Wonderful 20th Anniversary Cruise

For our 20th Wedding Anniversary, we chose to book a Family Suite for this two week cruise to give us extra room a well as all the great suite amenities. This was the best thing we could have done.  The room was lovely with floor to ceiling windows giving us a full wall of windows to view the sea.  The amenities included flowers, fruit and champagne when we got to the suite. There was an upscale coffee, Expresso /Cappuccino machine in our room that we used to a great extent. But the best part was the Butler that saw to our every need and whim.  Every day he brought us a snack around 3 pm that included club sandwiches, cookies, candy and fruit and cheese.  Being in a suite also came with an upscale breakfast and lunch restaurant with great food and personal service.  Having a suite also gives you special embarkation  as well as disembarkation and baggage priority.

For dinner we most often went to the larger of the two dinning rooms where we were seated right away and were served wonderful meals.  We had read reviews about the food being sub par but our food was great.  I have found that most of the people that complain about the food on a cruise eat at the buffet where food is produced in bulk but we did try the buffet and found the food there a cut above the other cruise lines we have been on. We did not see any reason to try a specialty restaurant.

Some of the things we did was buying some art, shopping for jewelry, cooking demos, dancing and sunbathing.  There is a never ending number of things to do.

The day spent going through the Panama Canal was very interesting and we had a great place to watch the action,  Our suite had a front facing window as well as side facing and we were able to sit in the easy chairs and watch the hooking up of the pull trains and the pull of the boat, the raising and lowering of the water in the locks while staying in the cool room and eating snacks that the butler brought.  During the trip across the lake connecting the locks, we went to the specialty restaurant for suite guests where we had lunch and watched the beautiful sights going by. 

We enjoyed the ports we stopped at since they were all new to us.  There were at least two that we want to go back to for longer visits.

We were very impressed with the service on the Star and loved the beauty of the ship.  The ship was returning to the west coast and then going into dry dock for a refurb where she will get new carpets and some other upgrades.  We would love to take another trip on the Star and will be looking at her other itineraries.