Just Back From Zenith March 11 - A "Different" Kind of Cruise

[reklawr]

BrooklynGirl,

The last week of May is Memorial day celebration. Lots of HS kids get out of school the end of May.:eek:

[alpal1993]

Broward County( Ft Lauderdale ) is on Spring Break April 8-April 17

[newmexicoNita]

Nita in your post did you mean last week of March or last week of May?? If you did mean to say last week of May can you tell me why there is a problem with the last week of May?

 

Thanks.

Actually I did mean the last week of May, but either would be the same. Many schools and colleges get out about mid to late May, in fact most: the cruises, especially the shorter ones are loaded with kids just out of high school, yes, lots of college kids before they start summer jobs and families. We have been on 2 4 day cruises the last week of May: kids everywhere you turn. One of the two we did not find this a problem, the second time it was a nightmare. NMnita

[hajekfam]

Ann - Thanks for sharing!

I loved your comments about the cruise experience.

A little different from past Celebrity cruises. I was thinking initially that perhaps we boarded a Carnival ship by mistake!

We felt exactly the same about the two day Millie cruise in Dec and it wasn't spring break (12/2-12/4). People sat anywhere in the dining room instead of going to their assigned tables, kids were running around the dining room, the disco actually had to close their doors as nobody else could fit in, and they actually ran out of prepared food at the buffet breakfast. When I spoke with the maitre'd, he said that they had never experienced anything like that before.

We had added this cruise as a back to back to our transatlantic, but after experiencing it we have decided never again - no matter how tempting.

I really think Celebrity should stick to longer cruises and quit the short ones. It seems on a short cruise, everyone is trying to get the most for their money out of the short period of time.

[dileep]

We will stay with 14-day cruises on M-Class ships, and stay away from the Caribbean :) !

 

We are tempted by some eastern med cruises on Galaxy though!

[BrooklynGirl2]

To all you experienced cruisers:

 

Do you think a 7 day cruise to Bermuda the last week of May would have tons of high school kids/college kids?

 

Thanks

[hajekfam]

First of all - the high schoolers and younger college students would be accompanied by parents.

From Celebrity's FAQ's

What is Celebrity's policy regarding unaccompanied minors?

Subject: Age Requirements

 

No guest under the age of 21 will be booked in a stateroom unless accompanied by an adult 25 years or older. This age limit will be waived for minor children sailing with their parents or guardians in adjacent staterooms.

Individual staterooms can be booked by married couples whose minimum age is 18.

Secondly - if the school is still in session, it might be too close to finals to pull a child from school for the week.

[Shir Hayam]

Anne, thanks for the great review. Too bad that some out of control individuals can disrupt the vacation of others. It's also disappointing to hear that the crew did little (nothing?) to better manage the situation.

 

Your comments about the ship's condition have me a little worried. We are booked on the 6/17 sailing to Bermuda and are thoroughly spoiled by CC cabins on the Connie. Plus, we are going with friends who have never sailed before. I'm hoping that the Celebrity service and food will make up for some of the ship's physical deficits.

 

Hi, Rich. How are you doing?

 

Sheila

[newmexicoNita]

To all you experienced cruisers:

 

Do you think a 7 day cruise to Bermuda the last week of May would have tons of high school kids/college kids?

 

Thanks

My gut feeling, probably not nearly as many as the 3,4 and 5 dayers to the Caribbean. Yes, there will be more than some weeks, but it won't be bad. Most will be traveling with family as Bermuda isn't the place college kids or kids just out of high school have at the top of their list for vacationing. NMnita

[Cruise or Lose!]

Why, thank you, Tom. Sometimes the noggin produces some gems; this happens to be one of those days :D

 

Happy St. Paddy's to all!!!

[Sky Sweet]

The problems noted on this cruise make me more and more concerned about the Century's future. After its renovation, it will also be doing short cheap cruises From Florida, on a regular basis, during the winter months. Since some colleges are on trimesters, while others are on semesters, there will always be a college kid somewhere who is on their break at that time.

[FinelyCruising]

Anne, our first cruise on Celebrity was on Merdian, and we were at a round 8 top with 9, knees and calves rubbing and touching those we didn't even know. When this occurs someone at X is definately not thinking, and to boot in your situation, you are a repeat cruiser, and were placed in this position when I imagine many of the others have never been on a ship before and had a less stress filled dining room experience. Poor customer relations IMHO. Sorry to hear this.

[Momto5]

While all it takes is a few bad apples, I have to say we met a delightful college couple on Zenith last month. So a few of those would not, IMHO, ruin the atmosphere of a cruise.

 

Our short cruise on the Zenith was a last minute deal. We only went because the price was right. We had such a good time that we have booked another cruise in the (gasp) Caribbean on Millenium. We plan on sampling more eclectic itineraries when our children are older, but for now these 5-10 day cruises are perfect for us.

 

So there is a niche out there. Maybe not the niche some of you are looking for, but we are really nice people if you met us!:p

 

Sorry your cruise was over-run with hooligans. That must have been terrible.:(

[Gypsea]

CruiseArizona,

 

The Carnival line as well as some of the companies they own do require one person to be 25 years old per cabin particularly during spring break for obvious reason. It is said that Celebrity also follows this or maybe not.

 

The Zenith was fabulous for our agency seminar in December. I had a great time as did the seventy people in our group. The maintnence issues mentioned were not even noticed since all the necessary elements were in place for a pleasant trip.

 

I've heard lots of horror stories here but I think there are lots of good sea days left in Zenith before she is refurbished.

[C 2 C]

Hi Anne..

 

Our experience with the Zenith last year was not much better. It was not the passengers but the dreaded Norwalk that brought out the worst in Celebrity. We would only sail on Zenith again if the price was really good and only if it was 13 or 14 days long. I find the decor offers too much plastic and the dining areas are to too crowded (no room between tables) to make it an attractive ship in comparison to what the competition has to offer.

 

How was trivia? It's what really matters...:cool:

[Bisous3]

Replacing deck chairs and tiles around the pool are such easy things to fix- I wonder why they haven't??

 

I am on Lois' Easter cruise- think if I call I can get them to throw the old junky loungers overboard?

 

Sorry- that stuff grosses me out.

Suzanne

PS It the Broward county elementary , middle and high schools on Spring Break. I think the universities will be done by then with theirs

[TexasMommy]

We were on that cruise as well! This was our 8th cruise but 1st one on Celebrity and prob last one on celebrity. We ran into a lot of the same problems you did. We are a couple in our early 30's with young children with us. Some complaints...my Daughter's friend cut open her foot by the pool due to a broken beer bottle!! Plus the pool was overrun by college students groping and using language inappropriate for my kindergarten daughter. We had drunken students bumping into us...there was a brawl one evening.etc. etc etc.

 

Our table was also way to small. We too didn't have room for the bread basket. Had myself hubby, DD and baby son at a too small table. Kept getting bumped into.

 

No deck chairs...again college kids.

 

It wasn't a horrible trip. We enjoyed being together as a family, strolling the deck and esp the port calls etc...but it certainly was not what we expected. It was a very poor introduction to the Celebrity line.

[Lois R]

TexasMommy, sorry your 1st cruise with Celebrity was such a poor

experience:(

I was on this ship last month and it was nothing like it. I was on

a 5 night cruise in early February and had marvelous time.:)

 

I am guessing what those have said is true....short cruises

on Spring Breaks are "different". I am not saying it is right...just

saying it happens.

I would suggest you try a longer cruise....maybe not at Spring

Break.

I have sailed Celebrity 7 times and as sad as this particular week

sounds to me, I will continue to sail them.

Just a suggestion, don't take this one as the "normal Celebrity

Cruise" because from everything I have experienced in the past....

it was not.

They are usually much more customer service oriented on the ship.

Again, maybe you will give them another chance.

I wish you smooth sailing, whatever you choose.

 

Suzanne, hoping what you say is true.....maybe by the time we

sail most of the college kids will be back......in college or wherever

they live:rolleyes:

[poetic license]

Many thanks for the candid review, Anne. I am so sorry it was not a 'typical' Celebrity cruise for you.

 

This is exactly what I fear will happen to CENTURY when they place it in Miami after the Eurpoean summer run. RCI, in all it's 'wisdom', has given what will be a beautifully refurbished ship the death sentence: 4 and 5 day cruises. What can they possibly be thinking?????????????? CENTURY is already an elegant ship .... it really is best suited for itineraries of 9 or more days in order for it to be appreciated. Short cruises place an even greater burden on ships: Cabins are turned around more often, crew and passengers don't form the same bond (read: respect) and they almost always draw a 'party crowd'.

 

I have taken three cruises at spring break time, but all were 7 or more days. Yes, there were a FEW spring breakers on them, but we never had the problems you described. There were also many families with older children on them, and for the most part, the kids were pretty well behaved, even if high spirited occasionally. But a five day cruise at spring break? Not in my lifetime! Sadly, I see this scenario playing out on CENTURY next year. Sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, SAD!

 

Cheers~

[semetz]

Hi Anne- We looked for you during sailaway but did not see anyone with a blue Cruise Critic shirt at either Fleet or Marina.

Thanks for the review. This was our 5th Celebrity cruise and we are very disappointed. My DH and I were travelling with our very sheltered 13 year old son. The behavior of many of the under 21 age group(especially the girls) scares the heck out of me. At 4:00 a.m. I poked my head outside our stateroom on deck 6 and asked two young ladies to be quiet and was cursed out with four letter expletives. My husband enjoys walking the decks in the morning for a little exercise and was shocked to find the deck near the hot tubs to be BLOODY! Evidently there was a brawl between two rival colleges the night before! For 5 nights young people were running up and down the corridors looking for someone to "party" with. Needless to say, we did not sleep the entire trip and found it very difficult to relax. I broke out in hives the morning of disembarkation. I've been home for about two hours now after staying an extra night in Miami. We stayed at the "Loews South Beach" and I can't recommend it highly enough! This tropical haven allowed me to rest and recover from our absolute worst cruise experience.

Celebrity needs to get their act together and remember who butters their bread so to speak. My DH and I are middle aged fun loving and quite tolerant of most things within reason. This was our second "Spring Break" cruise on Celebrity, our first was in March a few years ago to the Caribbean on Galaxy out of Baltimore and was great with a mix of age groups and also for ten nights. Had we known what the group dynamics were like on this recent five nighter, we would have never booked it. Celebrity should in good faith make restitution to their loyal cruisers or risk losing them. We work hard every day, our son works hard academically and we were so looking forward to spending quality time together relaxing. What a shame and a waste of money! We are very angry and are not going to take this sitting down. We have been faithful to them and we now expect them to do what is right by us. I hope they do.

In closing I would just like to say that our experience was an isolated one and I would not want to discourage anyone from sailing "Zenith". She is a little tired but very capable.

 

Hello to Danielle and Ken.

 

Sharon and Jake

[Sky Sweet]

Many thanks for the candid review, Anne. I am so sorry it was not a 'typical' Celebrity cruise for you.

 

This is exactly what I fear will happen to CENTURY when they place it in Miami after the Eurpoean summer run. RCI, in all it's 'wisdom', has given what will be a beautifully refurbished ship the death sentence: 4 and 5 day cruises. What can they possibly be thinking?????????????? CENTURY is already an elegant ship .... it really is best suited for itineraries of 9 or more days in order for it to be appreciated. Short cruises place an even greater burden on ships: Cabins are turned around more often, crew and passengers don't form the same bond (read: respect) and they almost always draw a 'party crowd'.

 

I have taken three cruises at spring break time, but all were 7 or more days. Yes, there were a FEW spring breakers on them, but we never had the problems you described. There were also many families with older children on them, and for the most part, the kids were pretty well behaved, even if high spirited occasionally. But a five day cruise at spring break? Not in my lifetime! Sadly, I see this scenario playing out on CENTURY next year. Sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, SAD!

 

Cheers~

 

I don't know if you saw my post from this afternoon, but I made a similar comment about the Century.

[Host Anne]

Hi Everyone ~ I'm sorry I haven't had a chance to get back to this thread before now....trying to catch up at work and spend some family time together before Amanda heads back to college tomorrow.

 

First, Danielle, Sharon and Texas Mommy ~ I'm so sorry we didn't get a chance to catch up. Sharon, we were at the Marina Bar for a short period at sailaway but it was quickly overrun by kids yelling and screaming. We moved to the upper deck outside the Fleet Bar for sailaway. It would have been great to have met you. I am very sorry, mostly for those who were new to Celebrity, to have had this be your first Celebrity experience. We are much like you, we love to have a good time and we would never want to prevent anyone else from having a good time. But this cruise went way beyond kids enjoying themselves and having fun. It got rude, vulgar and violent in some situations. TexasMommy ~ I forgot to mention the broken beer bottles in my review. We found more than one broken bottle in the pool area throughout the cruise. The sad thing was we were picking up the glass ... I think the crew was so out of sorts after two weeks of this nonsense and that they weren't even noticing these things. There was absolutely no way we were getting anywhere near the hot tubs on this cruise.

 

I forgot to mention one important thing (to us anyway) in my review. What was with the Red Bull rolling bars? Is this a new thing for Celebrity? Just a marketing gimmick during spring break cruises to appeal to the demographics on board? Whatever it was, it bugged the heck out of me. The last thing I want to see on a Celebrity ship are rolling billboards for any brand of anything. And quite honestly, the last thing any of the kids on this ship needed was Red Bull. Ocngypz, is this a permanent new thing?

 

For all those sailing Zenith in the near future, I think you'll be fine. We were told that the major college spring break cruises were over and while you may run into spring breaks for high school and younger from here on out, it will not be nearly the same as it was for college aged students. I would like to again note that we did meet many great college students as well so it wasn't everyone. But it sure was enough to make it an unpleasant experience for many. The crew on this ship certainly deserves to sail with some great groups of passengers after these last few cruises and I'm certain all of you will help make it that way.

 

I'm not sure how much the Celebrity crew on board could do to make the situation much better. There were simply too many issues. I do disagree that we should accept that short cruises attract this demographics so we should all avoid short cruises because this is how they will be. Here's the age requirement policy from Celebrity's website:

 

"No guest under the age of 21 will be booked in a stateroom unless accompanied by an adult 25 years or older. This age limit will be waived for minor children sailing with their parents or guardians in adjacent staterooms. Individual staterooms can be booked by married couples whose minimum age is 18." Perhaps they need to reconsider this policy and increase the age limit slightly. And perhaps increase the cost a little. Four students could be in one cabin on this cruise for under $800 TOTAL. That's $200 per person for the five days. No one could do a land based vacation for that cost.

 

As for Century....she may be doing short cruises but they are far from inexpensive. I've investigated doing a Cruise Critic group cruise and the pricing is rather high. I don't see them appealing to the same demographics at this point in time. I'd love to go on Zenith again, but not until they do some serious maintenance.

 

Arno ~ you are too funny. Actually, trivia was one of the highlights. This was one place where you met some fantastic kids and they were hysterical. The guys trounced us. It was amazing what info some of these college guys knew -- like the wedding colors from the movie Steel Magnolias. Do you know it? There were actually two trivia sessions that crew members neglected to show up for. Again, a different experience. But it was a lot of fun!

 

Finally (for tonight), I'd encourage everyone to drop a note to Celebrity and let them know about your experience (good or bad). Trust me, they already know how bad it was. But letters from passengers reinforce the experience and they need to know that many are wondering (especially if this was your first Celebrity cruise) if they want to return. If anyone needs an address, let me know.

 

I want to believe in the Celebrity product. We had an absolutely fabulous experinece on Mercury last month. They just need to do a little work to ensure cruises like the past two are truly a rare (and not be repeated) experience.

[TexasMommy]

We may sail Celebrity again if we find a great value on a convenient date. However right now this last cruise has left such a sour taste in my mouth it is not very likely.

 

 

I also forgot to add...

We did inquire at guest relations about the booking policy of Celebrity regarding young passengers. On most lines you can not book a room unless at least one occupant of the room is 21 or even 25. Not so on Celebrity. We were informed that Celebrity policy is 18 years old.

 

I think Guest Relations must have been getting a lot of complaints. The rep was very dismissive and rude. Apparently what their website says per quote in post above is not the policy per Guest relations.

 

There were indeed some very polite, friendly college students but they were overshadowed by their colleagues. The broken glass that cut my daughters 4 year old friend's foot causing her to cry, the 'dirty dancing' by the pool, finding vomit in the public rest rooms, profanity, the brawl, the drunkenness in the halls and elevators... It really was not the "celebrity treatment" they advertise.

 

I'm not sure where to write or email but I would be willing to do that.

[shmedrick]

Hello everyone, Just wanted to let you know how sad I was to dump money away on this cruise which should have been named

"THE VOMIT VOYAGE". Broken glass, used prophlylatics and young adults bleeding added to the wonderful sunsets we all shared together.

Seriously though, I wish that security would detain and impound those who were responsible for a nasty fight that resulted in the rainbow room being closed down for the evening. But as I witnessed, heads of security looked too comfortable sipping espresso at my favorite cafe Cova to be bothered. I must admit I was taken back a little on the third night when I was flashed in the elevator by two young ladies that were young enough to be my daughters. if you ladies are reading this (thank you).:D

Well, good evening everyone.

[Cachecara]

After reading the posts regarding how out of control so many of the college aged passengers were, Celebrity should count themselves lucky a truly unfortunate incident did not occur--ie--man overboard! (God forbid) Not that I would assess blame to Celebrity, at all, just realizing how this behavior could certainly lead to catastrophe. I hope those from Celebrity reading the board do take heed.

 

As far as this comment: "Replacing deck chairs and tiles around the pool are such easy things to fix- I wonder why they haven't??"

I, too, can not understand why Celebrity does not address this issue. It would go miles to putting the rumor to bed that Zenith should be retired. We were on Zenith last Sept and had a wonderful time. I was quite happy with the condition, overall, but did see some areas that were weary. I thought these areas would be addressed during her "fall cleanup". Getting a few new bed linens and replacing carpet doesn't seem enough to clear up a few cosmetic blemishes. :(