Celebrity Inifinity Review

Celebrity Infinity:  June 11, 2017 - June 18, 2017

Overall:

I really miss the Celebrity cruises of the past.  The wonderful fruit, chocolate and ice sculptures and grand presentations of culinary masterpieces were the highlight of those previous cruises.  Things have really changed since I cruised on the Celebrity Galaxy in 1999.  The opulence of décor, attention to detail and quality of service on that cruise were far superior to my experience on the Celebrity Infinity.

Dining:

Neither I nor anyone in my group of eight ever dined in any of the "Specialty Dining" or what we called the "for pay" areas.  After spending  thousands of dollars of retirement money for an all inclusive vacation, we were not spending any more on dining.  The area for these specialty restaurants is wasted space and should be used for a second full buffet area.  Very few passengers ate in the Specialty Dining areas and those were just probably trying to escape the buffet.  Dining at the buffet (Ocean View Café) was very difficult.  It was so overcrowded that once you finally got your plate, you had to balance the plate and drink while dodging an obstacle course of passengers and wait staff through the narrow walk areas along the serving lines trying to find an empty table.  This was especially difficult for my grown son with a broken foot.  It was so crowded that we were not able to find any seating indoors especially during breakfast.  Our group just ate outside in the cold weather.  With that said, the regular restaurant (Trellis) was very nice and that is where we had dinner every night and the food was fantastic!

Staterooms:

Oh my, where to begin...  Your staterooms are in dire need of repair and/or updating. 

There were several built-in fixtures that were either not functioning or obviously broken.  Such as curtains missing hooks and drooping off the rod.  Broken clothing racks in the closets.  Bent bedside table lamp.  Electrical outlet covers falling off the outlets. The carpeting was coming away from the walls and there were patches of loose carpeting laying over original carpet.  Worst of all was Stateroom 8038 that had no working air conditioning the entire cruise.  Servicemen began working on it the last day with no success.  The family of four which included the father with the broken foot had to leave the balcony door open the whole time to keep cool. 

Just a small thing... but I was so looking forward to finding which cute towel animal waited for me every day.  Of course, there were none and both my grandsons and I were disappointed.  With that said, our room attendant, Cliff was wonderful and did all he could to make our stay comfortable.

Activities:

I found the cruise ship's activities to be fun and well diversified.  With that said... there were very few physical activities to challenge and entertain pre-teen and teens such as a rock climbing wall, knots and rope course, etc.

Shopping:

I am totally not a shopper, so I found the "sales events" to be as chaotic and stressful as a "Black Friday" sale.  I avoided all of them.

Summary:

If I had never cruised  before on a Five Star cruise and had only experienced... let's say a "Carnival" cruise, I probably would not have been this critical.  Since that is not the case and I know what a truly magical experience a cruise can be, it would not have been honest to do otherwise.  I would still recommend a Celebrity cruise to someone else, but I cannot give it the high praise that I would had once given.  Personally, I would need to do more research on the quality of the ship before booking another cruise.  I had taken for granted the name "Celebrity" as being of higher quality than other cruise lines, but I will not make that mistake again.  I look forward to cruising again on Celebrity, but at least on a newer or renovated ship.