Worst Experience of our whole 6th cruise traveling
Harmony of the Seas Cruise Review to Caribbean - Western
Contributor Level:
Purser
Cruises: 4-6 cruises
Review: 1
Helpful Votes: 4
6 Night Western Caribbean (Galveston Roundtrip)
Sail date: July 28, 2024
Ship: Harmony of the Seas
Cabin type: Balcony
Cabin number: 9321
Traveled as: Family (older children)
Reviewed: 1 month ago
Review summary
* I'll never take any cruise ship from Royal Caribbean again in future when compared to this trip which was our 6th one. * The overall ratings for this cruise trip is less than 2 stars. * We have simply wasted our $9000 on this trip and not satisfied at all. * Waste of time and my valuable vacation time. * For my all-previous cruises, they got a rating from 3 to 5 stars but this one was not even closer to them. * Consider and check other cruise ships before taking this one.Embarkation
Good
Ship experiences
Food and Dining
* You can eat your favorite or forced to eat a frozen-reheated food only up to 9:00 PM every day.
* For other times, you don't have any other option other than eating a less than medium quality pizza.
* No food was available between 3:00-5:00 PM and the only option was to eat Taco. They promptly close at 5:00 PM and don't care about the remining people on the queue.
* For all 4000+ passengers we got this option only to eat during this hour. There was a big queue to get the Tacos but even we missed 2 days to get the Tacos. They were not refilling the ingredients and we eat only whatever leftover veggies without any chicken or any meat. Royal Caribbean cruise do this cleverly by just ask the waiter to just disappear/leave from the counter. You can ask any info only if somebody must be available.
* The common buffet was not available more time and promptly closed at 3:00 PM every day. If you miss then you must wait till open at 5:00 PM. This was not the case in our previous cruises.
* During the shore excursion and return between 3:00-5:00 PM you can't eat anywhere other than pizza.
* The food was available in some places on the ship in whole days in my previous cruises with Carnival, Norwegian, MSC.
* Very limited food was available. For example, for an Indian cuisine we had only 2 or 3 items and almost all the times the salt level was more than 200% and we were unable to eat and enjoy fully but we were eating the same old bread with butter instead.
* This reminds me of my college dorm where we had so many rules like these.
* Some of the water dispensers were not good and we need to wait long to get a full glass of water.
Onboard Activities
* All on-board water activities closed promptly at 6:00 PM everyday even you are in the middle of swimming pool and Jacuzzi. You will be simply kicked-out from these.
* They simply put a fence around these so that nobody can use this after 6:00 PM. Some Jacuzzi were available till mid-night on my previous cruises but not on Royal Caribbean.
* So, you got only water activities between 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM. We are taking vacation to relax and enjoy but we faced so many restrictions and availabilities.
* Most of the places on the outside of the ship activities area where we found NO night light at all, especially near the Mini-Golf. We and also some other people were using our cell phone torch light to play our mini golf. This might be to save some electricity bill for RC. Most of the ship area the lights were off even from 11:00 PM every day. We found some places were really dark and afraid to go.
* Just FYI, some activities were available between only during some hours and NOT available for the whole day day-time. So, you need to plan well ahead at least take these activities. We completely missed 2 activities because of our shore excursion times even though we were on the ship for 6 full days.
* Rock climbing were not available continually for the whole day.
* This again reminds me my college dorm where we had so many rules like these.
Entertainment
* Ice skating (2 shows) were really good.
* Musicians/DJ were not so good. I noticed even no one care to listen these.
* Comedy clubs/shows were terrible. The stand-up comedian reminded us to laugh multiple times during the show and we left very early almost on all shows.
* The musical shows were OK but our expectations were high compared to Radio City music hall in New York city.
* The cruise director was reminding us one thing at every time he speaks. That is "he is from Toronto, Canada". I notice someone near me joked about this, like "he wants to get a citizenship/ green card to US through this announcement".
Service and Staff
* The staffs were really helpful and good but they will simply disappear once 9:00 PM is reached at 'Wind jammer' buffet, Taco counter, etc.
* They simply remove all food items promptly at 9:00 PM even people were eating their food at that time.
* I noticed a waiter who was taking all the left-over shrimps and loaded in to his own box exactly at 9:00 PM in Wind Jammer and didn't care about me or other who were waiting to get the shrimp. Of course, the taste of the shrimp was not up to the mark but we didn't have any other choice.
Ship Quality
* The common areas were clean and neat.
* The layout of the ship must be changed to include enough lighting at multiple places especially at almost all outdoor activities area.
* I didn't find any decorative lights at all on the ship. When we compare this with other previous cruise ships, they were decorating their ship in a very good and in an attractive way.
* The whole water activities area was dark and we afraid to go even at 10:00 PM.
Cabin / Stateroom
* It was clean and maintained in a good way.
Ship tip
I won't and will never take cruise from royal Caribbean again when compared to my previous cruise trips. You, select a cruise other than Royal Caribbean because all their ships should have the same issues those I mentioned above.
Thumbs up
0
Ports of call
* Nothing to see much here.
* We visited this small island and nothing special about this island other than more shops.
* We didn't take any special activities because there were too expensive.
* Our shore excursion time was very short duration and was between 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM.
Coxen Hole, Roatan, Bay Islands, Honduras
* We visited a small church in this island and nothing special about this church.
* We visited a small chocolate shop where they were making own chocolate.
* We didn't take any special activities because there were too expensive.
* Our shore excursion time were between 8:00 PM to 3:00 PM.
* I really do not know how it became a high tourist spot in Mexico.
* We visited a small church in this island and nothing special about this church.
* We visited this small island and nothing special about this island other than more shops.
* Never take local sightseeing tour from the cruise. We paid nearly $400 but if we take a taxi then it would have been less than $50.
* We didn't take any special activities because there were too expensive and also the available time were less compared to the activities.
Disembarkation
* it was good but they urged you to go out of ship as early as possible.