Celebrity Cruises
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Celebriy Infinity from Barcelona Part 1 of 2
Our story started upon booking the Cruise through Iglu Cruises. We were notified that we had direct flights to Barcelona from Manchester (both ways) which we were delighted with until we received a change to flight notification from Celebrity, on the outward flight we now had to change at Paris. Come the morning of departure we left for Manchester at 2am in the morning, our flight was due to leave at 6am. Unfortunately the aircraft had to be de-iced whilst we were onboard which took 15 minutes and that meant we had missed our take off slot and resulted in a 30 minute delay to our flight. We arrived at Charles De Gaulle Airport over an hour later and had to race across the airport to make our connection in just 30 minutes!! We did not make the connection due to the distance across this huge airport and having to go through security again. We rang Celebrity head office to find out what could be done about this. Air France’s customer team said that we could go on the afternoon flight with our arrival time of 5pm one hour after the ship had sailed at 4pm! After much protesting and being joined by 4 other passengers with the same problem they put us on the midday flight. At our revised departure time they announced a Gate change and a later take-off time. It emerged that the original aircraft had broken down and a different aircraft had to be readied instead. We were delayed again by 30 minutes and by my calculations it was going to be touch and go whether we would make the Ship. We were in contact with Celebrity head office again and asked what time the ship would depart and they informed us that the ‘hard close’ for getting on ship was 3.30pm. We landed in Barcelona at 3pm and raced to baggage reclaim which was right next to the exit. We waited and waited for our baggage and were told the machine had broken down. It was now 3.25pm and that meant there was still a 30 minute transfer to the ship through heavy traffic. We were just about to collapse with stress when a Celebrity bus driver appeared. We explained we had been delayed etc. and that we were waiting for our baggage. He disappeared for 5 minutes and then re-appeared and announced that they were holding the Ship for us.....we were so relieved; in 28 previous cruises we had never ever known this. We arrived at the ship and were the last to check in at 4.10pm. The relief was intense after the worst journey of our lives. We had been on this Ship 20 years ago when she was much newer, the first thing we noticed was how tired she had become and desperately was in need of a refit. Our cabin was extremely tired with an unpleasant smell on arrival. We spoke to the cabin attendant who sorted this. The flexi hose to the showerhead was absolutely disgusting covered in black mould. The sink had two cracks in it and the shower curtain hooks were rusty. The coffee table was rusty, the mirrored wall looked smeared and was not cleaned the whole time we were there, 11 days. The carpet had not been fitted, just cut and placed on the floor. I could go on but I think you get the picture. The whole ethos of the cruise was to make money and at no stage did we feel the customer was the priority...what a shame! Internet packages were nearly £300 for the trip and premium drinks packages cost £120 per day for each passenger if sharing a cabin, and non drinks package drinks were astronomical in price $12 for half a pint plus 20% and $14 for a small glass of wine plus service charge and nearly everyone on our table each evening (we had different dinner companions most evenings) did not drink as they could not afford it. Meals were hit and miss in both quality and portion size. Vegetables never cooked properly just washed in boiling water and choice was limited with half of the menu the same each and every time.We then had the hurdle of getting home to navigate. The evening before disembarkation we put our suitcases out. When we went to collect them the next morning ready for our transfer to the airport we could not find one of our cases. It took over an hour to find it by which time our transfer bus had gone but we were taken to the terminal and we were now an hour behind schedule. We arrived at the Air France desk to present for boarding passes. At this point we were told that there was no record of us on Air France and that we should leave the desk.....no help, just total dismissal! All our details that had been on the Air France App disappeared (we had had seat numbers allocated beforehand).