In general do you think service on cruise lines is getting better or worse?

It seems that as the ships get bigger, service declines. Our steward was responsible for over 20 cabins by herself. That's a lot of work in a short period of time. 2x a day too!

Now, NCL is trying out charging for room service on two ships. It's only a trial period, but who the hell thought that would be a good idea? Supposedly they have an expanded RS menu. Now, if you want to charge me from the expanded menu,say a full meal, and guarantee a hot delivery, then fine, I get it. But if you are going to charge me $7.95 for my morning coffee and Danish, we have a problem. For more info on this, go to NCL.com and look at their FAQs,keyword,room service.

I think the quality matches the demographic. New cruisers are unaware of classic cruising, so the cruise lines don't have to meet the standards veteran cruisers are used to. Instead of luxury liners, there are floating resorts with people complaining about dressing for dinner. Social graces are long gone, and cruise line quality has gone with them.

Service has declined. Quantity of staff to cruisers is NOTICEABLY worse. Entertainment is now C level, not A level. Big bands are gone and replaced with a sound track. Many lounges have NO entertainment under the guise of being "friendly" for people who just want to talk. Too bad they are EMPTY.

Worst aspect for us is the quality of food. Recent cruise was barely edible.

The cruise lines are following the airlines in that they have started to charge for what they consider extra's, such as water. You have the choice of buying bottled water or drinking the tap water, which comes from who knows where. What I have noticed the most is the cruise lines now automatically add gratuities to your account. The result is quality of service has declined. This stands to reason, why work any harder if everyone gets a portion of the tip. On our most recent cruise I had the gratuity lowered and then gave cash gratuities to those staff that went beyond the ordinary to make our vacation special. The amount of cash we gave together with the Gratuity we added to our account was greater than what would have been the amount of the automatic gratuity. Those that were given the extra cash were very appreciative and I am sure they will continue to go above and beyond. I would further note that we were on this same ship seven years ago and the quality of food in the main dining room has gone down. I suspect that this is because of the addition of the specialty restaurants that are now all over the ship. But I have had much better steaks at Texas Road House then that I had on board the ship! On another ship of the same cruise line two years ago they actually charged additional for what they termed a specialty show in the theater. One would think with all of the new "Mega" ships coming out that the cruise lines would have to get more competitive both in price and quality of service.

I guess when you start having to pay for what was once complimentary you feel that you are getting cheated but prices have not gone up that much. Cruise lines are hold down prices but asking you to pay for some items. Something has to give. I still think that cruising is the way to go.

In the last 20 years I have scene decline in Dining room service and food on the Major lines. I am not expecting more, I am expecting descent service in the MDR. I expect enough staff that dinner will get to me hot, I will not have to sit for 20 or 30 to minutes to place an order and that dinner will not take 2 hours because of slow service.

On my last cruise we gave up on the MDR and just ate in the buffet because MDR service was so slow and food was cool by the time we got it. It was not just me. out of a table of 10, there were only 2 of us on the last night of the cruise. We only went to say goodbye to our table mates, but none of them showed up. I did not bother to eat my dinner because cold BBQ ribs just are not good. I went up to the Lido after my frined ate his dinner and had the BBQ ribs that were hot in the buffet.

If Cruising did not have its good, we would not go. Plenty of good on a cruise, just not as good as it had been.

There are many positives about cruising. However, an experienced cruiser will see a decline in service that were once the norm, to what passes for the norm 5 to 10 years later.

But I agree, creating a new thread or open forum on the good things we experience would be a great start.

Very interesting topic! I recently came back from the annual SeaTrade conference where all the cruise lines meet with others in the industry. For one of the panel discussions, we (Cruiseline.com) actually did some analysis on all the reviews on the site here and found some trends...

1. Service / Staff is the highest rated attribute on reviews (avg 2.7 out of 3). The lowest rated attribute? Onboard activities at 2.4 out of 3.

2. What if we looked at the actual reviews - what are cruisers are unhappy about? Turns out, most complaints involve 'food and dining', 'nickel and dime', and 'smoking'. This sounds similar to what you all pointed out here.

3. Most interesting to me was this fact - NEW cruisers (first cruise), rated their cruise experience much higher than experienced cruisers. Specifically, they rated the Service/Staff, food/dining and cabin/stateroom higher.

I think this makes sense. On people's first cruise they are not sure what to expect and are blown away by the service, food, etc. But, as they go on more cruises, they expectations get higher. Do you agree?

Overall though, review scores average between 3.5 and 3.8, which is still very good. I agree with @Kennicot, maybe we should have another thread listing all the positives.

I get depressed when reading my own post here. Surely there has been some positives in recent years with the new ships, policies and all. Maybe we need another thread listing such, but I can't think of hardly any. Well, maybe a few, very few.

Thank you all for leaving your detailed comments. I appreciate them. I hope that the cruise lines read them thoughtfully.