I guess this will qualify as a semi-review, but it's mostly a set of random thoughts following our holiday cruise on Celebrity Reflection.
A little about us: We're in our fifties (I still say early!), without children. We've cruised HAL (>10 years ago) a couple of times, and Royal Caribbean ever since. We're Diamond on RCI, so we came into the Captain's Club as Elite.
We originally booked a standard verandah, but ultimately upgraded to Aqua, and had cabin 1589, port side mid-ship. I'll discuss the cabin later. Oddly enough, we never actually used Persian Gardens (DW is not a spa person), but truly enjoyed Blu.
We boarded Reflection on Christmas Eve. We arrived between 11:30 and 12:00 to an absolute hot mess for check-in. Only Zenith members and suite guests had a dedicated line to enter the terminal, and security was frankly slow and inefficient. I suspect this got better later in the day, but Celebrity invited suite, Aqua, Concierge, and I believe Elite and above to board anytime after 11:30; security was not prepared for this. The remaining check-in process was very efficient.
We had two initial impressions on boarding: 1) The ship was beautiful, with a layout similar to the RCI Radiance Class, but still different, and 2) Apparently someone has decided that harassing (perhaps too strong of a word, maybe overselling?) guests with offers to upgrade drink packages AS SOON AS THEY BOARD is a good idea! We knew from Cruise Critic posts that we needed to look at the options before deciding to upgrade, and were more than a little turned off by this immediate "assault", that seriously occurred as soon as we were onboard!
We had a big breakfast that morning, so relaxed for awhile near the coffee shop, and were pleasantly surprised when cabins were opened before 1:00. We dropped out bags in our cabin, looked outside, and took off to explore the ship. We had a light lunch in the Oceanview, and generally wandered the ship. Another impression that developed through the week: Reflection has a LOT of bars! This is neither good nor bad, just an observation. By the end of the week, we still hadn't been to all of them! We did drift through Cellar Masters, and a quick look at the wine list convinved us that yes, we wanted to upgrade to the premium package, so we did.
We did not have internet as a perk, and found that Celebrity made it far more complicated than Royal to see and apply an Elite discount. We actually had to visit the iCafe to get an unlimited access plan versus the free 90 minutes. Having said that, the internet access worked very well, and was extremely easy to swith devices. The bad new, Celebrity has apparently hired at least a few competent IT folks as, unlike our last Royal cruise, logging onto a new device automatically logged you off the previous device; on Royal I found that I was frequently connected to two devices simply by logging on to another device.
We generally were very pleased with the location of our cabin. Our view in port was somewhat obstructed by the lifeboats, so we couldn't see the pier runners, but otherwise the cabin was convenient and quiet. We have mostly sailed in Junior Suites recently on RCI, and clearly the AQ cabin was smaller. The size really wasn't an issue, but there were little design features that were somewhat different that we had to adjust to. For instance, on RCI, there are side shelfs beside the mirror in the bathroom, and beside the desk in the cabin. Those didn't exist in our cabin and were the places we were used to storing things. We worked around it, but were still surprised.
Blu. I've read the posts that suggest quality is falling, and I don't have that frame of reference. We loved it and never felt the need to eat at a specialty restaurant, no matter how much they kept discounting them. We found the food and service to be excellent, and had good wait staff and an amazing sommelier. We loved it!
After an early day spent trying the martini bar, which was literally cool, but their multi-page menu doesn't include an actual martini (martini=gin and a hint of dry vermouth; I am a martini snob!), we hit on the World Class Bar, which may have a limited menu, but had two great bartenders, and the Zacapa Old Fashioned was amazing (as was the Oban 14).
Entertainment is kind of like food and very subjective, but we generally loved the entertainment. We went to I think three production shows that were extremely well done; a comedian, and the "Tenors of Rock" specialty show, which was also amazing. The "house band" was a UK group called Blind Vinyl that was an honest to goodness rock band with two guitars, a bass, a drummer, a keyboard that might or might not be used on any given number, and a great female lead vocalist. Among other things, they dared to perform covers of Santana, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Adele, and did them all very well.
No real comments on the ports of call. This cruise had the ubiquitous nearly useless 3:30 stop in San Juan (although the CVS was open), St Kitts, and Sint Maarten. I did succomb to a great Panama hat in San Juan, so it was a little less useless than before. The other two islands were great, although Orient Beach was more than a little rough while were were there.
Other random thoughts. We ended up on the premium drink package, which for right or wrong really discouraged us from going to the nightly Elite event. We did attempt to go to the senior officer's event, but it just kind of fizzled (at least for us). We had gotten used to the Diamond lounge on RCI, which doesn't exist on X, but the drink package kind of offset that loss.
All-in-all, we had a great cruise! We've decided that Celebrity is more "us" at this point in our life, at least for now, and are booked on Equinox for spring break 2018 (DW is a teacher). We were looking at repeating the holiday cruise, but we could do a sky suite, with all its perks, in March for the price of an Aqua at Christmas. So, next cruise we'll experience Luminae and Michael's Club (and probably never be able to go back)!