katiemsw

We cruised to Alaska on the Solstice this past week, and really enjoyed our trip. We have only on Royal Caribbean in the past (and only out of Port Canaveral), so this was a huge change for us. We are happy we decided to cruise to Alaska on this ship, and we were satisfied with our interior stateroom (to help save money - the cruise, flights, and excursions really add up!) which felt bigger than interior rooms on RCCL. We thought the dining room food was wonderful, and better than RRCL. We tried Sushi on Five, which was "meh" compared to our hometown sushi restaurants, but did not go to any other specialty restaurants. Solstice has great staff, and impressive theater shows, but its biggest assets might be naturalist Brent Nixon and historian Mary "Miss Amanda" Fairchild. Both have a wealth of information to offer, and we attended their talks on a daily basis. We discovered at the end of the cruise that they are married! What an impressive couple. We missed having towel animals, we missed having a large open area promenade, and we missed having a piano bar, but otherwise it was really a great choice and we would recommend to others. Go on this cruise and enjoy Alaska, complete with Cruise Director Damien, and your hilarious Captain Tasos!

This is really a comment about Port of Seattle (Pier 91) and not the cruise line, but embarkation (May 26th) was AWFUL. Embarkation opened at 10:30 and we arrived 11:30am, but did not get into our stateroom until 3:00pm. We were told at 3:00pm that they were still "1000 people behind." We were stuck at a standstill in the line (this is after the exit for the port), with no organization whatsoever. It was truly as if it was the first day the port had ever had a ship there, and/or all of the staff were new, and/or they did not expect the ship and its guests to arrive. Outside and inside, it was a complete catastrophe. Everyone kept commenting on this and the staff said it wasn't normal. Don't you do this every week? Disembarking was better, and we were in good hands once Celebrity staff was in charge.