Never Again

Ship tip

Don’t sail with Royal Caribbean. Beware of thieves and shady crew. My wife and I went on a 7-day cruise on the Allure of the Seas. The ship was nice, but a lot of the staff were unfriendly and the food was mediocre. My main complaint stems from items that were left in our stateroom and are now gone forever. Here is what happened…We used the in-room safe to store some valuable which included an iPad, a smart key for our car, a couple of gifts cards and miscellaneous items that I took out of my wallet to thin it out while walking around; like my Sam’s Club card (which obviously had my name and photo on it). During the morning of debarkation, while still in a slumber and packing to get off the boat and head straight to the airport, I forgot the empty the safe. While still at the cruise port, waiting for our LYFT, I realized that what had happened. I sent an email to RC explaining what had happened before we even left town. After several emails and phone calls over about a 4-week period, I finally received a message that RC did not have my belongings!! What?! Here is the thing. I understand that if I left my sunglasses by the pool, that they I probably won’t ever see them again, but this was not the case!! First of all, the room stewards supposedly do not have access to our room safe. We know this because, there was a point on the cruise where I was unable to access my safe, and the steward had to call someone else (I assume from security) to open the safe for me. Therefore, I would assume that when the steward went to clean our room after we disembarked, that she would have noticed that the safe was still locked. She would have then called security to open the safe. They would then have seen that there were valuables in the safe. They would have then places the valuables in a bin or bag and labeled it with the stateroom number. This seems like a reasonable course of action to me. Well, obviously, this did not happen! Shame on me for not checking the safe, but shame on them for being shady crooks. Like I said, this was not a question of, “I think I left something by the pool or in the lounge”. This is a case of KNOWING that I left items in MY stateroom safe and then being told by RC that they don’t have them. No offers were made to do anything for me by RC, even though there is someone with that company walking around with my stolen items! Even without the safe incident, I was ready to move on from RC crappy service and hospitality. I have been on several cruises in the past and it seems that ever since they changed to the “automatic” gratuities that the staff simply doesn’t go out of their way for you anymore. I would recommend going with another cruise line and only use RC as a last resort. Oh and…check your safe before your leave!!!