We went on this Celebrity Infinity cruise with several friends from our church who were all very interested in seeing the Holy Land. As I'd previously had a marvelous experience with Celebrity to Bermuda in 1995--indeed, of nine or so cruises I had taken, they were my favorite (prior to Royal Caribbean's acquisition of the company in 1997). So, it was quite a surprise to get to the ship terminal in Rome and discover that the culture had changed.

Perhaps Royal Caribbean's culture had overtaken Celebrity's--I cannot be sure, as I've also taken Royal Caribbean, and didn't remember the awful hard-sell when I sailed that line. However, as soon as we hit the ship terminal (around 10:45 am, and a good point in Celebrity's favor is that we were one of the first to board in a smoothly-organized fashion), there were employees coming up to us and selling drinks packages, themed restaurants, etc. Multiple people, multiple times. This surprised me.

It did not stop there, either. The moment we headed to the Oceanview Cafe to rest prior to our stateroom availability, there they were--easily 20 pitches from 20 different bar staff to sign up for drinks packages. So, a sour start. The funny thing was that I already had a drinks package, but, once they heard that, they started to pester the friends with us that didn't. When declined, they left pretty quickly, only for the next person pitching the package to come by minutes later. Read more