Ovation WOWS again

Royal was extremely clear that the time you had chosen to board was the time you would be able to get onboard… a massive line formed outside the terminal with people that decided to show up when they wanted to, and because of that, they waited. We showed up at 12:45pm for our 12:30 boarding time, and we’re drink in hand at 12:55pm. It took 7 minutes to board once inside the terminal. Love the new process!

Overall food & beverage was what I expected, I was actually surprised at the quality still being there given the protocols in place for safety. Some items just don’t translate well to being served to you instead of self serve, but I much prefer the served buffet to the unwashed hands of passengers. Specialty dining it was for us during the cruise and Jaimie’s Italian, Wonderland & Izumi we’re all amazing. Chop’s - while the food was mostly good, the service on my previous cruise and now this one, it’s as if the servers there have been trained that fine dining is panicked servers, even the restaurant manager was seen rushing around, panicked and could even be overheard saying something about problems, servers slamming silverware draws at their stations, no descriptions of the food like at the other venues, just handed a menu and then rushing off, while the steaks are good, the service feels very high stress.

The cabin was kept spotless, and everything was in amazing condition… except for the virtual balcony. The screen had a large black circle on the screen that I thought may have been damage from a previous cruiser hitting it with something, but our room attendant said it was an issue with the system / camera. A few days in it seemed to get better but then the screen would turn green. Then black spot again, or just too hard to look at because of out of focus or something wrong with the camera. Room attendant said he had maintenance check it and said it was a system issue… Disembarkation day the next cabin over was open along with several other ones, it seems it was just our “virtual balcony” that had issues, all the other ones we could see looked great. 🤷🏼‍♂️ a tv balcony didn’t make it break my trip, just thought it was odd with so many vacant inside rooms that it wasn’t brought up to offer a room change. Just makes me thing I shouldn’t be so cheap and just get a real balcony 😂

It was a mess, to put it bluntly. BUT. I think that’s more on the port and customs and border patrol. The ship docked around 7:30am as expected, the captain said we’d arrive then abs should be cleared by 8am. There was a hard to understand announcement around 9am that there was a delay in clearing the ship, and to please not come downstairs yet. Then around 9:50am we saw passengers going out of the port, but no announcements were made. Around 10:15am an announcement was made that no one should come down to deck 5 for disembarkation until their bag tag number is called. No numbers were ever called, the ship was basically shutting down, crew members were all being brought to the royal theater, the Captain never made an announcement on disembarkation day, which seemed very odd. We went to deck 5 finally at 10:45am, our arranged car was scheduled at 10am. Deck 5 was 2 giant lines snaking through and around the venues to handle all the people that just showed up there (like us) and most people were grumpy or rude to each other and crew. I get it, it wasn’t great. But, it was a ship shutting down, 2,800 people trying to leave with little direction, and COVID distancing ideas out the window. Once we made it outside to border control, it made sense. There were only 3 customs 🛃 border officers checking 2,800 passengers passports. No wonder it was so slow. Keeping in mind the amazing cruise I’d just been on, on such a beautiful ship, with such an incredible crew… I don’t want disembarkation to be the final thought on the trip. My last time on this ship disembarkation was fine, so this was a one off.