Celebrity Solstice Cruise Reviews - Reviews

This was our first cruise and we enjoyed the experience

DISLIKES: (1) Our co-ordinator was Jessica Dickason who was very pleasant and helpful but she had never been on a cruise ship before. We are surprised that Cruises Only uses agents who have never

cruised before. Jessica misled us in a major way when we asked her on which side of the ship we should select our Balcony cabin. She said any side was OK. This turned out not to be true and is not true if the ship cruises straight along side the shore line. Obviously the STARBOARD  side along the shore line  is the "better" side of the vessal. We chose the PORT  side and missed close views of the terrain and ports that were always along the STARBOARD  side. WE missed close views of the Fiords and the coast line of Alaska. We understand that Jessica has moved on to another job.

(2) It was overcast and rainy for most of the cruise therefore we were not able to view the majesty of Alaska which was hidden. WE booked a $900 excursion thru Cruises Only to watch bears but due to the heavy rains the streams were flooded and the bear viewing site was a wash out. We realize that Cruises Only cannot control the weather but we had plenty of dates to choice from but again Jessica Dickason was of no help.   

(3) The entertainment and the Life programs were generally very good except for the shows put on by the Celebity staff which lacked production value and were pretty amateaurish

LIKES: Excellent ship; Excellent Food; Excellent Service and great cabin. Really enjoyed the on-ship time

The entire Cruise was fantastic. The staff was courteous, efficient and most willing to help.

The food was excellent and the entertainment first class.

The voyage was "fogged" and  thus some beauty loss but truely a voyage to remember and cherrish.

This cruise did a wonderful job introducing us to the cruise experience--wonderful accommodations, great food and service, taking us to spectacular destinations. 

After 13 cruises on various cruise lines...4 being in Alaska, this cruise on the Solstice exceeds them all.

The beds were very comfortable (they provided memory foam toppers and pillows), the bathroom was much roomier and the shower has thoughtfully designed.....including a rod across the corner for ladies to rest foot on when shaving legs! the balcony had very comfortable chairs that allowed for several reclining positions. The buffet upstairs had an immense selection, my favorite was the cooked to order salmon at nights!  The ice cream bar was a hit with grandkids....no limit, no extra charge!

The atrium stretched from deck 3 up to the top of the ship (12 decks high!), with a suspended ficus tree that was enormous...it definitely was a "WOW" factor when first boarding the ship!  The embarkation was seamless...as was disembarkation. the staff were well trained in welcoming and caring for guests!   I'd love to sail again on that ship!

The ship's staff really stood out in being courteous, friendly, caring, and attentive to our needs and likes/dislikes. This is especially true of our waiter, Allwyn, and assistant waiter, Ramdani, during the nightly sit down dinners in the Grand Epernay dining room.

The ship, Solstice, is really set up as a 5-star hotel, with banks of glass elevators, theaters, beautifully appointed Grand Epernay dining room, Ocean View Café, other restaurants, and on-board activities. The variety and quality of the food were both exceptional, with outstanding service.

Our balcony stateroom was very comfortable, especially the bed.

The only shortcomings in the cruise were the rather long "at sea" times, that accounted for almost one-half of the total cruising time. The on-board programs and amenities did try to relieve this tedium, however.

My family and I really enjoyed our week long cruise on the Celebrity Solstice.  Beautiful ship, great food and wonderful staff made the journey to Alaska a pleasure.  My family has been on a several other cruise lines (Royal Caribbean, Carnival, Norwegian and Princess) and this by far was the best quality of food we have had on a boat.

We brought along our 20 month old daughter and our waiter, Shashi and his assistant Charlie provided the best service and special attention to her and our entire group.  We then requested them every night for the rest of the trip and they continued to provide excellent service.  They just did things like make sure they got food for my daughter right away to have something to distract her with or brought out special fruit plates of just her favorites.  Shashi would cut the harder to eat meats for the older people in our group, just the little things that were above and beyond what we ever expected.

We had a fabulous time!  Ship was great, excursions and scenery were awesome. All three excursions (lumberjack show in Ketchikan, Whalewatching/Mendenhall glacier/Salmon Bake in Juneau and then the gold panning/dog sled, in Skagway); were a great time for ages 7 to 70. Have amazing pictures of humpback whales feeding.

This was the Best Cruise to Alaska, the Posts were exceptional, the food was exciting and the shows and Staff were professional.

I hope all your ships have a Martini Bar and someone trained to make 12 Martinis at once.

Patti the Cruise Director was great, informative every day at shows and during Breakfast.

The Performers put on over 5 different Shows, each with a different level of difficulty, but did so wonderfully.

Have been on Carnival before, but that was more a Family and Noisy cruise, Celebrity caters to a more professional level of Adult Passengers, even when they brought their Children.

The Room Steward was great and took care of every detail that we needed during the Cruise, including Stateroom set up, especially for special needs prior to sailing.

This was our first cruise and our excitement was huge! The Solstice is truly a luxury liner and has spoiled us for any other cruise ship.  It is a magnificient ship, an outstanding crew and an unbelieveably beautiful journey! We want to go again!

Had a great time on the beautiful Solstice. The ship is beautiful and the service was excellent. We had dinner in two of the restaurants, Murano and the Tuscan Grill and we were very happy with the food and the service. They were definitely worth the extra price. I was especially happy with all of the gulten free choices everywhere on the ship. The coffee shop even had gluten free muffins and cookies.

Had rain in Juneau and our tour was cancelled but great weather at our other ports. I would encourage people to go on an excursion at each port. We did a hike in Ketchican, a boat ride in Skagway and we would have done a float plane ride to Taku Lodge if the weather hadn't caused that tour to be cancelled.

On the ship we attended the shows, played bingo, had excellent spa services, and enjoyed the gym. Our favorite part of the spa is the Persion room with the heated tile chairs - they are amazing and worth the extra charge.

I would highly recommend this cruise.

When I was booking my cruise I was reassured by agent that cruise provides kosher meal.Let me tell you that so called meal is not edible .I would like to see people that make them eat it for a week.I complain to the  food coordinator on board and was told that they have this problem all the time and Florida head office had done nothing to change supplier.On top of this while on the ship you have to order food in advent or you will be eating fruits and vegetables only.Then was another issue with paper plater.every time I went to dining I had to find someone in charge to ask for paper plates and they would go to look for them that took at least ten minutes each time.Only few days into cruise they finally started keeping few in the dining area

My family and I just returned from our cruise vacation on the Celebrity Solstice. It was a good vacation overall with some small disappointments.

The best part about this specific cruise was the entertainment. The shows and performances were amazing. "Solstice the Show" and "The Ghost Light" were two amazing performances; the on-board performance group did a great job singing, dancing, and with the acrobatics. Further, the talks by Brent Nixon were enlightening and comical, he is a great host for this specific cruise. And my family and I liked the Rockstar Juggler Mike Price and especially liked Jason Bishop for his amazing performance, he was really funny and his act was well conceived and executed. Overall with all these performances our entire family was entertained and delighted; my son even wishes to have Jason perform at his school!

The other great thing about this cruise was the room and room service. We had the stateroom with the balcony, and it was a great place to kick back between activities. The balcony is spacious and offered great views during the trips through the passages. The on-board entertainment included a nice selection of free movies and kids programming so that the entire family was satisfied. Further, the room service was excellent. We were on floor 6 and our room host Arun was amazing; he not only kept the room immaculate, but every time we saw him in the hallway he was super friendly and was a joy to converse with.

The last thing that we really enjoyed was the Solarium, which was basically an indoor pool. This is amazing as normally the pool is useless on the Alaskan cruises due to the weather, but this pool was nice at all times of the day and night, even in the cold Alaskan climate. However, the issue with the pool was that you had to be 16 or older to use it besides the 1 hour family time from 4:00 to 5:00pm, and during that time it was full of little kids. My son

Some of the disadvantages of this cruise compared to other cruises I've been on was the buffet. The variety was really lacking for this buffet, and about half the stuff wasn't good. I liked the fish, Indian buffet and soups, but some of the meats and salads sections were lacking and not tasty. The cookies were horrible; I was expecting the nice larger deli style cookies but found the cheap, small, hard ones instead. Further, the drinks were cheap "cocktail mix" (I saw them filling it once) no-name stuff that were not very good; to get the good beverages you had to pay something like $8.00 per day + gratuity, which is too expensive compared to how much we put into the cruise already. The Norwegian Pearl had fresh apple and orange juice in the mornings and I was expecting similar on this cruise but was definitely let down.

The main restaurant on the ship "The Grand Ephany" was nice and had really good selections, but could get pretty crowded. The Alaskan Salmon dish that is always on the menu is really great and was always enjoyable when the rotating dish wasn't as good. The only issue was that the wait times could get bad; I'd recommend getting the select dining to be able to schedule any times as due to times at port it was easier to eat early some nights, and later others.

Some of the other disadvantages were the overall ship layout. The Solstice being a newer ship had a high rating for the actual ship. However, I found it to be lacking in many areas. For instance, the Norwegian Pearl had a really nice deck on level 7 with shuffle board courts. The only deck on the Solstice was really for maintenance; sure it was accessible but there was nothing there and it didn't have a view. The Pearl also had this really fun lounge room in the back of the ship with bowling, some arcade games and a couple lounge areas with couch beds. The lounges in the Solstice were more basic and didn't offer as much entertainment.

Overall I'd rate this about a 3 to 3.5 stars out of 5.

Solstice is a beautiful, clean ship with attentive, courteous amazing staff.  Having traveled on royal Caribbean, princess, Ncl and carnival, celebrity ranks near the top.

Not what we expected. The scenery wasn't what I expected to see. Got some great pics but we expected to see glaciers and glaciers calving but saw ice pieces on the water. The float plane ride was the highlight of the trip, the helicopter to the dog sledding was cancelled after waiting in line for an hour to board a bus to the airport was a huge disappointment and the train to the Yukon was just okay. 

Lots of rain and cold weather for the first 4 days wasn't expected. The staff on board the Solstice was awesome! I requested gluten free beer, as I have celiac disease, and the crew had 2 cases put on the ship prior to departure. Needless to say, I wasn't the only one requesting GF beer so they ran out after 3 days! I would, however, go on another Celebrity cruise but not to Alaska. I'm still trying to figure out why so many cruise lines go there with so many other exotic destinations all over the world. Been there, done that and don't need to go there again. 

okay, but dissappointed I did not see any glacier on th shoreline form the ship.  All brochures and commercials show people just floating by them.  We paid a lot more for the veranda and it was a waste of money.  It was a nice room but also are the smaller inside ones.  I wish we had saved that money and spent it towards expensive excursion to see a glacier first hand.   Four or five "shows" on board were a series f talks about animals.  The speaker was knowlegable, but way too animated.  He was perfect for keeping the attention of all of the way too many bratty kids on board.  Found out people who have enough money to take kids on a cruise, probably shouldn't.  

I think this trip had it pros and cons.

Ship by itself is beautiful and has a lot of lounges to rest, to read, and to isolate yourself from others (if this is what you are looking for). 

There were a lot of activities that we did not use because when you booked trips there is very little time left for any of them. The best shows were educational with Mr. B. Nixon - he is very talented in what he is doing, knowledgeable in the subject, and very intertaining. Evening shows were not as good as we were expecting them to be.

Cabins are very clean, and all the bathrooms in the ship are very clean and well equipped.

Overall, we think that the cruise is very expensive in terms of all costs including overpricing trips, overpriced drinks, special restaurants prices, cover charges, etc. 

After extensive research and input from blogs, we chose Celebrity Solstice for our first cruising experience.  We were not disappointed and know we made the right choice.  Every aspect of the ship met or in most cases exceeded our wildest imaginations.  Specific onboard experiences that stand out include:

Staff:  Waitstaff was very attentive and eager to please.  Once they knew what we wanted they were quick to provide in a most expeditious manner.  Courtesy and professionalism were hallmarks. They were very engaging in conversation.  Cabin stewards were always considerate of our privacy and upon our departure immediately cleaned and serviced the cabin.  They were willing to greet us and briefly talk even if engaged in cleaning acivities.  They treated us as though we were  cherished guests.

Food:  Outstanding in the main dining room.  Excellent changing daily choices with a static number of dishes as well.  Steaks were perfectly prepared.   Buffet had great choices but some dishes lacked the tasty factor.  However it is a buffet for 2800 different palates. We did not visit any of the speciality restaurants.  The Aquaspa cafe had a very good selection of alternative, healthy foods.

Activities and shows:  There is no down time on this boat.  Every waking minute contains opportunities for learning and personal enrichment, fun, and entertainment, The fund raiser for breast cancer was especially meaningful.  The glass show was something we wished we had attended more often.  The off boat excursion to Tracy Arm is NOT to be missed.  It was the highlight of all the excursions we took.

This was our 15th cruise and we both agreed, the best yet! We've cruised Royal Caribbean, Carnival, Norwegian, Holland American, Renaissance and Celebrity and have, overall, like Celebrity best. We had even been on this very same Solstice ship, on a 2010 Caribbean cruise, and they hadn't updated it much, maybe changed the art work and artifacts. We liked the ship the first time and still do. But the itinerary - Alaska - this time was so great! Majestic, constantly amazingly awe-inspiring scenery. We saw ice floes and glaciers, and a mama bear with her two cubs, dozens of bald eagles, five or six whales, dolphins, a seal swimming across a pond, a seal stretched out on its back sunning on an ice floe, five or six sea lions sunning on a buoy. The evening sky was indescribably beautiful -- one night a huge moon seemed to be at arm's reach, with its sunbeams across the water, then set behind mountains and icy sea, so bright that it cast rays as a sunset does! We watched this for 10-20 minutes in awe! And at the same time -- this 3 a.m. -- the sun was coming up, and the sky around it turning peach and rose and cream!  Our three tours, with a Tlinkit guide who was terrific in Ketchikan to the Saxman Village and environs and Ketchikan city; on a boat whale watching out of Juneau; and a bus tour to White Summit Pass with lots of info on the Klondike Gold Rush and back to the frontier town of Skagway, were all terrific. (These we booked through Cruise.Com rather than through the ship).

But the very best thing about this cruise, for us, were the wonderful presentations by Brent Nixon on wildlife and his narration through the Inside Passage and those of his wife, Mary Amanda, who was just terrific, on the history of Ketchikan, Skagway, the Gold Rush, and especially the shady ladies of the times plus a memorable presentation on the Last Song played on the Titanic as it was sinking. These two were terrific -- witty, animated, enthused, informed, intelligent, folks giving talks that we will always remember and that really enhanced the value of the cruise to us. It was so good to hear a ship's presentation on something other than shopping! Huzzah for the Alaska Solstice, and for the Nixons -- may their tribes increase!

It was OK this was our 12+ cruise. My husband and I would not recommend for our age group.  The music was much much to loud through out the ship even when a band was not playing it was piped in.  When we went to the library to read we could not because of the music. We ended up in our cabin, if we had wanted to read in our cabin we could have saved a lot of money and stayed home. We ate in the Blu, the food sizes were great not a lot of waste. There was usually only one choose that we would pick each night (not a lot to pick from). The Oceanview cafe was below what we are use to on cruises. The food was very spicy and not good for mid life stomaches. Several times I could not find anything to eat. Our last night we had been out and when we returned to the ship which was not late there was only hambergers and french fries, we are not kids and paid to much for the trip to eat hambergers and french fries. Our cabin was very nice and the crew with it were very nice and helpful. The 40's night in the one lounge was a BIG dissapointment.  We would have liked just some nice music not people dancing around making stupid actions. The shows for the most part were not worth seeing. Some piano music would have been great to sit and let your dinner digest. The only good part was that we were with friends.

They ran out of tea on Wed and vanilla soft serve ice cream. also we docked at Victoria Canada at 6pm and had to be back on the boat at 11:45. We sailed for two days and should have been able to get to Victoria earlier in the day so we had time to sight see. Ship was very clean and service in our rooms was great. Not sure I would take Celebrity again. The shows were great and Brent Nixon and Miss Amanda were awsome.