Harmony is a beautiful ship, well crewed. I highly recommend this this ship.
Embarkation
4 out of 5
The process was about as easy as it could be, since they are trying to get 5400+ people on board in a short time frame. Other ports (Miami and Fort Lauderdale in particular) were more stringent about keeping people to their scheduled arrival times, but I didn’t see anything similar at Port Canaveral.
Inside the terminal, the announcements and signage were a bit confusing. We were waiting in the terminal because the signs said Diamond and above to board, but then an announcement called for the 12:00 people to board (we had 11:00). Just then, one of the terminal workers asked by, so we asked what the deal was. She told us to ignore the signs, which we happily did and walked right on board. It wasn’t a big deal, but it could have created a problem later if it wasn’t managed carefully.
Ship experiences
Food and Dining
4 out of 5
The food was good and plentiful. Ate at Jamie’s one night, which was very good as well.
The only complaint I have is that My Time Dining (MTD) was a train wreck. MTD is scheduled for Deck 3 exclusively, so there shouldn’t be any waiting lines if you have a reservation. Sadly, there was a traditional seating on Deck 3 at 5:00, which created a horrendous backup at the start of MTD. Lines were out the door and around the corner, even for those of us that booked specific times months in advance. Even worse was that they were seating people WITHOUT reservations ahead of those WITH reservations. I can’t count the number of people I heard asking why even bother making or taking reservations if they don’t really mean anything.
My suspicion is that they had to schedule the traditional seating on 3 because of crew shortages, but I can’t prove it. Regardless of the reason, MTD did not work well at all. After two nights of this mess, we changed to a 5:00 traditional seating on Deck 4 and everything was wonderful after that.
Onboard Activities
4 out of 5
Plenty to do, lots of fun activities. If you were bored, it was pretty much your own fault.
Entertainment
5 out of 5
Grease was really well done, the ice shows were entertaining enough (not really a big fan, but I didn’t hate being there), and the stage performers were really good. Perhaps the least entertaining was one of the stand-up comedians. She just didn’t seem to have any enthusiasm for being there and it came across.
I have to note that our originally scheduled showing of Grease was cancelled right at show time due to technical issues. The stage crew worked very hard and were able to get the issues resolved and get the show rescheduled. This caused a lot of additional changes to other shows, but the Cruise Director and staff were able to work the schedule so that pretty much everything happened, though maybe at a different time. I can’t imagine how hard it was to figure out all those changes on the fly, so hats off to them.
Service and Staff
5 out of 5
Room steward and dining table staff were, as expected, outstanding. Though I’m pretty sure the ship is severely short staffed, I didn’t see any of the crew giving anything less than 100% great service. I’m sure they’re exhausted, which makes the level of service even more impressive.
Cabin / Stateroom
4 out of 5
The cabin was generally very good. Everything was clean and functional.
The only complaint is that there was a lot of wind noise coming from the balcony door, especially when the ship was moving at higher speeds. We opened and closed the door several times to try and get a better seal, but nothing helped.
It is possible that some of the noise was caused by the fact that we had three balconies opened up and connected, which may have changed the air flow to the point of making more noise.
Love, love, love the self handling walk-off debarkation. Left my stateroom at about 7:00 and was in my car at the hotel ready to hit the road by 8:00. Smooth and easy.
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