Let me begin by saying that these are my own personal observations. Every person comes aboard with different expectations of a cruise. On any cruise one person can have a totally horrible experience and another can have the time of their life. But I know I benefit from a wide range of opinions when I’m trying to pick a cruise so I feel it can’t hurt to report my experience for others to compare. I have previously cruised on Royal Caribbean and Princess so that is what I am comparing things to. As Celebrity’s slogan is “exceeding expectations”, I was anticipating a pretty high quality experience. So that said, here’s my take on the Galaxy...

Overall, this was a pleasant, relaxing cruise. But Celebrity did not exceed my expectations. I was surprised at how standard most things were, instead of above average as they claim. Lets start with the food, since they claim to have the best cuisine. It was good, but not great. Examples: runny scrambled eggs, soggy French toast, fatty veal, dry tenderloin. The breakfast buffet had essentially the same choices every single day. Usually there was one different selection. The buffet itself was presented very simply. One thing I noticed right away was how they were obviously trying to improve the buffet experience by having trays lined with linens, a server who hands you a tray and utensils, and waiters to carry your tray to your table. But what I found myself thinking was “This doesn’t really do anything for me. I’d rather have better food choices and carry my tray myself!”. The lunch buffet seemed to always have very heavy dinner foods. Only once was I able to get a sandwich,! and they also had a salad bar (and a meager one, at that) only once. I sorely missed the daily salad bar aboard Princess. It was extensive and available all afternoon long, great for late lunches! On the Galaxy, if you wanted something to eat after 2pm, you were pretty much left with having a hamburger or pizza. (The only late-afternoon food available.) There was an “afternoon tea” from 4pm – 5pm, which had a few finger sandwiches and tons of sweets. (Note: We never tried the room service. But our tablemates told us that the selection was less than stellar. The only sandwich they were able to get was PB&J.) Another thing I missed from Princess was having the beverages available. The Galaxy provided lemonade, punch and iced tea during meals. But right after the buffet ended, they were promptly closed. Princess always had at least one drink station open where you could get a glass of iced tea. As such, we ended up spending quite a bit more on bar drinks (soda, wine, and a fe! w cocktails) than we ever have. ($400+ total bar bill) The dining room. Again, so-so. We had the late seating, which was supposed to be at 8:30pm. Several nights they opened late. We would see people from the early seating still coming out at 8:15pm! They would open the doors for our seating usually about 5 to 10 minutes late. If you had lunch at 1:00, you’re pretty hungry by 8:30pm, you want to eat! We were at a table for 4 with one other couple. I was a little disappointed with our table. I realize we all can’t have window seats, but we were way over on the far side, along the emergency exit wall, near the front. What I stared at for 7 days was a blank white wall with a red exit sign above the door. The dining room was supposed to be very elegant and beautiful, I wouldn’t know. I had my back to the whole thing. (Actually, I did get up one night and took a little stroll. It was very pretty. A lovely staircase led down to the lower level. The ceilings could’ve been a little taller, though. ) Now, the service. Definitely nothing! spectacular. Our waiters were VERY slow the first night. (They did improve as the cruise went on.) When we were eating our salad, most of the tables around us were already on dessert. Our head waiter never remembered the menu choices. When he would bring out the dessert platter, he had a cheat-sheet so he could tell us what the choices were. He also never remembered our names. (We played a little joke on him and wore nametags one night.) The others were better. The assistant waiter always remembered that I don’t drink coffee. And the wine steward was very friendly and chatty, delightful company! Our thought is that the head waiter is really the leader (after all, he gets the biggest tip). So if anyone should exceed expectations, it should be him. So... he should surely remember what deserts are offered, and he would probably remember our names (as they always have on our other cruises). The service was also very slow when we ate breakfast in the dining room. We only went ! once, then decided we’d stick with the buffet. We were seated at a long table with 9 others. They took our order quickly, but then people who arrived after us got their food first. I was pleasantly surprised when they remembered the 2 glasses of juice I’d ordered. The meal? Well, I’ve had better eggs benedict at IHOP.
The dinner food was also so-so. One of their salads was simply a chunk of iceberg lettuce with a few tomato slices on the side. My tenderloin was a little overcooked and pretty dry. One night, my veal was terribly fatty. The next time I had veal it was a little better. Positives: the Celebrity dressing gets an A+, yummy! (It has 20+ top-secret ingredients, so I’m told...) Some good sauces, and tasty desserts. The first midnight buffet we ate since we boarded pretty late. Pretty mediocre. Very greasy fried chicken, so-so ribs, good rice. We never had any of the other midnight buffets. Another thing I wanted to mention – they had one “Grand Buffet”. It was beautiful. Tons of intricately carved food sculptures, lots of ice sculptures and lovely presentation. But what I was thinking as I was walking through was why didn’t they put a little more effort into the daily buffets instead of all of this just once? It would’ve made the other buffets a little more classy (and went along ! better with the white-gloved waiters) to have had a few of those ice/food sculptures around those, too. And the viewing processional that they had for the Grand Buffet was ridiculous. It took WAY too long for all the passengers to go through the line to “view” the buffet before it was eaten. If they wanted it to be seen before it was consumed, then it should’ve just been an open invitation instead of this incredibly long line. (Both Princess and Royal Caribbean had lovely buffets every night. We were able to get plenty of pictures as people were wandering around them. No line necessary. )

Okay, on to other service. Right off the bat, the service we received was definitely not on the same level as Princess. One thing in particular annoyed us. We arranged our own air, but purchased Celebrity’s transfers. The baggage tags specifically stated that if we purchased our own air, not to put the tags on our luggage. Our travel agent had told us that we needed to claim our own luggage, and then meet the representatives down in the baggage claim. Fine, we have no problem with that. So when we arrive at the airport, there are representatives there to meet us at the gate. They are asking everyone if they put the tags on their bags. We tell them we didn’t, as instructed. We tell them that we were told to go to baggage claim first. They have no idea what we’re talking about. Eventually another representative comes along who does seem to know whats going on. She tells us where to go to get down to the baggage claim, and that they’ll be someone down there. Well, there isn’t a! nyone down there, not right away. After about 15 minutes, we see someone from Celebrity. At this point we have gotten our luggage off the carousel. So he tells us to put the Celebrity tags on the luggage, and then put the bags back on the carousel! We couldn’t believe it! All this hoopla and then the luggage just goes back into the system where their people will pick it up anyway! We were expecting that we would have to take our luggage to a holding area or to a bus or something, which is fine. But to have us go all the way down there, meanwhile they’re holding the bus for us, to just put the stupid Celebrity tags on them and come back up was ridiculous. I have no doubt that if we would’ve just put the tags on before we left, our bags would’ve been picked up with everyone else’s and none of them would’ve cared that we weren’t forced to go down to tag the bags. Ok, that’s my piece about that. Moving on... When we were at embarkation, the agent was very short with us when we ! didn’t have one of the forms filled out. It had not been in the packet with the others so that’s why we had missed it. Then we get to our stateroom and our keys are not there as indicated. Also, our stateroom steward is nowhere to be found. On all of our other cruises, the steward has always been there to introduce himself and offer any assistance. We found another steward and told him that we didn’t get our keys. He told us to go down to Guest Relations and ask them to get us new ones. Now I’m not saying it was a horrible inconvenience or it upset us, but the standard service is that your keys are waiting for you in the room. In my opinion, above-average service would’ve been if that steward had gone and gotten our keys and brought them to us, not just told us to go get them ourselves. In regards to our cabin steward, he did his job. But didn’t “exceed expectations”. Throughout the entire cruise, I never once met him. Each day the bed would be made, but he never really cle! aned the bathroom very well and never did any tidying up. On a positive note, he always had our pitcher filled with fresh water and our ice bucket full. The bed was always made promptly, and the laundry service was always returned promptly as well.

Now, entertainment. The shows were okay. I would agree with what I have read in other reviews – it was as if the performers weren’t quite up to the level that the costumes and sets were. There were glitzy costumes and lots of music, but the dancers weren’t in synch and some couldn’t keep up. The acrobats took 3 tries to complete one of their stunts, and they didn’t close the curtains to change over some of the sets. The singers in the lounges were all very pleasant. When they didn’t have production shows in the theatre, the entertainers were better. They had a violinist one night who was excellent. They also had a juggler/comedian/magician. Although kind of a hodge-podge of jokes, stunts, and tricks, it was still somewhat entertaining. The theatre itself was very beautiful and well designed with good views and comfortable seats. Ok, a few comments about everything else. One of the reasons we picked Celebrity was all the activities they claimed to have on board. The volleyball and basketball courts were great to have, and the spa was very nice, as indicated. But I was expecting my spa services to be explained to me before they just jumped right in and started applying the treatment. The tv had a system to book shore excursions on it, but when I tried to book both of ours, I was unable to and had to go to the desk anyway. ( However, it was still very easy as I just had to drop my requests in a box. We got everything we requested. ) I would’ve liked to see better descriptions of the shore excursions, and some type of description for the movies playing in the cinema. Not even a poster around to give us an idea of the movie. They also re-played the same movies most days. They also replayed the same movies over and over again on tv. The only regular channels we got were CNN (from Europe) and TBS. Again,! these things were all better on Princess and RCCL. Another really nice feature on Princess was the re-entry procedure when in port. They had room cards that were scanned. You just had to swipe your card when you came on board. With the Galaxy, you had to present your card, as well as a photo-id to a crewmember when you came back on. Just by showing your card, they still have no idea if everyone’s back or not. And it was a little slower and less efficient than how it was on Princess. (No one ever had their picture-id ready.) With the scanning on Princess, it moved very quickly and the computer could tell them instantly if it had counted everyone or not. And for security, the computer would take a picture of your face at the same time that you scanned your card. So it was a really fast, efficient system. As far as other amenities/activities on Galaxy – pathetic library. Maybe a total of 50 books, many empty shelves. A very nice computer room – with no computers!! Just empty ! desks. A nice video-arcade for the kids, first time I’ve seen that. And finishing on a positive note, things I really liked -- TONS of deck space. I could always find a quiet place to go, and there were plenty of deck chairs to go around, even when we were at sea! Loved having the v-ball and b-ball courts, definitely going to look for that in the future! (Weren’t available on our past cruises.) Several fun activities planned, I wish there had been a better turnout by my fellow cruisers! We enjoyed all the fresh fruit in the morning, and the cookies in the afternoon.
So there you have it. As I said, overall a very nice, relaxing vacation. But the impressions made upon my husband and myself were not of superior service and food. We would probably take Celebrity again, but it wouldn’t be our first choice. (I am actually looking forward to taking another RCCL cruise now that they have some newer ships with more amenities and services! ) I’m sure if you ask someone else that was aboard with us, they’d say it was the best cruise of their life. So there you go. Just another opinion… :>

Feel free to email me with questions, bschipke@usa.net.