Poor customer service, food, and changed itinerary

Cruises: 4-6 cruises

Review: 1

Helpful Votes: 0

Review summary

We booked a four stop Bahamas cruise that got re-routed for potential bad weather to a Mexico, Honduras, and Belize cruise that we could have booked at a fraction of the cost. The night before the cruise when we found out, we tried to cancel and refund our trip as the new itinerary wasn’t safe for cruising with kids if we wanted to get off the boat at the ports. Royal Caribbean wouldn’t refund us our cruise or even pay us back the difference in cost for a Bahama’s cruise as compared to the one they changed it to. We had originally chosen a cruise that was safer to walk to beaches and booked one excursion with kids. The new itinerary, we were told wasn’t safe to venture outside of most of the ports and didn’t allow children on most of the excursions. We did book one excursion on a port that had one kids could go one, but paid way more for it as we were paying a premium since we had to book it during the cruise. As a result, we were stuck on the ship for most of the cruise with very limited activities. We reserved 5:00PM seating right when we booked the cruise due to having young children who’s bedtime was during the later seating, but when we showed up for dinner they said our reservation wasn’t until later seating. After discussing it with them to no avail, we went and found the originally confirmation of our early seating and talked to another staff who did eventually get us seated and told us they would fix it for other nights. They never fixed it but after talking with different staff we got it fixed eventually. The food offered in the Windjammer was less than satisfactory. They offered the same choices almost every day for breakfast and lunch. The food wasn’t very good or seasoned. They didn’t even have barbeque sauce for chicken nuggets, but thankfully one of the food workers was kind enough to go all the way to the main dining room to grab some for us. We requested more towels three times through the QR code they said to use. We never received any of them. We had a lifeguard tell us our kid couldn’t be in the pool because she was not potty trained when she was actually potty trained. Even when we explained the situation they still refused to believe she was. The entertainment/shows were also a disappointment. The theater productions were fine, but the comedy and juggler were so terrible people sitting beside us left three minutes into the show with many following for the remainder of the show. We were disappointed there weren’t shows offered every night. We booked a room for four people and gave the ages of our children for a room that showed a king bed and pull-out couch and we were going to use a crib for our youngest. When we called to reserve the crib, they told us that our room did not have a pull-out couch but had beds that folded out from the ceiling. This is not what was pictured online when we reserved and not ideal for a two-year-old’s safety. They told us there was no other options so we had to put the two-year-old in the bed from the ceiling. When we got on the ship we were told by the room steward and supervisor that they didn’t allow children under six on the pull-down beds from the ceiling. At this point we had no other option but for our two-year-old to use this bed. Royal Caribbean knew the ages of the kids so we are not sure how this didn’t get flagged when we reserved that cabin that they switched us to one with fold-down beds without our knowledge. The best part of the cruise was definitely the staff. Our main dining room servers and they were great and helped make it a pleasant dining experience even with two young children. They went above and beyond to make sure our kid's favorite appetizers were waiting for us when we arrived to our table, and brought out extra food when they heard our kid talking about his favorite types fruit. They also brought out extra deserts to accommodate dietary restrictions. Our room stewardess was always friendly and seeking to meet any needs we had. The issues we previously discussed about trying to get towels were not her fault as she was off-duty at the times we requested so she was unaware.

Embarkation

Ship experiences

Food and Dining

Onboard Activities

Entertainment

Service and Staff

Ship Quality

Cabin / Stateroom

Ports of call

Tampa, Florida

Disembarkation