We normally go royal Caribbean and are diamond members. My wife has never been a fan of the food on royal and we heard the food on Celebrity was much better. It wasn't. I would rate the dining room food to be about the same as Royal but the buffet was not as good and didn't have the variety I have seen even on small ships on royal. This is not to say you can't find something to eat. Just don't go thinking it was a foody cruise. I think the idea here is to get people to book aqua suites and above to get exclusive dining room (blu and luminae). Maybe the food used to be better before that push.

Next, Since being a diamond on royal we got elite status on celebrity. The nightly meeting with free drinks was not as important since we had a drink package. However it has become an important part of socializing on Royal. Why? Diamond lounges are small and when you are crammed together you are forced to sit with people you dont know. We have made great friends that way. On celebrity the Elite party was held in a huge bar that never seems to get used and is so spread out that people don't talk to each other. I know that our failing but still a check mark for royal for us.

We also spent a huge amount of time dealing with just the business of cruising problems. First was OBC was not all there but we got that worked out eventually. Next we had select time dining but when we got to our room we were notified that we were changed to a late seating. That does not work for us so we went to the dining room to change it and the maître d' he told us he was too busy (with 30 or so others with similar problems) to come back later. Ok that made the wife mad so we go to guest services who emails the maître d' and tells him we have select time and to fix it. She tells us to just show up whenever and all is well. Not so. When we got there, a tiny little maître d' tells us that we dont have select dining come back at 8.30. We stood our ground but he kept arguing with us saying select was full, it was our travel agents fault (we booked through celebrity) etc. Finally he said he would change it but we had to have reservations every night. We said no that we would not have booked celebrity if that had been the deal. Finally he say ok go the the back of the line and we will server you. (the line by this time was substantial and there was no line when we arrived) Again No so he gave us a pager and we finally got in. We went to the dining room almost every night and it was never crowded. I dont know what this guys problem was. Again the food was average for a cruise but the buffet kinda sucked. Read more