A tired old boat

Our immediate reaction on boarding was one of disappointment, having sailed with Celebrity before and been impressed this was a big let down. Apparently the Century is to be sold on to the Chinese later this year, hence Celebrity had spent little or no money on this ship. Scratched and chipped furniture, rusty and bent trim, poor condition hand rails. The public rooms were generally ok, but looking tired.

The food in the self service restaurant was good, but in the main dining room only ok.

Shows varied between very good and ok. The theatre company’s show wasn’t very good. The cruise director was excellent and his own talk on his life as a Hollywood stuntman most enjoyable. The lecturers were good.

The ships staff were very good and helpful when needed. My wife was taken ill on the first night and everyone was concerned and helpful. We do not know why she was sick, could have been something on the ship, impossible to tell.

Ports of call – some good, some not so good. Vietnam was enjoyable. Honk Kong was chilly and the cruise terminal 40 mins from central Hong Kong. The heavily promoted Hop on Hop off bus tour was a shambles. Our complaints were ignored.

Manila is traffic hell and proved difficult to leave and board the ship due to port traffic. Not a place we will return to.
Boracay was good, called the new Bali, sunny busy great for water sports and the beach.
Kota Kinabalu (Borneo) was uninspiring. Other than ticking off Borneo we could see no reason to visit. We walked into the town. Wandered around and returned to the ship – no reason to visit. No idea why Celebrity took us there.

Singapore was great.

As always the organised tours from Celebrity were expensive. However, the Vietnam tours were good and because of the distance from the port a safe bet.

We enjoyed the varied mix of other passengers. there were a lot of Aussie – who were open and friendly. We also met folk from the states, Israel, Malta, Poland and Mexico – all with tales to tell. This made for enjoyable meal times and sea days.

Celebrity constantly push to sell you more. We hadn’t finished our first lunch when they were exhorting us to book another cruise. Buy, this buy that – we don’t really need or want this.

Overall, despite some disappointments we had an interesting and enjoyable time. However. we probably will avoid Celebrity next time.