Celebrity Cruises - Mercury Review

I would start this review with the observations that either you love cruising or you don't.  I now know I don't love cruising, but despite this, I would expect any cruise line I traveled on to treat me with respect, to apologize when service is not up-to-par and to (at least) try to retain me as a customer no matter what my feelings on cruising are.

It seems clear Celebrity does not agree.

Our story: After hearing about the great experiences our "cruising friends" related, we anticipated that our first "cruise experience" would be (basically) good. However, from the start a number of elements, most of them small and some, but not all out of Celebrity's control ruined the experience:

- Our story begins with the failure to notify us that our luggage would not be delivered to our cabin until almost 10 pm the first day. While I realize the need to screen luggage is critical now-days, the least Celebrity could do, would be to notify us of the delay (we were told the luggage would be brought to our cabin "soon" after we checked in). A small failure, but it seems to have set the tone for the rest of the trip.

- Structural flaws in our cabin (loud popping noised at random intervals of about 5 to 10 minutes), combined with rough seas led to a sleepless night. With no engineering night coverage, we were initially offered the opportunity to switch cabins, but after a 45 minute wait at 1 in the morning, with repeated phone calls which we initiated (not the staff), we were told the ship was full. We wandered the ship the rest of the night looking for an open lounge or couch to catch a few winks, largely to no avail.

- The next day we were promised an engineering fix  - the issue was the wall interface to the ceiling which, due to torqueing caused by the rough seas produced a loud "pop". The crew wedged wooden stakes into the interface which held until about midnight at which point the popping commenced again. Once again we were told there was no solution for that night - another night of wandering the halls of the ship.

 - The next day, the management stepped up and offered us an upscale room on a lower deck. The story was that the passenger failed to show so they could not give us the room the first or second night (although our paperwork clearly states we would have forgone rights to our noisy cabin had we missed the ship).

- The next two nights were blissfully silent, but the damage had already been done. A 6 day cruise which started with two days of sleep deprivation is not exactly the vacation I imagined.

Needless to say, after two sleepless nights and a number of other minor inconveniences I sent a letter to Celebrity (actually I would have expected them to follow up with me, but customer service like that is clearly not their forte). I was very disappointed in the response.  I would have anticipated something more substantial from them than a "we're sorry you didn't like the cruise and hope you will join us again some time" letter.

I would say that despite Celebrity's "up-market" pretenses, the business strategy is nothing more than being a "cruise machine" where you are a number to be processed. As with any industrial process, there are defects. However, if <<we>> never cruise again because of it, I don't think Celebrity feels that will hurt their overall volume.

Draw your own conclusions about management of a company that treats first time customers as disposable, but I will probably never cruise again and certainly not with Celebrity.