Beautiful ports but horrible staff communication

Cruises: 4-6 cruises

Review: 1

Helpful Votes: 24

Review summary

We have been sailing Celebrity Cruise lines for 15 years. Our most recent trip was on Celebrity Solstice our of Seattle, Washington to Alaska on June 29th, 2018. Overall the we had a wonderful time at all the ports and had beautiful weather, which is always a gamble in Alaska. Captain Tasos was is by far the best Captain of any ship/cruise line I have been on. He had an amazing sense of humor and we looked forward to his message at 10am every single day. As I mentioned we have sailed Celebrity a number of times over 15 years and had been our preferred cruise line when we went on adult only cruise (our honeymoon, 10 year anniversary, and most recent 15 year anniversary). We have always been impressed with the food and top notch service, which makes our most recent cruise such a royal disappointment. Through out the cruise we thought the service was fine...which is, well...fine...no one was rude or anything, but no one really seemed like they cared to go the extra mile. Again, that's fine, I don't need special treatment, it just was quite different then the other Celebrity Cruises we had been on in the Caribbean and Mediterranean. We were also put off by the constant upselling on board. We were asked repeatedly about premium drink package as well as a lot of the activities on the ship had additional fees associated with them. The issues above were more annoying, however we did have one major issue that happened and the lack of action/empathy of the staff was beyond upsetting and disappointing. On our last (full) day we were sailing to Victoria B.C. We were not scheduled to get to port until around 6pm, so we had a large portion of that day at sea. We paid extra for Aqua Class and had a nice balcony. We were outside reading and when I came inside I noticed the carpet around bathroom was soaking wet. My husband then took a look and saw it was wet by the door out of cabin as well. We opened the door and asked one of the room attendants for help. He said our actual attendant was on break. Turns out the cabin next to us somehow overflowed their shower and gallons and gallons of water drained into our cabin. The carpet was wet from the door and ran along the bathroom, closet, behind the couch, and the bed all the way to balcony door. My husband and the room attendant we asked for help moved the couch and bed and used towels to help soak up water. The attendant then left and returned with two others to help. They brought in a huge industrial fan which was pointed under the bed to dry carpet and said "Turn it the other way after a little while" (meaning towards bathroom/living area carpet and left. Luckily we had the balcony because the wet carpet and the fan had a bad odor. When it was time to leave for our excursion, we saw our actual room attendant who asked if we would put our luggage out before we left (luggage had to be outside room by 10, and all on board was 11:30pm-it was a very late port of call). I made a joke and said we are all packed, but not sure we can get suitcases out with the huge fan in the cabin. He looked at me with a strange expression and it was clear he didn't know what I was talking about. So I explained what happened and he said "Oh, I didn't know" I know he was on break at the time, and he definitely deserves a break, but I would have thought since one of his rooms had a shower that over flowed into a second of his rooms, some sort of message would have been left for him giving him a heads up when he returned from break. He then was in our room and just kind of shook his head and said "wow, I think I'm going to keep balcony door opened a little while to help air it out". We then went on our excursion. We got back around 10:40pm and the fan was still running, and our balcony door was wide opened. It was very chilly in our room, the carpet was still damp, and the room smelled musty and kind of like dirty sweaty socks. Our room attendant was now off duty for the night so we called guest relations and had to explain the whole story again because there was no note about it. They said they would send someone up to take a look and remove the fan. After 20 minutes when no one showed up we went down to deck 3 to guest relations and had to yet again, explain the entire saga. Their response was you could have just put the fan outside of your room. We told her that the carpet was still wet and the room smelled really bad. After pushing she said she could look to see if they had a different room for us to sleep in for the night. She said to go back to our cabin and she would call when the other room was ready (there was a guest who got off at Victoria and wasn't sailing back to Seattle). So we went up and sat in the smelly wet room for another 20 minutes or so waiting for a phone call. By this time it's close to 11:30pm (also it was our 15 year anniversary-which Celebrity asked when we booked if there was anything we were going to celebrate on the cruise so we told them it would be out 15th-but it was never acknowledged, not even a piece of paper in the room saying happy anniversary-not sure why they ask if they don't actually do anything for their guest are celebrating. Just don't ask if you son't actually care). Anyways, they then came up to the room and removed the fan, and we got a call saying room was ready for us and they would leave door opened since our sea pass cards would not work for the new room. Once we were in there, we realized there was no soap or towels so we had to go back to our room and get that stuff and bring it over to the new room. In the morning, about 6:20am, we were awoken by another room attendant who had no clue we were in there because his record showed the guest got off the ship in Victoria. He was very frustrated as he wanted to get room ready for next cruise. We apologized to him multiple times and went through the whole story again and he just kept saying, "No one was suppose to be in here...I already had the bed made up" We finally just said, please go talk to Guest relations and then got out of that room as fast as we could and went back to our cabin, which still had damp carpet and smelled awful. We never saw our actual attendant again, he also hadn't fully made up our room the night before either. At no point were we offered any sort of compensation (only got to sleep in another room because we kept saying how bad ours smelled). However what's more disappointing is not a single staff member we dealt with during the whole saga once actually said I'm sorry or had any sympathy. Technically the guy who came to get the fan after we went down to guest services did say "sorry about this" as we took the fan out. The utter lack of communication was baffling. It was completely absurd we had to explain what happened over and over. Why couldn't they put some sort of note in our "file" everything else on the ship runs with your sea pass or giving out your cabin number. We definitely gave everyone we spoke with our cabin number multiple times. They definitely gave the impression it's the last day and we are in full prep for the next wave of guests/over caring about current guest. I feel bad for the guest getting on board after us who stay in room 1639. Your carpets will be damp and your room will smell. Hopefully since it's the beginning of your cruise, the staff will be more incline to actually care and maybe you will get the compensation/decent treatment. Celebrity has lost our trust and no longer is our default cruise line.

Embarkation

Ship experiences

Food and Dining

Onboard Activities

Entertainment

Service and Staff

Ship Quality

Cabin / Stateroom

Ports of call

Seattle, Washington

Ketchikan, Alaska

Juneau, Alaska

Skagway, Alaska

Victoria, British Columbia

Disembarkation

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