Celebrity Millennium, Infinity and Summit information

[Nurse Debra]

I was one of those who was trapped on one of the many cruises that developed propulsion problems (pods) and have not seen this information about this posted anywhere. I only wish that I had been aware of these problems that have happened on so many cruises. Most Celebrity m-class cruises go off without a hitch, but there is a known design problem that has cropped up seventeen times on these three ships. When the pods do fail cruises are shortened, ports skipped and in many cases the next cruise after the problems start the cruise is cancelled altogether.

I posted my review of our disastrous Summit cruise of last year in the Celebrity review section. Since our cruise there have been two dry docks for the Millennium for this same problem and one for the Infinity to make repairs to fix the problem. This year the Millennium and Infinity sailed for a total of about thirty-five weeks at reduced speeds until dry dock. Celebrity is less than open about these problems and has settled one lawsuit against the manufacturer and has another multi-million suit pending in court.
This is by no means necessarily a deal breaker but it is an important fact worth considering before booking any of these three ships.

Considering the lack of maintenance to several other ships in the Celebrity fleet and the problems I have experienced with the Celebrity
m-class ships, I am eagar to try the new Celebrity Solstice class of ship that is coming out in a couple of years.

[kd]

We're very interested in your post. We sailed on Millenium (no problems) and plan to spend two weeks on Summit in Nov. Was totally unaware of the frequency of these problems on the M class ships. I would like to hear of someone else's experience or be referred to a Celebrity article that would offer some reassurance.

[Nurse Debra]

Originally Posted by kd

We're very interested in your post. We sailed on Millenium (no problems) and plan to spend two weeks on Summit in Nov. Was totally unaware of the frequency of these problems on the M class ships. I would like to hear of someone else's experience or be referred to a Celebrity article that would offer some reassurance.

Hi kd,

As I said the majority of all Celebrity m-class ships cruises do not have any problem. Whether or not the frequency of these problems is a major concern is a matter of opinion. I can assure you that after seeing a long awaited cruise to Alaska be ruined because of a problem that Celebrity was fully aware off and I was not, does lead to some questions on my part. If you read my review, I think that most people would question how the whole matter was handled by Celebrity.

One of the best articles describing the situation in a very non-biased manner is from ebearing news which is a trade publication for information on bearings. The bearings are the part of the pods that are the usual culprit in these cases. The article is dated September 21, 2004. Since the date of this publication there have been seven more pod failures; on the Millennium on 12/10/06 and 01/01/07, Infinity pod failures on 3/27/05, 9/13/06 and 11/19/06, Summit pod failures on 6/13/05 and 5/7/06. Here is a link to that article:

www.ebearing.com/news2004/092101.htm

A search on "Mermaid Pods" will also yield several more articles about this problem.

The Summit has no reported pod problems since the emergency dry dock on May 20, 2006 to once again make repairs and I don't mean to scare anybody but I do feel that looking back I wish I had been at least been made aware of the past history of these ongoing problems and what could happen on my Celebrity cruise to Alaska.

Hope this information helps.
Debra

[Wave Runner]

Have been thinking about trying Celebrity and I would certainly be concerned if this happened to a cruise that I was on. Does anybody know how long these propulsion problems have been going with Celebrity?

[kd]

I'm assuming the problems haqve been resolved since the most recent newsclip was from 2004. Celebrity is wonderful and we have never experienced problems. Plan to be on the Summit in November and not worried at all. You'll love Celebrity!

[Nurse Debra]

Originally Posted by kd

I'm assuming the problems haqve been resolved since the most recent newsclip was from 2004. Celebrity is wonderful and we have never experienced problems. Plan to be on the Summit in November and not worried at all. You'll love Celebrity!

Hi kd,

You may have mis-read my post, because what I said was that "one of the best articles describing the situation" was written several years ago. There have been many other articles published, before and after the one that I mentioned, dealing with the many POD failures on Celebrity
m-class ships. Since the time of the article that I sited, there have been seven more pod failures on Celebrity ships all of which resulted in dry dock for one week.
I wish you well on your upcoming cruise as and I think a positive attitude is a good thing. However, it also does not hurt to be aware of the facts and the fact that the Summit is now overdue for a propulsion problem and that the problem has not been fixed. As I said before most passengers have not yet experienced POD problems, but ten's of thousands of passengers have. If there are no POD problems I am sure you will have a great cruise.
Enjoy your cruise.
Debra

[Nurse Debra]

Originally Posted by Wave Runner

Have been thinking about trying Celebrity and I would certainly be concerned if this happened to a cruise that I was on. Does anybody know how long these propulsion problems have been going with Celebrity?

Hi Wave Runner,

These problems have been going on since the launch of the first of the
Celebrity M-class ships in 2000. The three that have the most propulsion (POD) problems in order of number of failures are: Infinity (8 POD failures), Summit (5 POD failures) and Millennium (4 pod failures). The Constellation since its initial POD problem, right at launch time, has had no further POD problems to date.
Debra

[sasco]

We were scheduled on an Infinity Alaska cruise last year. 6 weeks prior to the cruise we were advised that the trip we were scheduled for was going to be cancelled so propulsion repairs could be made. We were VERY generously compensated and also got all of our $$ back. Overall we were qiite please with the way Celebrity handled the situation.

[Nurse Debra]

Originally Posted by sasco

We were scheduled on an Infinity Alaska cruise last year. 6 weeks prior to the cruise we were advised that the trip we were scheduled for was going to be cancelled so propulsion repairs could be made. We were VERY generously compensated and also got all of our $$ back. Overall we were qiite please with the way Celebrity handled the situation.

Hi sasco:

Celebrity does treat passengers fairly on the cruise that is cancelled because of POD problems. You were very lucky to be one of the "Celebrity POD lottery" winners.
The downside for most passengers was that only two months after your Alaska cruise was cancelled the Infinity once again had POD problems and the reduced speed that followed because of these problems caused tens of thousands of passengers to have altered itineraries until the next scheduled dry dock in late May of 2007. So while you feel you were "generously compensated" by Celebrity there were tens of thousands of Celebrity Infinity passengers who did not receive the cruise they paid for because of these on-going problems. This same story was also repeated this year on the Millennium.