Excellent first cruise

Celebrity Equinox Cruise Review to Europe - Mediterranean

Cruises: 1 cruise (first)
Reviews: 3
Helpful Votes: 113

Overall rating:

4 out of 5
Verified Review
Celebrity Equinox

12 Night Eastern Mediterranean (Rome To Barcelona)

Sail date: May 21, 2015

Ship: Celebrity Equinox

Cabin type: Balcony

Cabin number: 1071

Traveled as: Couple

Reviewed: 9 years ago

Review summary

We loved this cruise. The ship is impressive, extremely clean and well kept. We were satisfied with the few shore excursions that we took, but on the day-long shore excursions we would have expected better lunches given the cost of the tours.

Overall the staff was very pleasant. We appreciated the open-seating dinners in the main dining room. However the maîtres d's seemed stressed and disorganized. The food in the main dining room was below par and poorly presented for a ship rated 5.5. The dining-room is extremely noisy due to the lack of attention by the waiters while clearing the tables. The breads were not very good, but the pizzas were excellent. The coffee in the Oceanview Café was pretty awful, but the beverage package was well worth it and the speciality coffee at Bacio's Café was excellent. 

Having dinner on the terrace of the Oceanview Café while looking at the Golden Horn in Istanbul was one of the highlight of the trip. We would hesitate taking again a cabin in the Concierge class. We do not think it was worth the extra cost.

For first-time cruisers we received excellent advice from our Cruise.com agent Kerri Winston.

Ship experiences

Food and Dining

3 out of 5
We were disappointed by the noise and the food in the Sihouette dining room

Onboard Activities

3 out of 5

Entertainment

3 out of 5

Service and Staff

5 out of 5
Except for the maitres d's in the Silhouette dining room. They were disorganized and seemed overwhelmed

Ship Quality

5 out of 5

Cabin / Stateroom

5 out of 5
The Concierge class is not worth the extra expense for hors d'oeuvres and a bottle of bubbly. The cabin is the same size as a regular cabin.

Ship tip

The ship is very well appointed and extremely clean.

Ports of call

Civitavecchia (Rome), Italy

5 out of 5

Salerno (Amalfi Coast), Italy

5 out of 5

Piraeus (Athens), Greece

3 out of 5
It would have been useful to know that there was an express bus for the center of Athens right outside the terminal building

Istanbul, Turkey

5 out of 5

Mykonos, Greece

5 out of 5
The transfer by tender was very efficient

Santorini, Greece

5 out of 5
Because of the high winds and the closure of the funicular the cruise ship provided buses quickly to bring us back to the pier

Souda (Chania), Crete

5 out of 5
Very efficient local buses to bring us downtown Chania

Barcelona, Spain

5 out of 5
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