Celebrity Constellation Cruise Review

Part 1 of Celebrity Constellation Cruise Review

Part 2 of Celebrity Constellation Cruise Review --

Everyone has favorite venues and activities onboard, and on the Celebrity Constellation my wife and I particularly enjoy:

• The Aqua Spa healthful buffet, which is hidden behind the sculpture in the spa pool (remember, the best lean cuisine is behind the fat lady) and is open throughout most of the day. This is a great alternative to the bulk food sometimes found in shipboard buffets. It is also the place where you can find papaya and lime wedges for breakfast (which is my favorite part of any tropical vacation -- I live on papaya in Tahiti).

• The Library is small but has an enjoyable collection for those who just want to relax with a book. It has a few books in several languages (Spanish, German, French) Celebrity deserves credit adding the services of a very pleasant librarian (Patrick) rather than a rotating (uninformed) library staff.

• Michaels Club looks like a gentlemen’s smoking club, but fortunately the main part of it is smoke-free and features Perry, a very talented vocalist with an excellent voice, perfect pitch, a knowledge of almost every lyric and melody ever written, a campy delivery, and a wicked sense of humor. We are not drinkers, but we spent part of every evening here.

• Afternoon snacks in the 10-deck buffet area to cover the gap between lunch and late-seating (8:30pm) dinner, from exquisite pastries or homemade ice creams at tea time, to pizza or sushi a little later.

• Enrichment lectures by educators/naturalists in the ship’s cinema/lecture area. We enjoyed the oceanographer’s several lectures about sea-life and life at sea. Most cruise lines underestimate their cruisers’ intelligence (or maybe not) by providing more lectures about shopping than anything reasonably enriching. I give credit to Celebrity for exceeding our expectations once again.

• Watching cruisers pose for their photo portraits on formal nights is one of our favorite pre-dinner activities. Simply take a seat near one of the photo shoots and watch your fellow cruisers look their best. Then return to the photo gallery the next day and view the results.

• Captains Club amenities were exceptional on this cruise, perhaps because it was a club reunion cruise or because it was the Cirque de Soleil launch with all the VIPs from the cruise line’s headquarters in attendance. In addition to the usual chocolate on the pillow, as "Select Level" club members (five to nine previous Celebrity cruises), we received a complimentary bottle of private label wine in an elegant travel carrier, CdS T-shirts and masks, a travel document organizer, a tray of chocolate-covered strawberries and marzipan roses at one bedtime, an internet fee credit, and invitations to complementary wine tastings, behind the scenes tours, several complementary cocktail parties, a complementary champagne breakfast buffet, etc., etc.

It certainly is worth joining Celebrity’s Captain's Club, since every repeat cruiser/club member will get some extra treats. Membership is free, I believe, (there was a small fee years ago when we joined) and one gets credit for each cruise, regardless of cruise length or cabin category.

Entertainment onboard this cruise was the best we have experienced. They really assembled the A-team, including a vocalist from London’s West End, an illusionist, an impressionist/comedian/singer, a comedian, a dance/acrobatic duo, and excellent musicians in the ship’s orchestra and lounges, including a string quartet, a guitarist, a harpist, and a pianist/singer. The cruise director, Eric Bohus, did a fine job in organizing all the entertainment, and we were delighted that he scheduled some of the performers before dinner for second seating guests. My only complaint was that virtually every venue (from pool to lounges to theater to gym) was over-amplified to the point of auditory pain. As a result, I carry earplugs everywhere while on board, and find that using them brings it all down to a reasonable mezzo forte (and they are great on buses and planes, to eliminate travel fatigue).

Before I outline our favorite inexpensive shore activities, I will give just a little information about disembarkation. This is very well organized, with none of the overhead paging and uncertainty that were prevalent in years past. One is given the usual color-coded luggage tags, leaves suitcases in the hall the last night of the cruise, and is told a time and a location to assemble in the morning with your disembarkation group.

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