What are they thinking?

Getting through the New York port is a breeze. Our problem came when we tried to check in and we were told by the counter employee that we were getting an upgrade to a Haven suite! We were incredibly excited until we got on board the boat, and were told by the heaven employee that the people on shore had made a mistake, and that we didn’t have a suite. We had originally booked a family balcony so that both of my daughters could have their own bed, but because of the screwup at the counter, we were forced into a regular balcony because they didn’t have any family balconies left now not only did we have the sweet upgrade, but we also didn’t have enough full beds in our room for the children because they were over the cruise line did not try to offer us any other additional rooms or make up for this error at all

The only reason why I am giving this review to stars instead of one was because the sushi out the wasabi restaurant was easily. Some of the best I have ever had including any restaurant that I have been to on the mainland. Every other restaurant that we were in had mediocre food, and a horrible selection, no matter what time of day. The Buffay had the exact same food every single day, and it was lukewarm at best. Every type of meat was so incredibly over cooked, and the selection of foods left a lot to be desired. The best way I can describe the food would be if you asked 100 foreigners to do their best at making American food without describing what you wanted them to make. Even simple things like hamburgers were over cooked and in some cases in edible. Like the sweet corn and olive pizza was terrible, the french fries were over cooked and stale, even at the beginning of lunch, and sometimes so salty. You couldn’t eat them and other times, not salted at all the breakfast buffet had over cooked omelettes and undercooked scrambled eggs every single day. There was no consistency to the food at all. Tried to eat at several of the à la carte restaurants even paying for it. The menus were disjointed, and not entertaining whatsoever. I was very disappointed with the food from start to finish aboard the ship for the duration of the cruise.

Only one pool open to the general population of the cruise ship. And not enough chairs poolside I know this is a common occurrence on a lot of ships but with the lack of other onboard activities, the poolside was the place to be. I have to say that the poolside bar workers were the best of any cruise ship that I have ever been on. They worked their tails off all day long because they were so busy, however for most of the trip, they only had one of the two poolside bars open and every day it was the bar next to the smoking area so for myself, my girlfriend and my two children having to walk through a cloud of smoke every day in order to get drinks near the pool Was really on appetizing. If you have two bars, why not open the one on the other side of the cruise ship. At least make it so that the non-smokers don’t have to walk through all the smoke just to get a drink. The comedy shows on board were mediocre. The comedians only changed once for the full 12 days, and the shows were the same every single day. There were two shows on board. Neither one of them really appealed to me, however, I did try to go and see them, but wound up leaving halfway through both as they were just absolutely an entertaining the cruise crew. Whatever they decide to call themselves tried their best to be entertaining, but for most of the day they were pretty absent on deck, it seems to me that the big draw for this ship was the casino. Although even the bingo was sparsely attended because if you buy a card for 50 bucks, the best case scenario would be winning the maximum jackpot they had of $3$300. Overall I have to say that I was disappointed with this cruise. The ropes course was only open for two hours per day, and only on days when it wasn’t too windy, which meant that days with the boat was moving it was seldom open one of the five waterslides was closed for the duration of the trip and the other four we’re only open for about two hours per day. It really left almost nothing to do that you didn’t have to pay for. All of the pool tables, the bowling alley, the dirt boards, the air hockey everything was between three and five dollars per play.

The entertainment was not entertaining and that is about as straightforward as I can be. On deck, the DJ played roughly the same 35 songs on repeat all day long literally the same songs every day all day on repeat the DJ wasn’t really a DJ if you wanted to make a request, you could only choose from the same songs that he already was playing. There were a few days where they had a reggae band, and that was OK, but the other on board entertainers like Shelley, the piano player and some of the other bands were really mediocre. I tried to attend to stage shows, but wound up, walking out of both of them as they were really poor.

This is the only five star part of my review as I will say that the bar employees were fantastic. Our room steward was fantastic, and every employee that we had to interact with was responsive and thoughtful and thorough in how we were handled. Of all the cruises I have been on, this was the only one that I had to actually make complaints on deck, and they were all handled thoroughly and well.

The ship was very clean all the way throughout. I have no complaints about the cleanliness or how well-kept the ship was. The decor of the ship was kind of all over the place with no real theme or genre in mind from the dining areas to the specialty restaurants, there was no overall aesthetic that they seemed to be going for. On the pool deck my biggest complaint was that for most days of a 12 day cruise they only had one of the two poolside bars open and every day it was the bar directly next to the smoking section so that for the non-smokers on board the only way to get a drink was to walk directly through the smell of smoke coming from the smoking section. They had two bars side-by-side, but only the one next to the smoking area would be opened. It seems to make sense to open the other one, when most of the people on deck were non-smokers.

Our cabin attendant, Dominic was fantastic, and was courteous to myself and my girlfriend and daughters every day. The room was left, clean whenever we had our do not disturb late and we were left alone, and every time we had a need it was taken care of. I will, however, say that it was definitely about 50% smaller than any other balcony state room that I have booked on any other cruise ship, including the smaller older ships that I have sailed on like the carnival glory or the carnival pride.