Go with Carnival, you go so much more for your money.

Royal Caribbean is far too focused on your hip pocket and taking you for every dollar they can get. So save yourself a lot of frustration, and go with someone else.

I took my family on the Radiance of the Seas with Royal Caribbean for a 14 night trip from Sydney around New Zealand and back again. Stopping in about 8 ports and doing day trips in each port. I have previously taken my family on other cruises, such as Carnival Spirit, and while the ships are near identical in size and similar in structure this is where the similarities end. To be fair for those who have never sailed before the Radiance has had a recent refurbishment in mid 2016 and is of a reasonable fitout standard, so for first timers don’t despair, but do hang onto your wallets!

Yes the biggest difference between Royal Caribbean and Carnival is attention to detail, particularly the part where they try and fleece you for every dollar you have. From the minute you step aboard, to the minute you walk off 14 nights later the staff are at you constantly to pay more. This philosophy is ingrained into everything they do, from the ship layouts, to the port destinations, and the day trips.

To start with the Radiance is nearly identical in size and shape to the Carnival Spirit, expect on the Radiance they pack in an extra 400 passengers. These passengers have to go somewhere, and that’s probably an extra 120 rooms, with only about 6 floors of cabins that’s about 20 more rooms per floor. So consequently your rooms end up about 50% smaller to accommodate the extra guests. Yep smaller room, smaller balcony, smaller bathroom and so on.

The refit in 2016 has taken the Radiance up to a reasonable standard in look and feel. Not as nice as the Carnival, but acceptable. However in the refit they added a host of speciality dining rooms. This effectively is a “pay to eat” scenario, where in turn they have removed additional “free” dining experiences. The net result of this is almost all of the dining options are extra. Also that then effectively locks this area of the ship off to those who do not wish to pay. This was certainly not the case in Carnival where only one or two speciality dining rooms existed. To add to this they also have the unusual habit of closing the bistro early and forcing people who (for example) want something outside of hours (say an evening coffee) to go and pay for it in the “specialty café”.

Then there is the crew, who have been instructed at every turn to push sales. Sales of shore trips, sales of internal trips, sales of drink offers, sales of everything you care to name. It gets to the point where you dread seeing a crew member because you just know they are going to push something on you.

After this you have them cutting corners on shore trips and docking. Instead of going into the main port of the city, in most cases Royal Caribbean opted to stay outside of town in a commercial dock and then charge you a bus fair ($15 USD per person) to get into town. Or the other fun one was charging me $160 USD for a trip to the Cadbury Factory (fun trip) but was advertised on the door at only $40 USD ($55 NZD). Yep a whopping four times the price! When I complained I was told it was not their problem and I should call their help line if I had an issue. I complained again, and again, and was eventually offer a 20% rebate on the price. Now I fully expected they to make a profit on the day trips, that is their business. But they are booking 100s of these trips, and the door price (even have a pic of it) is $55 NZD (about $40 USD) for the family and I was charged $160 USD. On top of that they didn’t even book the tickets for my $160 USD, they just dumped us at the door and told us to sort it out ourselves. Had to wait over an hour because they didn’t book the tickets.

Regrettably the Cadbury Tour was not a unique experience. The bus trip to Christchurch (this time stopped 2 hours outside of town) was a rough as guts bus ride into Christchurch, where you got 30 minutes for essentially a toilet break before turning you around and racing back to the ship. So much for Christchurch, all I have is pictures of the toilet…

With their attention to fleecing you of your money, their small rooms, and poor ship layout I would strongly suggest you book with someone else. New Zealand is lovely, the people are great, and the place is so much fun to see, such a pity we went with Royal Caribbean.

Oh as for those “Specialty Dining” options, we did try one, it was very disappointing, a specialty steak place and I have had better steaks from Aldi, this was full of fat and sinew, very disappointing.