Very Disappointed

Item: Empress of the Seas
Rating: 3.1
Author: Ronaldnyli

Empress of the Seas Cruise Review to Cuba

Ronaldnyli

Contributor Level: Purser

Cruises: 7+ cruises

Review: 1

Helpful Votes: 23

Overall rating:

3.1 out of 5

8 Night Best Of Cuba (Miami Roundtrip)

Sail date: November 04, 2018

Ship: Empress of the Seas

Cabin type: Oceanview

Traveled as: Couple

Reviewed: 5 years ago

Review summary

If you read the title of the cruise, you saw it was called the "Best of Cuba". A few weeks before the cruise started, I was notified that the port in Santiago de Cuba was not completed so they changed the port to Key West. This was a very poor judgment call on Royal Caribbean. While Key West is a very nice place with lots to do, it took away from the purpose of doing this cruise: seeing Cuba! I saw very little of Cuba. They should have either docked early in the day (8am) and/or stayed over night and leave mid-afternoon on the next day. For me, that would have made up for not going to the other Cuban port. I would have been able to shop, dine out, and visit more places in Havana. At the time of this review, Royal Caribbean has not even acknowledged the multiple complaints from passengers nor compensated us for this change which really compromised the integrity of their advertisement of "The Best of Cuba". I saw very little of it! This is my first and probably last cruise with Royal Caribbean. There are multiple cruise lines out there with a much better product. I hope more decide to add Cuba to their ports. I really would like to experience Cuba the right way!

Embarkation

4 out of 5

Ship experiences

Food and Dining

1 out of 5

I have done multiple cruises. This was my first on Royal Caribbean. On any other cruise line, if I ate in the dining room for breakfast, I had a full menu from which to chose and was served. Breakfast on Royal Caribbean was always a buffet with the same selections every day. Even when it was a "brunch" buffet, it was basically the same things. Many foods were dry, overcooked, etc. If I did try to order from the menu, it was the debarkation menu which was very limited.

Windjammer Café

1 out of 5

Like the main dining room, it lacked variety and quality. It sometimes appeared like you were being served leftovers.

Main Dining Room

1 out of 5

The food was not well-prepared or imaginative. Please note, if you'd like to have Lobster for dinner one night, it will set you back about $30+ per person! So much for an "all-inclusive" vacation. Other cruise lines offer lobster FREE for dinner on occasion, like a formal night or last night of your cruise - just saying!!

Chops Grille

5 out of 5

I got a great deal on pre-booking this specialty restaurant. The food was well-prepared. With the poor quality of the main dining room, this a is a great choice for a nice dinner!

Onboard Activities

1 out of 5

My friend and I participated in trivia, bingo and other activities. The big prize was a cheap Royal Caribbean key chain for winning the trivia. On NCL, you at least win a drink! Bingo was expensive and they don't even supply you with something to mark the numbers: they expect you to buy a marker.

Entertainment

3 out of 5

Service and Staff

5 out of 5

In this area the cruise line excelled. The staff was terrific!

Ship Quality

3 out of 5

Ship definitely needs to be updated with more variety of bar types and shopping.

Cabin / Stateroom

3 out of 5

Ship tip

Small ship with minimal to do.

Thumbs up

Ports of call

Labadee (Cruise Line Private Island)

4 out of 5

Key West, Florida

4 out of 5

HAVANA, CUBA

3 out of 5

The port itself is very nice, but the cruise line changed substituted Santiago de Cuba for Key West; We arrived in the mid afternoon (3pm), so by the time you passed immigration and completed the "mandatory" excursion, there was no time to shop or see anything else. We were only there from 3pm to 5am. Can't do much when things close at night! Very disappointing. I wasn't even able to buy any decent souvenirs because all the store where closed when our excursion ended at 10pm! This was very poorly planned.

Thumbs Up 1

Nassau, Bahamas

3 out of 5

Disembarkation

3 out of 5

4 Comments

bumbleboy 5 years ago

There should be well over 1000 complaints as pretty much the whole ship filed complaints, the line for customer relations went in for two days !!

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Ronaldnyli 5 years ago

There is only one comprehensive review from me. There are several more from others

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agfstamps 5 years ago

We love the Empress. You have to understand with the small ship you don’t get the variety like on the megaships. Our Cuba trip was an overnight in Havana and it was marvelous, fabulous. Sorry you didn’t have a good time and you felt the need to post so many bad reviews in a row.

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graham123 5 years ago

☹☹

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Other reviews of this sailing

Extremely disappointed and want to ensure others know. Promised 8 Night Best of Cuba and with Royal Caribbean changing ports ended up with 1 hour of daylight in Cuba!

The Not-So-Best of Cuba

The Best of Cuba what a absolute joke and waste of money . 1.5 hrs of port time in the dark plus a trip to key west instead of Santiago de Cuba . Terrible smell of drainage on deck 4 & 5. Food in windjamer luke warm & not kept at correct temperature.