Good, Not Great

This was my 5th with Royal Caribbean in the last 10+ years, not counting 3 or 4 under the Celebrity flag.  With each experience, some services show remarkable improvement,  while others appear to get worse or decline on each visit compared to the previous. 

My observation is that Royal Caribbean excels at efficiency and dexterity in many areas; for example, the crowd control during initial embarkation was a thing of beauty.  Even though the ship on this cruise was fully booked, there was no zig zagging long lines even for the nonexclusive suites dwellers as we were on this cruise.  In most aspects of the operations, I was impressed with the smoothness with which things were handled.  I could go on and on, the guest service desk was quite impressive, with  an agent walking the line to triage individuals, dispatching those with simple questions, and diverting others to perhaps a more appropriate desk for dinner reservations or Wi Fi support,

On the other hand, I was disappointed with the quality of food overall.  The Windjammer café was average on the whole, except for the Caribbean Night, that was well above average.  The main dining room should be avoided, and the specialty restaurants overpriced for the quality of food served, this seems to decline with each successive cruise last year we cruise on Allure with almost identical set or restaurants and the food was several notches above, the Wonderland restaurant was a bit gimmicky, I was not impressed seems like a lot of trouble to make fake food that was not better that the real thing, I am not ready for Soylent Green.  I should quickly add the wait staff and all service related staff that we encountered were all very professional and courteous, with the exception of the occasional grouch at the zip line or some other recreation area. 

After leaving the ship with sniffles that started on the day before disembarkation and progressed during the following week to full blown cold flu symptoms, I have decided to swear off cruise ships for the foreseeable future.  I may consider the smaller ships, last year we cruised with Oceana (Rivera),  and Celebrity (Reflections),  Celebrity was not much different from RC Harmony.  On the other hand, Oceania was outstanding especially the quality of the food and there were no upcharges for specialty restaurants, things like bottled water were generously distributed with no up charge or drink package required.  There was not the constant barrage to buy over priced junk merchandise, nor highly overpriced photos, etc. Just my observations.