disappointment

Having taken several RC voyages before this one was our longest and most expensive, and most disappointing. The quality of service was terrible, at most they did their jobs at the basic level and not even with a smile.  When we dined at the restaurants with a cover charge, THEN we got service. 

We stayed in a balcony room on the 8th floor, four of us.  One child was in an overhead (literally over my head) bunk.  Worst room layout EVER. Every handle on every drawer was sticky smeared with chocolate, the remote control was the same. Another child slept on the fold out sofa (twin sized).  The bed was NEVER made properly.  There was this constant pile of sheets by his pillow.  The state room attendant NEVER made the bed just tossed a duvet on it.

Mid cruise there was construction work on our balcony covering the railing with this black and yellow sticky foam caution tape.  five days later (and a lot of complaining) it was removed and the balcony repaired only to have them white paint the exterior covering the glass planels with paint splatter.  In 12 days the balcony was never cleaned, swept, glass washed, nothing.  Glasses and dishes were out there for multiple days. 

One of our excursions was cancelled, with no attempt to provide us with additional options (god forbid a discount even), when we asked for what was available nearly everything was sold out. so we got nothing and they didn't seem to mind. 

We complained about our neighbours smoking (various products) on their balcony.... FIVE times in 3 days.  The customer service offered several excuses, but in the end didn't apologise for the inconvenience, but reminded us how they were going out of there way to make sure our neighbours were abiding by the rules.  

We spend time (too much time for a holiday) discussing with the manager, the state room manager, the maintenance manager to cover all the BS that was ruining our trip, the manager did finally offer a discount on a future cruise, but when we got it in writing it was 50% LESS than what was verbally stated.  

It was eventually corrected, but that's the thing... it felt shady, no real apologies for anything no admitting of wrong doing, or poor service just here's a discount and oh by the way there's a time limit. :S

This boat is too small to hold 3000+ people from 60+ countries for this period of time.  The "shows" were cheesy at best, but at least the artists/dancer/magician/comedian didn't try to sell a cd a dozen times throughout their performance (like on other cruise lines).

Our first RC cruise was the greatest thing ever, it was nearly 20 years ago and we are still in contact with our table mates.  But since then... the service has just gone down the drain.