I need to preface this by saying that this was our third cruise on Celebrity’s (we refer to Celebrity as X) Century and our second in a space of four months. We had last been aboard with our best buddies Bob and Judy in Alaska in September 2011. You can read that review by clicking here. So we were very familiar with the ship and her crew. We have another cruise booked on her for November 2012 so you can tell we like her.

Actually what we truly like is her crew. We have never met such a wonderful, energetic, hard-working group of people anywhere. And those who had been on when we were in Alaska welcomed us back with open arms.

A quick report on Century’s condition. If you are not familiar with Celebrity Cruise Lines, Century is their oldest ship. She is also their smallest. She carries only 1850 passengers and that’s just perfect as far as we are concerned. In fact, if she carried less, we might like it more. But she is a good size for us.

She is old though and it shows in a few places. Nothing I said in my Alaska review had changed other than the location where we boarded her. She stills needs some minor repairs in the Rendezvous Lounge and some windows replaced in Reflections but other than that, she is a clean and well taken care of ship.

Our cabin was a Concierge cabin, 9215. It was just behind the aft elevator bank on the 9th deck. We love this deck as it is two floors below the buffet/spa/gym and two floors above the Martini Bar/Michael’s Club/Theater. Since I try never to use an elevator on a ship, this is perfect for me. Century cabins are not huge but this one is well-apportioned and has great storage. The bathroom is typical and it was great to get here after living out of a suitcase for three days and unpack for the duration. The beds are adequate. Even though we have been aboard before, I found the shortness of the bed to be a distraction this time. Not sure why. We always order an egg crate mattress pad for Kathleen due to her hip and even though our travel agent (not our regular one) had forgotten to request it, Edy (see below) had it on the bed by the time we turned in.

Our cabin attendant was named Edy (that’s him in the pic with Kathleen) and we can honestly say he was the best we have ever had after all our cruises. Not only did he make us amazing towel animals, he was always available to say hello, to ask if we needed anything or just to open our door for us if he saw us coming, carrying something. It was the perfect level of service. He didn’t overpower us with service but he was there when we needed him. And he was truly an artist when it came to the cruising tradition of towel animals. We have had those left on our bed before but he went above and beyond. So much so that I devoted an entire page of our photo albums to his. You can see them by clicking here.

Embarkation was smooth. We took a taxi to the pier, dropped our luggage at around 11:30 am. We were only in line to clear Customs and get our sea pass card for under 30 minutes and had we noticed there was a separate line for Elite guests (those of us with more than a certain number of Celebrity cruises) we would have been on even faster. Once aboard, we went to the Sunset Bar on deck 11 aft and had lunch from the buffet. Century still has trays in her buffet which I greatly appreciate. I don’t like making multiple trips to get food, drinks, etc. so I love my trays.

By 1:00 pm they had released the cabins (which amazed us since when we arrived there were still people disembarking) and we went down to drop our carry ons. We also found our dining assignment (main seating) and went to check out the location of our table. Darned good thing we did. Our (NOW EX) travel agent had put us at a table for two even though we had clearly requested a table for at least six if not eight. Thankfully we were able to find the maitre’d and get changed to a much better located table for six. It really wasn’t that hard to do as so many people want tables for two. Our feeling is that we eat dinner every night by ourselves most of the year and when we vacation, we love to meet people. This gives us a chance to meet more. But this was the last straw with our current travel agent. He is now gone! (I should explain that our long-time TA had switched agencies after we booked this cruise with her and could not take the cruise with her. The guy who replaced her promised he would take care of us to the same wonderful extent that she had but no dice. He fell down on too many fronts. Thankfully our next cruise is back with her.)

After getting the dining snafu straightened out we walked around the ship looking for others from our Cruise Critic group and crew members we knew from earlier cruises. After doing this for a short time we stopped by the room again to find that our luggage had been delivered so it was time to unpack. Did I mention this was the smoothest embarkation ever?

Food was excellent. If you cruise you know that much of cruising is about the food. Just to set the stage, Kathleen and I ate most of our breakfasts in the Aqua Spa Cafe, our lunches (when on the ship) in the buffet and all but one dinner (when we got back to the ship too late) in the main dining room. Century has the original Murano alternative restaurant but we had eaten there many times before on previous cruises so we decided to skip it this time. And we don’t do room service so we can’t give you a report on that either.

All that said we were very pleased with the food on this trip. As I mentioned we made our way forward to the Aqua Spa Cafe that is located right outside the spa on deck 11. They serve “healthier” cuisine for breakfast and lunch. We stuck with our normal breakfast food of yogurt and granola and a banana for Kathleen. Always there and always good. After eating in the Spa cafe we would head down to the Reflections Lounge for a speciality coffee drink in the Elite reception. We are glad that we had this reception as it saved us a bunch of money on coffee drinks. Of course X does provide free coffee but it is the one place where they fall down. Their coffee is and has always been BAD!

Lunch in the buffet/grille was also just fine. I ate a lot of pizza, roasted veggies, burgers and sandwiches. Stuff I rarely eat at home. All were good. No complaints.

Dinner in the dining room was also good (not great, just good) with the usual cruise fare. Got my yearly quota of escargot, shrimp cocktail and all the other normal cruise stuff. We wound up with a table for six with four Aussies who were great fun. It seemed as if two of us were always gone each evening. Helen and Andrew and Katherine and Fred (who we called “the Captain” as he closely resembled the captain

of the Titanic in the movie--that’s him in the pic so you can judge) did Murano multiple times and we missed dinner one night when we got back late from Napier and another when we were asked to sit at the Captain’s Table. That’s always fun. You can see everyone else’s pics in the Century People photo album. I should also mention for the benefit of fellow cruisers that there were three formal nights on this cruise, the nights we were in Tauranga, Dunedin and the second sea day between NZ and Australia. I took my suit and not my tux and there were about 10% of the men in tuxes so I felt right at home. We actually saw someone turned away from the dining room on formal night who tried to dine in just khakis and an izod-style shirt.

Service was outstanding! That’s why we cruise with Celebrity. The service. And so far we have NEVER been disappointed by Century. Every member of the crew that we had contact with treated us famously and took excellent care of us. I want to make a special point to send a huge thank you to our incredible cabin attendant Edy, our waiter Edwin, his assistant Ruth, the best assistant maitre’d ever Jayson who we had made friends with on our previous trip on Century (that’s the three of us at left). We also were thrilled to find Korina Murphy still at her post as Captain’s Club hostess. Korina took such great care of us even though she had a huge group of Elites on board, she made us feel very special. Jayne in the Martini Bar became our special friend as we seemed to wind up there every night.

How about some miscellaneous notes. Just things we want to mention. I hit the gym every morning at 6:00. Two things need to be improved. One is that they need to set an opening time and stick to it for everyone. The posted time was 6:00 am but many times I would have to wait until 6:10 or 6:15. And then when they finally opened and the group waiting patiently outside got in, we found that there were people inside who had somehow snuck in. Secondly, I used to use the treadmills but my knees can’t take that anymore so now I ride a stationary bike for an hour a day. But the gym on Century had two bikes when I was onboard in September but one was always broken. On the first sea day I went to the gym only to find one bike---THE BROKEN ONE! WHAT??? Fix it or buy new ones.

We wish we could give you a review on the onboard entertainment but we only went to one show, a comic-magic show that was “cute.” We only went because our buddy Jacqui had wound up on stage at the first show and told us we had to go to the later show. We skipped the rest of the shows. They had a pianist, the aforementioned magician, a juggler, a Rod Stewart impersonator that everyone complained was “horrible” and three full stage shows that we had seen on previous cruises so we did what we do best in the evening on cruise ships: socialized with friends.

Disembarkation was maybe our easiest ever. We had put our big luggage out the night before and after I had risen early to take pictures as we entered Sydney harbor, we ate breakfast in the buffet, got our carry-ons and headed to the Elite disembarkation lounge (Murano restaurant), said goodbye to Korina, got off the ship and were in a taxi on the way to our hotel by 8:15. We heard later that people who did not get off until after 8:45 ended up waiting hours for a taxi. We left our luggage at our hotel, walked to the nearby train station, boarded the HoHo bus and did about half of one route, got off near the ship again and there was still a very long line waiting for cabs. This was well after 10:00 am. A word to the wise...get off early!

All in all it was a marvelous cruise. To us the best part was the service we received, the ports we visited and the friends we made. We have met so many wonderful people cruising and most of them through the Cruise Critic website on the roll call for this cruise. If you ever cruise, head to Cruise Critic and check for a roll call for your cruise. The people we met there are wonderful. We also met some great people during the Elite breakfast and cocktails each day. As I mentioned earlier, we are booked on Century this coming November and we can’t wait to get back aboard and head for Hawaii.

If you click here you can go directly to our Ports of Call page without scrolling back to the top of the page.

For those of you who sailed with us who are just looking for pictures of yourselves and others we sailed with, click this link.