Beautiful places with great touring opportunities, but not so much with their tours

Celebrity Equinox Cruise Review to Europe - Western Mediterranean

Cruises: 7+ cruises
Reviews: 6
Helpful Votes: 307

Overall rating:

3 out of 5
Celebrity Equinox

13 Night Spain & Portugal (Barcelona Roundtrip)

Sail date: October 02, 2015

Ship: Celebrity Equinox

Cabin type: Balcony

Cabin number: 1017

Traveled as: Couple

Reviewed: 9 years ago

Review summary

We enjoyed many aspects of the cruise. But the level of information we could get was pretty limited.  Crew seemed predominantly new. Sometimes we knew more about the ship than they did. 

Not impressed by the entertainment. Victor Cruz (acoustic guitar) was good, but seemed to play the same songs every day. Airband and the jazz group were good. But those were the only decent groups. And this is a long cruise.

The evening shows were some good/ some ok. 

The customer service group was also really spotty.  Some had no idea about the cities we were going to. They weren't sure where shuttles went. When I asked info about the material they passed out about the ports I got a lot of "I don't know" responses. 

Ship experiences

Food and Dining

3 out of 5

Onboard Activities

1 out of 5

Entertainment

1 out of 5

Service and Staff

3 out of 5

Ship Quality

5 out of 5

Cabin / Stateroom

5 out of 5

Ports of call

Barcelona, Spain

5 out of 5

Palma De Mallorca, Balearic Islands

5 out of 5

Cartagena, Spain

3 out of 5

Gibraltar (U.K.)

3 out of 5

Lisbon, Portugal

5 out of 5

Cadiz (Seville), Spain

5 out of 5

Malaga, Spain

5 out of 5
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4 Comments

HermanBarbara    9 years ago

This was our third Celebrity cruise -- the others were better!  It occurred to me that this may not have been a regular itinerary for the ship and they just didn't have experience in some of these locations. In the past I've had better info from the customer service people.

glomarrone    9 years ago

Wow, I have only had good experience on Celebrity.  I have to admit, though,  that I always take the ship sponsored shore excursions.  I hope that you have a better experience on your next cruise. 

HermanBarbara    9 years ago

And always be careful when they give answers like "it's probably a 15-20 minute walk".  In the Olympics that's probably three miles. And you have to know where you're going to get there in that time. And it would really help if you knew that the answer you were getting was based on knowledge or canned answers.

Part of the problem may have been that there were a lot of Spanish guests on the cruise, so there were a mix of crew who spoke English and some Spanish, and some who spoke Spanish and some English. Regardless, the training levels seemed pretty low.

It's really easy to distribute maps that show rough distances from the ship to really local spots.  And it's also easy to say at the beginning of the cruise that in one port you're not going to be near anything, so plan on making transfer plans.

Some of the support people were very helpful. It's just that you don't know who to pick; and you don't know whether you've been given fact or impression.

CrusinTim    9 years ago

I can not understand how a cruise line can put crew at the customer service desk that has absolutely NO insight on the cruise. You are on a 13 day cruise and the crew don't even know what's going on? That's sad. If your on an ANY amount day's cruise, the one spot on the ship you depend on for answers to anything is the customer service desk!! I would think this is the one of the major areas the line would make sure they have trained and informed crew. For a crew member at the customer service desk to answer "I don't know" is NOT an answer!!

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