John Fasciana

Age: 51
Occupation: retail manager
Number of Cruises: 3
Cruise Line: Celebrity Cruises
Ship: Millennium
Sailing Date: January 6th, 2002
Itinerary: Eastern Caribbean

Cruise review, Celebrity Millennium.

This is the first review I am posting online so if it seems jumbled at times please forgive me as I will try to go in some kind of order that is easy to read and relate to.

This was our third cruise (one in each of the last three years) so they are all pretty current in my mind for comparison. The first two were on the Grand Princess and the second on the Sea Princess. This last one was on the Celebrity Millennium. I will include some comparisons as well as a review of the Millennium. If I do not mention a part of the ship you may be interested in it is because we did not use it.

Let me start with the biggest positive first, by saying the crew and the service on the Millennium was OUTSTANDING.

Every person we came in contact with was friendly and smiling most of the time. Special accolades go out to our cabin steward, Advino, our waiter, Mansur and our assistant waiter, Constantine. I must also mention our assistant Maitre d', Julio who was very nice. Many other people were great also, but these were the ones we came in contact with daily so I thought I would mention them.

Embarkation was smooth, fast and quite orderly. A great start to our cruise. We booked a room with a balcony in class 2b, our room was 7128 mid ship and very quiet. The room was nice but a little small for four. If I would have known, I would have upgraded to a 2a as it was a little bigger and would have been nicer to have extra space.

Upon checking for our seating assignments which I suggest you do first thing, it was quite easy and my request was satisfied, all eight in our party were seated together.

I will not go into every detail about the ship as you can read a brochure to get facts and pictures. I will tell you what I thought about the different rooms we frequented, service etc.

The Promenade or walking deck does not go around the ship. It allows you to only go up and down one side at a time. The only deck you can really walk or jog is on deck 11. During the mid morning it was crowded and with joggers trying to get by servers and people walking it was kind of ‘in every ones way’.

The pool area was nice. The main pool a little small but there are two side by side and then the aqua spa pool under cover so there is plenty of swimming space. Even though they were smaller it never seemed they were crowded. There is a basketball court outside on deck 12 but you have to look for it or you won’t see it. In closing out the outside portion, plenty of room for everyone (and this cruise was full) bar service and servers outside, music, towels, hot tubs and sun.

Entertainment- I will start this on a positive note also. The ships singers and dancers were GREAT! Don’t miss their Broadway show.

The only problem is they do three full shows, different themes, but we thought they could have had more variety of talent. They also had a comedian-juggler and a Dulcimer player for their main show entertainment. They also featured a harpist (excellent) a string quartet (excellent) and a piano player- did not see- along with the Celebrity orchestra. In their clubs there was a duo, a disk jockey along with a band that played outside during the day and inside the night club at night. Only one main show played at night. I guess we were spoiled with Princess as they had two shows a night with many different entertainers including hypnotist, ventriloquist, and other Vegas type shows. And if you missed them in one venue you could always see them another night.

Cruise director- was very nice but only seen him at show time. On Princess he was seen interacting many time with the guests. the club rooms were all nice but the best was the Platinum Club. Very nice and cozy. If you plan on seeing a movie forget it. They played two different movies all week and both were very old.

Now on to the food. And I will try to be brief. Breakfast. We ate only on the 10th floor Ocean grill. The food was okay. We did not like the cafeteria style line you had to go through. On Princess there were stations so if you did not want what was next you could go to another station etc. Make note they do have an omelet station. It is located way beyond the normal BF line so you wont see it unless you go to the back of the grill.

Lunch. About the same, food okay. But we did find a better alternative in the Aqua spa. Try it the lunches are light but tasty. Before I go on to dinner, they did have a burger bar, ice cream station and pizza, BUT read the cruise news to find out when they are open and where as they have times for everything. This was kind of annoying. On Princess you can get food any time of the day, even a full meal at 2am. Some times you may only be able to get pizza, so read the food times of service. One thing that really got to me. You could not get an ice tea or lemonade unless they were serving lunch or dinner???? At 3:30 in the afternoon, perhaps the hottest time of the day they shut down the ice tea station???? This policy is nonsense. Dinner. For all the hype the dinners were not as great as expected. Very good but when you expect fabulous that’s a little disappointing. They have to learn how to make a good pasta dish. Not one was exceptional. Neither was the soup or salads. One meal on Princess was better than the next, and with each meal they would offer a special pasta dish prepared especially for that meal. They were all exceptional. Maybe the French don’t make pasta sauces. I would rate the dinner food very good but would not go the next step up. Desserts were good also. One negative, you had to pay for cappuccino at dinner that is if you could get it ordered. Twice I waited and it was finally brought after we were all done with dinner. Of course our assistant Maitre d' covered it for me which was very nice. On Princess it was no problem, nor was there a charge.

One other tidbit. On Princess they were cleaning the rest rooms constantly. Not only did Celebrity close them but the women’s public rooms would be out of service many times due to lack of attention.

All in all we had a great time. As I said in the beginning, the crew on the Millennium was TOPS and this made the week very enjoyable. On the question air we were asked to fill out at the end of the trip it asked, would you sail Celebrity again? we did say yes but our first choice certainly would be Princess.

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