11/6/2008

By warusfca

• December 9, 2008

The Celebrity Mercury is in good shape considering her age, however, we did have a problem with the sailing date because the previous cruise had to return to Honolulu to offload sick passengers. The ship departed San Diego one day later than scheduled and in order to keep the ship on the advertised scheduled sailing dates and the scheduled 24 hour stop in Honolulu was eliminated.

The main problem with taking a Hawaii cruise from the west coast is the five days in each direction in the water, is too many particularily on the return, it seemed endless and after only two days I was ready to depart the ship.

Celebrity is making an effort to upgrade the stateroom facilities, dining menues and entertainment. Only two of these three were in evidence on the Mercury, the stateroom was neat, clean and well maintained by the room steward and the new menu in the main dining room as good to very good depending upon the day of the week and which meal you were having. Brunch on one of the return leg sea days was a disaster, under staffed, long lines and COLD food........The buffet on the Lido is OK if you don't mind get pushed, shoved and stepped on by your fellow passengers and the menu for breakfast and lunch is dull and uninteresting (only exception is the pasta/pizza area)

The entertainment overall on this cruise was adequate, nothing special except for one lounge singer.

Another major problem with the Mercury was the tender issue in both ports where ships tenders were needed to move the masses from ship to shore. The tender service was slow, poorly organized and just plain bad especially in Kona.

Celebrity cruises has suffered some setbacks since the RCL takeover but by in large it is still a premium cruise line in every way and is now a head above Princess cruise lines but not in the class with Holland America or Crystal cruises....

On a scale of 1 to 10........I would rate Celebrity as a strong 7 in all catagories. Try a Celebrity cruise, you will like them