Tampa and the Silhouette

We had planned this nine night cruise to New Orleans, Roatan and Belize for 2025 but in October 2023, Celebrity informed us they were cancelling the sailing in favor of shorter cruises out of Tampa. We were able to rebook the same itinerary for 2024 even though it meant cruising very close to our previous cruise on the Beyond. So we drove to a new cruise port for us, Tampa. We dropped off the luggage and found the parking deck and walked to the terminal. For the first time in several cruises, Celebrity was actually segregrating guests based off port arrival time, so we sat down in the 10:30 waiting area to be called. Unfortunately, they began calling by rows but some entitled guests just went ahead and started boarding anyway. This is just the first example of 'if you are going to have rules, enforce them, otherwise get rid of them' we saw on this cruise. But soon we were on board, and checked in at our muster station, dropped off our bag at our room and headed to the buffet. We were not really pleased with our room as the chair was very ratty and we found a fake fingernail on the desk and someone's dress hanging in the closet. We didn't meet our stateroom attendant until 2PM the second day when he came to clean the room and rarely saw him all week, which was unusual for Celebrity.

After lunch we went to the Martini Bar for our first drinks at what would, as usual, be one of our favorite locations on the ship. Agung, Razvan, Jan and Yukta took good care of us all week.

Helipad Sailaway

When we went back to our room after lunch, we didn't see the usual list of Captain's Club Elite activities so went to the concierge guest to ask about it and we were glad we did because there was a Captain's Club sailaway event on the helipad as we left Tampa. This the second time we did not get a list of activities and we wonder if it is intentional to get guests to have to ask about it instead of just giving away the activities. We luckily had worn closed toed shoes as our luggage had not arrived yet and we walked out on the helipad to have some champagne and watch us leave Tampa. We were escorted off before the ship got to the Sunshine Skyway Bridge but some other guests were able to get a photo of it from the top deck.

First Night on the Silhoutte

Anne Martinez was performing the Music of Las Vegas and Broadway in the Theater but we were not really in the mood for a show so we decided to listen to some music at the bar in the Rendezvous Lounge until it was time for dinner. Our service today was a little rocky. The sommelier made it clear his job was only to get wine when J. R. asked him for an iced tea. Then he asked the assistant waiter and finally the waiter and it didn't arrive until midway through dinner. We went to the martini bar and sat down for a drink and Janie picked up some silent disco headsets. We mostly sat at the bar and listened to the music, which was not very good but we did a little dancing. Every silent disco has the same music, including for some reason having "Love Shack" on two channels at the same time and "YMCA" and "Macho Man" playing on two different channels simultaneously.