounge. The DJ didn't start playing until 12:15 am every night. Why? Because they waited for the stage show to finish up. Weird. Two completely different crowds.

I will say this: the music/dancing on board was much better than we had read. There was a live band in Ensemble every night. Usually one in the Grand Foyer. And the DJ played every single night in Sky, usually late into the night. Anyone who thinks they "keep it quiet" for the Suite guests are crazy. The Sky lounge was thumping until 3-4 am most nights. There was also live music and dancing out on the pool deck stage area (which is terrific) several nights. The music/dancing was an unexpected bonus for us since we expected little, and thought they did a good job. They just really need to have more options in the Sky lounge during the afternoon and night. It is a terrific venue that is terribly under-used.

 

Ports

 

We have sailed this itinerary before and enjoy it. We spent a couple of hours in San Juan and enjoyed the free bus to the Fort. Its really a beautiful city. Its best just to look at this day as a mini-Sea Day.

St. Thomas is always the same for us. Taxi to Red Hook, Ferry to St. John, Taxi to Trunk Bay. We spent 3-4 hours there and loved every minute of it.

St. Maarten was a stunner for us. We booked with Robinson Tours and had one of the best excursions we have ever had. The power boat tour is simply incredible and worth every single penny (we would have paid double for it). I couldn't imagine doing anything else if we came back to the island.

 

Overall

We enjoyed Celebrity and liked Reflection. The biggest question is usually, "Would you sail with it/them again?". Yes. Absolutely we would. I went in worried that after sailing Celebrity, we would never be able to enjoy NCL again. That did not happen. NCL fits our needs pretty well, and as long as you eat in their Specialty restaurants, we think it is far better bang for your buck. But, we did enjoy Celebrity. I just didn't see the difference I expected.

More than anything else, Celebrity's silver bullet is the Drink Package. I cannot begin to tell you how incredibly nice this was. To not have to sign one receipt all week was worth so much. It is never awkward not to tip. There is never an attitude about it. It is a genius program by them. We added up the cost (generally speaking), and dollar for dollar it was close. But, that doesn't matter. The fact we were able to try drinks we never would have was worth the money alone. Factor in the ease of it and it is a complete and total winner in our opinion. I will be shocked if other lines do not follow in quick order. If they do, we will make our next cruise decision based on value, itinerary, etc. If other lines hold out, and Celebrity is the only one who offers the Premium Drink package and can actually carry it out so well…we will probably be back on Celebrity for that alone.

[riclop]

Thanks for the well balanced review.

[CruiserByHeart]

Thanks for a great and detailed review. Made us look forward to our cruise even more ;)

 

Do you have your Celebrity Today newsletters to share? It would be invaluable in our planning.

 

Thanks again :)

[portofrome]

Thanks for your review.

[wpgcycler]

Thanks for this. Glad to hear about the Sky lounge - we like our dance music late and loud. Hope it's somewhat cutting edge too.

[SuperTrooper00]

Thanks for this. Glad to hear about the Sky lounge - we like our dance music late and loud. Hope it's somewhat cutting edge too.

 

They will play just about anything if you get to know the DJ. But, for the most part, its the common stuff you would hear in a club today.

[wpgcycler]

They will play just about anything if you get to know the DJ. But, for the most part, its the common stuff you would hear in a club today.

 

Cool. I had fears of all Top 40 - or worse, Wedding Classics (Mony Mony, YMCA etc. :eek:)

[Lovey26]

Excellent review. We just came off of the Reflection as well and agree with most of what you have said. I will be posting my review as soon as I get my head out of the washing machine and catch up at work. I also found it difficult to get a drink at times, especially in the dining room. One night we didn't get them until dessert! Thanks for taking the time to review!

[20pluscruises]

If i may ask...how bad was the pool area...avaiable chairs?

Thanks!

[kpeck21085]

Thank you for the review, we sail on Dec 7th, very happy to hear both good and bad. Also happy to know the drink package is worth it.

[fredflint]

I am just back too and can echo the comments but we had no problem getting a chair up on the deck above the pool, the pool is so small that it was not even worth trying to actually get in the pool.

 

Entertainment I feel was probably worse than what you said, our TA had a Violist one night and a Flute player another, we did not even bother to go. They brought in a Beatles Cover band which we felt was pretty bad but some other thought they were great. One nit I had is that many of the musicians only played for 45 minutes.

 

 

The movies on the movies channel were also played on the regular movie channel and also played in Celebrity Central, Central was a good idea but it is too wide and the posts ruin the sight lines.

 

We agree that Blu was mostly good and they really wanted to be challenged by a special request to show you how flexible they are. I am not sure if service sometimes is slow or if it just how they feel dinner should be paced.

[SuperTrooper00]

If i may ask...how bad was the pool area...avaiable chairs?

Thanks!

 

For us, pretty bad. You can find them, but you have to either go early or really search.

Beyond just finding them, I thought the layout of the chairs were pretty awful also. Its just too small an area for a ship that big. That is the real challenge. Again, I think it all comes back to the wasted lawn space.

 

Thankfully, we don't mind too much not being by the pool, so we made due just fine. On that note, all the way forward on the ship has some older lawn chairs that were generally free. Outside of the bouncing basketball and clanging rim, its a pretty quiet area.

[SuperTrooper00]

One more note on the Drink Package. On top of how nice everything else was (as I said above) about the package, the bottled water is probably its greatest value. They are the LARGE bottles of Evian, and I cannot tell you how many I drank in the week. Dozens at least.

[Bosjoe]

Cool. I had fears of all Top 40 - or worse, Wedding Classics (Mony Mony, YMCA etc. :eek:)

 

The wedding classics were played(Mony Mony, YMCA etc). One night they moved from the 70's 80's and upward to todays top 40.

[wallie5446]

We too are just back and the chair hogs were out in force last week. We could get into the pool, but finding a lounger was a bit tough!

[kpeck21085]

Thanks for a great and detailed review. Made us look forward to our cruise even more ;)

 

Do you have your Celebrity Today newsletters to share? It would be invaluable in our planning.

 

Thanks again :)

 

Yes please post any Daileys. I would like to know what crew is sailing now and the entertainment next week.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums mobile app

[Shake]

If i may ask...how bad was the pool area...avaiable chairs?

Thanks!

 

There were pool chairs available and easy to find anytime of the day. Spent a lot of time at the pool during our Transatlantic cruise 3 weeks ago that was warm and humid all the way over.

[Keith1010]

Enjoyed your review. Glad you would sail again.

 

Keith

[drarill]

Thanks for your well balanced review. We just booked the Reflection for next summer, it will be? our fourth Solstice class ship, and we are looking forward to cruise our cruise!! :):)