Celebrity Cruise Lines Ocean Liner Themed Restaurants Memories

[JeffB]

We recently sold our residence in GA and are sorting through boxes of travel brochures that were moved to FL. I came across a souvenir booklet describing the history of the SS United States and the specialty restaurant by that same name on Infinity.  The booklet has a hand written reservation and a card with the Maitre D's name on it. All four Millennium Class ships featured ocean liner themed specialty restaurants  I found a not to old discussion of these on the Cruise Critic forum (below). One of the posts has links to articles on the four ocean liner restaurants: Millennium, The Olympic (Cunard's White Star liner by that name), Infinity, the SS United Sates, Summit, the Normandy and Constellation, Ocean Liners (generic artifacts from the Golden Age of Ocean Cruising).

We were well into our love for cruising when Celebrity introduced it's Millennium Class ships in 2000. All four Millennium class ships entered service between 2000 and 2002. The Ocean Liner themed specialty restaurants were original installations. Over a couple of years staring in 2017, as these M Class ships were refurbished, The ocean liner themed restaurants were removed on all of them and replaced with Tuscan Grill. Sadly, I was told the removals were driven by cost control measures. We've sailed on all four M-Class ships and dined in all four ocean liner themed restaurants - fabulous dining experience. and sorely missed. To say the least, Celebrity's decision to end these specialty restaurants was very unpopular. Tuscan Grill is OK but I'm hard pressed to pay the up-charge when the food and service may only be marginally better than in the main dining room. That was not the case in the ocean liner themed restaurants. Personally, I thought it was a terrible business decision as from what I could tell, these restaurants were very special and immensely popular. 

The only vestige of these fabulous, Michelin 3 Star level, restaurants onboard Celebrity ships is Murano but they are not on the older M-Class or newer Edge Class ships. I'm pretty sure as costs drive operations, Murano is not as profitable, even with the sur-charges, as Celebrity would like it to be. Murano is still elegant and staffed by wait-persons that want to be there. Most are European and professionally trained in the many restaurant service industry schools available there. In general there is a notable difference between restaurant dining in Europe and in the US. Murano still preserves elegant European level table service.  

IMO, there's no question that as various cruise lines expanded onboard dining options in their new ships, Celebrity was playing catch-up.  Celebrity did do a unique introduction of 4, themed, main restaurants in their Edge class ships. One of them is named Normandy and I believe it is fitted out with some of Normandy's artifacts. As well, the number of eateries on these ships is greatly expanded. It's not all bad but nothing like the real deal of the past.

https://creative.rccl.com/Sales/Celebrity/General_Info/EDGE/Edge_Culinary_One_Pager_TRADE_FLYER.pdf

For those of you that have enjoyed the ocean liner themed restaurants and miss them as much as I do

https://boards.cruisecritic.co.uk/topic/2826970-olympic-restaurant-on-millenium-and-other-historical-dining-rooms/

[steverk]

I didn't know about these rest, so thank you for posting. 

I've recently sailed Millennium and Infinity. I think the restaurants are gone,  as I didn't see them.

However, between the casino and photo gallery,  they do have a space displaying some momentos from great ocean liners. 

Millennium has artifacts from the Olympic.  Infinity has some from SS United States.