Second time on Constellation
Celebrity Constellation Cruise Review to Other (Asia/Africa/Middle East)
14 Night Vietnam & Philippines (Singapore Roundtrip)
Sail date: February 05, 2017
Ship: Celebrity Constellation
Cabin type: Balcony
Cabin number: 8167
Traveled as: Couple
Reviewed: 7 years ago
Review summary
This is our second sailing on the Constellation, in comparison, this sailing the crew appeared less experienced and it was a new itinerary for most of the crew.
Our favorite part of this cruise was the Entertainment and Bar Staff/Sommeliers by far. All of the shows provided top-notch entertainment, the singers were excellent, as well as the small venue entertainment (soloists, duos, bands, DJ) were also excellent. The Bar Staff/Sommeliers were very friendly, of course the drink package helped!
The ship needs to go through a serious dry-dock maintenance, as many areas showed rust and wear including sagging floors in our shower and the Ocean View Café.
Itinerary-wise, they could overnight in Hong Kong since there is so much to see and do and not enough time to see 25% of it. They could skip Manila all together. Unfortunately due to extreme winds at the tender port of Boracay, we had to skip that port and Kota Kinabalu is still a destination port "in-progress", so maybe wait a few more years before stopping there.
The Shore excursions department really needs to expand their information available to cruisers regardless of whether or not they are on a tour or not. We did 2 "self guided" tours with the ships transfers, but the maps of the locations were awful and there really wasn't any additional information to help out those not on an organized, escorted tour.
"Traffic Management"
Tour disembarkation - Celebrity still has yet to figure out the best way to distribute the tour bus number stickers to passengers. This time they had the line wrap through the photo gallery and around, whilst passengers were arriving in the middle of the line via elevators and stairs.
Philippine Health Inspection - this was ridiculous, people merging and converging into the line from 5 different access points. All to walk through and hand a piece of paper to the Philippine immigration officers. No one really say the point of this exercise.
Passport Pick up - DEBACLE, worst location on the entire ship for mass pick up of passports for 2034 passengers, in the Art Gallery!!!
The Art Auction was generally routine, as expected, but the advertised auction for no work over $750 immediately started with many works that were over $3000, all under the guise of "requested art". This cleared out the room of about 30% within the first 15 minutes of the auction. During the normal auctions, they were auctioning the high cost art that didn't seem to resonant with anyone, but they kept putting those pieces on the auction block. Piece of advise for the auctioneer "Read your audience".
Ship experiences
Food and Dining
Onboard Activities
Entertainment
Service and Staff
Ship Quality
Cabin / Stateroom
Ports of call
Phu My (Ho Chi Minh City), Vietnam