Rest assured. I have 2 friends from Philly (who we met on the Galaxy a few years ago actually) who sailed the Summit in early December and they said they had a spendid time. I'm sure it will be dandy for you as well.
Even though I STARTED this thread, I too sailed on Summit in early December and had a wonderful time. The ship is dazzling, and as far as we were concerned the staff was absolutely first rate.
There were very few negatives, and most of those had to do with the passengers and not the ship or the staff.
As always, you will have as good a time as you decide to have. You're a longtime poster here and you know very well how to balance this stuff out.
No matter what the details turn out to be, it's almost sure that any problems now being encountered are related to the holiday sailing one way or another. It's certain to calm down again when the kids go back to school.
I agree that the captain is in a public place, why can't you talk to him, especially if nobody else was listening. I remeber last year on the Millennium, leaving San Juan, they decided to do an open seating for dinner that night. Well Celebrity figured because we would be sailing late, they would be able to serve evryone through out the open seating times. Problem was everyone showed up at once! It was a mess, It took 1-1/2 hour just to get seated and nobody asked for a free cruise. The point here is yes the cruiselines do scew up. We shall here the facts once the cruise ends. I will be on the Summit in 2 weeks and I promise not to go up to the captain and ask how his noggin is feeling. I might request a table that is out of the line of fire.
That's what I think too. But my grandson works for RCI in the department that enters the comment cards into the computers. He does it for both RCI and Celebrity so I will get some first hand information.