I am extremely disgusted with Royal Caribbean on all levels, but the wait staff( our servers and room steward were AMAZING).

I am extremely disgusted with Royal Caribbean on all levels, but the wait staff( our servers and room steward were AMAZING).

My Best Friend, Myself and our 2 daughters drove from Syracuse, NY to Miami, Fl leaving in a major blizzard on Valentines day night. We decided a road trip would be fun. Our girls only knew we were going to Miami, no idea about the cruise until we pulled up front of the ship, my daughter had never been on a cruise.. This was their Birthday/Christmas gifts as we planned on spending a lot of money on this trip. The week before my friend called RC to book the Sea Lion Excursion for the 4 of us. She was advised that we couldn't book it over the phone, but they would set aside 4 ticket for us on the ship and to go right to the excursions desk when we got there, which we did only to be told by Andre that the Sea Lions we not available on this cruise And here starts the disappointments.... .So we opt for the Dolphin swim for the kids, as we( the adults) have done this prior. We asked Andre what was the better choice as there were 2 offered, Atlantis or Blue Lagoon, he advised that Blue Lagoon was the better choice, they have

more personalized service and we could have access to the private beaches and inflatable water toys for the day. We were told to meet at the pier at 12:45, we never left the dock till 1:30 pm, stopped at Atlantis to pick up additional passengers, and then on to Blue Lagoon, the kids did have a great experience with the Dolphins, but we were at the island for no more than 9 minutes, once we finished the Dolphin Swim we have less than 15 minutes at the beach. We were back to ship by 4:15. When we went to the excursion desk they stated that " the book states that it is a 4 hour excursion, nothing about having access to the beach for the day" When we explained that we spoke to THEIR excursions rep for the advice we were told we "should have read the brochure'. So with that being said, I asked" the book says a 4 hr excursion, we were told to meet at 12:45pm, never left the dock till 1:30 pm, it is 4:15 now, how is it an 4 hr excursion when I am standing in front of you and it was less than 3 hrs ago we left the pier?" They couldn't answer that, nor would the compensate us until we argued for another 30 minutes, and then the would only take 20% off of the kids parasailing tickets that were 65.00 ( 20% of the 65.00) not 20% of the 274.00 we spent on the dolphin excursion. Did I also mention that the SEA LION excursion was available as well according to the Blue Lagoon staff?

The ship itself..... we walked into the room, and it smelled like sewer, the room steward was great, he re-cleaned the bathroom and also fixed the fan that was making noises, then the lights for the bunk beds didn't work, so they fixed those, and the TV only had 4 stations that came in and one of them that was in English, only played in English part of the time, it kept switching to Spanish during the shows. Day 2 the toilet overflowed and kept flowing, I had to bail Urine out for over an hour of the toilet, when we called the front desk on this they said they were aware of this an it would take about an hour to fix this issue, so I bailed for an hour, when we called back they said it would be an additional 15 minutes. They never once offered to shut the water off as we found out they could on day 3 when it happened again. Our room was next to the service elevator so we heard banging ALL NIGHT and had a very hard time sleeping, I personally was in bed with a migraine for 2 days due to this. The manager of guest services guaranteed us that we wouldn't hear a thing on the last night, which was not the case as they moved luggage all night long so we again got no sleep, and we had a 22 hr drive ahead of us as we drove from Syracuse NY.

We were scheduled for 3 ports and only went to 1, there was nothing to do on the ship as it was too windy and cold for the kids st swim, and they closed the pool for some time, the rock climbing wall was closed 90% of the time there was very little entertainment on board to begin with, then ad 2 extra days on board. The food was ok, but nothing spectacular , they didn't even have Bagels available for breakfast, bagels are a staple for most breakfast buffets.

There were so many things that went wrong and i could go on with, but overall this was a horrible experience and now we owe the kids a make up trip, and the next one will be on Carnival Cruise line, where we have not had an issue.