Celebrity Cruises, Mercury Review

Overall Rating

Excellent service and cuisine. Decent cabin space. Fireworks show at midnight on July 3rd. Seapass card (cashless system) is nice.

Mandatory 15% gratuity for drinks. Anoying "rocking" motion on one section of boat. Could have used more port time.

AVOID THE DISCOVER SHOPPING BOOK on the Celebrity Cruises - it's a waste of money! (Note that ALL shops described in the presentation and the books have PAID FOR THEIR representation. This is noted is very small print in the book but not in the presentation.) Thus, there's a conflict of interest that the presenter doesn't tell you about and you're lead to believe that these are the "best places" to shop. Fooey! When booking excursions, think about what you can do where you live and what can only be done in Alaska. I went on a fishing excursion - this was cool but was only about 2.5 hours of fishing and really only one of the five on board was fishing at a time. The skipper did everything except reel in the fish. Not quite what I expected. I could have done this in California. Oh, and sending Salmon home? Yep, there's an $80 minimum charge and then $4.50/lb over 17lbs. The whale watching was nice, but we could also do that in California. We should have taken a trip to the dog sleds or halo over a glacier. People who did these trips said they were amazing. We boarded the ship just before noon. This was great because there was no line - we walked right through! Our bags arrived earlier than most others too. I like the fact that Celebrity hasn't made the service tipping a mandatory item as other cruise lines have. Our waiter was "ok," but not very friendly. His assistant was wonderful. Thus, we adjusted their tips accordingly. The ship was very clean and we had no problems with any of the services on board, save the Discover Shopping book. (We requested our money back and it was refunded on the last day.) We noticed that many excursions are offered in port for quite a bit less than through Celebrity. Be careful though - Celebrity will wait to leave port if one of their excursions is late but won't wait if you booked through someone else and are running late. Nightly sushi bar was fantastic! Drink prices are about normal but include a 15% gratuity. You need to know this because if you hand the server a tip after delivering the drinks, they don't inform you that you've already tipped them on the bill. :( Our stateroom attendant was great and went well beyond the normal. Children are supposed to stay out of certain areas but that wasn't the case. For example, a couple of the spas are adults only, but we never found them without children in them. The navigator club at night also had children running around. Hubbard glacier was gorgeous! We got in real close and were able to stay and watch for a while. The Seapass card allows for cashless purchased throughout the cruise. This was great because we didn't have to carry cash or credit cards. Only wish we could have a nightly report on the TV if needed. Internet access and wireless is available for an outrageous $0.75/minute (or less in bulk.) You can download digital pictures for free onto their computers and then burn a CD of them for $15. (For twice that price, you can buy a 512mb card for your camera.) All-in-all, we had a great time and this was by far the best vacation we've ever had.