Celebrity Food Quality out of Hawaii

[Prost Seattle]

So I’ll be doing the Solstice cruise from Vancouver to Hawaii in September.  I’ve watched a few video reviews, and one consistent theme has been people saying that the food wasn’t of the quality they remember on Celebrity, but only out of Hawaii.  People doing the cruise from Vancouver never mention a reduced quality of food. 

 

Has anybody experienced disappointing dining on itineraries leaving Hawaii?  I used to live there, and I know a lot of food is shipped in from the mainland, so maybe what they’re experiencing is lack of freshness, and the chefs are doing the best they can with what they’ve been given. 

[Travelexpert35]

I’ve done two cruises from HNL to Vancouver on the Solstice in 2017 and 2019 and we never had any issues with the food quality. The food was excellent in the MDR and the Oceanview cafe.

[az_tchr]

Exactly the same? Why would it be different? Just fine for our cruises.

[Denny01]

Did the cruise a few years ago out of San Diego and there was no difference between dining transiting to an then from Hawaii. No idea what that is about......and you said it was in a number of reviews.

 

The transiting is only 4 days, and sometimes 3 so that’s not enough time for the ship to have to make a major replenishment and so on. Recently, did a Transatlantic from Southampton to NYC and then onto other ports down to FLL. You’d think replenishing in NYC would bring different quality in, but I found it the same excellent level. First time I’ve heard anyone (not you, the reviewers) state the quality differed after a port call. Weird. the ship is always brining on foodstuffs at various ports, but it’s a set standard and preset food items. 

 

Den

[Langley Cruisers]

I know it's not exactly what OP asked, but we did a Coastal out of San Diego last year and some of the fruit was different - they had this strange (to us) melon that was kind of pale and not too sweet (not honeydew). They had just repo'd from South America and one of the crew mentioned they had to get rid of this melon first! We saw regular cantaloupe and honeydew a few days later. We also had cans of soda in our cabin cooler sourced from South America. 😊

[Jim_Iain]

I've sailed out of HNL a couple times and have never noticed any difference in the food than any other cruise world wide.    Sometimes you see different brands on dairy product but have never found any difference in flavor.

 

[Northern Aurora]

We have cruised from Honolulu to Sydney three times and also haven't noticed any food quality difference.

[Prost Seattle]

Huh.  Perhaps it was just finicky reviewers then, or an off kitchen crew.  Thanks for the feedback. 

[Denny01]

I would go with the ‘finicky reviewers’ as a probability.  We were on a cruise with good friends, a B2B, and the first leg we just had a grand time and both couples enjoyed the dining onboard. The next leg, the 4 of us shared the table with a couple and the man had a complaint about every meal....it got ridiculous. But then our friends started noticing things they didn’t like about the meals also and started complaining. Same meals as a week prior; same service and quality......but someone had set the ‘tone’ of complaints. 

 

Who knows what drives subjective opinions. Just remember how many times your friends hate a restaurant that you think is one of the best in town.  

 

Den 

[4774Papa]

We have done 11 Celebrity cruises (none to Hawaii) and have found the dining to be consistently excellent.  We do miss the end of cruise brunch.

[Prost Seattle]

Honestly, I’m looking forward to my first X cruise in September.  I started the thread because I was watching vids of the ship I’ll be on and I just happened to notice that commonality.  I’m the kind of person who looks for the positive, the good and the fun.  I’m a flight attendant and I’m aware of service hiccups, but those are also opportunities to recover with style!

[CruiserMickey]

The only thing I noticed on our Vancouver-Hawaii cruise last year was that the shrimp used in the shrimp cocktail were tiny compared to what was usual. I have no idea why that would be, as I did an Alaska cruise on the Eclipse three months later and the shrimp cocktail was back to the usual large shrimp.