One thing I can’t get over is how disappointing the food was in the reflections dining room for dinner. Service was fine but all the meals were executed below average. Not sure if it’s royal Caribbean cutting corners on good ingredients or poor execution by the cooking staff staff. Probably a little of both.
Embarkation
5 out of 5
Was fast and fairly organized. No need to pay extra for Key upgrade.
Ship experiences
Food and Dining
3 out of 5
Drinks 4 star
Food 2.5 star
Food was mediocre at best. The dishes sound great but the execution was piss poor. This is based on Windjammer buffet (3 stars) for breakfast/lunch and Reflections (2 stars) main dining for dinner. Honestly not better than Denney’s and Vegas has better buffets. Come on Royal Caribbean.
Onboard Activities
3 out of 5
Small ship so it doesn’t have wave/surf pool, zip line, cool tube slide, etc. Pools are small as well. Does have nice climbing wall and sports court and so so mini golf.
Fitness center is very nice though and decent size.
Movies theater is fine but so so movies shown during our cruise.
Entertainment
2 out of 5
Acts were mediocre at best. I was hoping for a magic act or hypnotist (funny as hell is they are good), but we got ok comedian twice, abba tribute band and some other lame acts.
Main band in Centrum was technically good but played bored, which was lame and uninspiring.
Children's Programs
5 out of 5
I’d have to say this was good because my boys 8 and 10 always wanted to go back.
Service and Staff
4 out of 5
I’m sure a lot of people will leave five stars here but this was not five-star service. Nothing against the individuals but they were mostly acting as robots. Remember most of their earnings come from tips so of course they’re going to be nice and do their job that they were hired for. I often felt that they were acting like robots and just reading from a script in their head that they were taught.
Biggest issue I had though was that 90+ percent of them were non-English as a first language and so not just understanding but communicating was difficult at times. Not as big a deal with my Cabin steward but a big deal with customer service representatives. But this is just the way ships are these days registering the ships in countries with the lowest labor laws so they can hire as inexpensively as possible. I’d rather pay a little more For the cruise and have a higher average caliber of staff.
Ship Quality
3 out of 5
This is a small ship and I don’t think it should be put on any cruise longer than five days as there’s just not enough to do. The pools are small so even if all you wanna do is lounge they get crowded fast. And service around the pool is near nonexistent.
I’m sure this doesn’t happen all the time but it was annoying that they were doing construction on the main giant TV screen overlooking the main pool during the cruise, including cutting and welding which was very loud at times. They also replaced our railing on our balconyIn the middle of the cruise which is fine I guess but goes to show that this is an older boat that needs continued TLC and maintenance.
Cabin / Stateroom
5 out of 5
Our balcony cabin was fine for the two of us and our two boys. Plenty of room. Modern enough. Only issue we had was with a strong vinegar smell in the lav which our cabin steward attempted to remedy throughout the trip.
Ship tip
I think 11 days was too long on such a little ship. This ship just does not have enough entertainment and activity options. Also the pools I think are too small and because there’s no service at the pools it would sometimes take a while to get drinks at the pool bar.
Complete waste of a stop. I think this was a mercy stop by royal Caribbean to help the economy with a slight influx of toursist dollars, But there isn’t much to do here and the shopping is piss poor.
We did treetop excursion Ziplining on our own But the taxi ride was expensive. This one I might recommend doing through the ship even though we had a great time. We were here on a Sunday so many things were closed including the beach snorkel rental shop it was a bummer.
I highly recommend the dolphin discovery swimming with the dolphins excursion. We did this on our own and pre-booked it before hand which was cheaper in the excursion through Royal Caribbean. In the taxi ride was inexpensive and fast.
This went incredibly smoothly for us. We were in the last group to disembark which gave us time to enjoy breakfast in the morning and when we got off the ship to retrieve our luggage it was easy to find as 90% of the people had already gone. Royal Caribbean has a program called The Key which gives you some extra perks including priority disembarkation. I don’t think it’s worth it on this small of the ship. Maybe on the larger ships.
We went on serenade of the seas in November on a 10 day cruise and had plenty to do and the food was very good and service excellent also got drinks by the main pool area no problem and had staff coming around too. The entertainment was also first class so not sure what this guy is on about.
Sorry you didn’t enjoy the food. We were on Adventure of the Seas in November with similar menus and found good variety and quality in both the dining room and buffet. It’s not 5 star cuisine, but about the best you can expect when they are feeding several thousand people 3 meals a day for multiple days on end. I am always curious as to what people who complain about the food on a cruise eat at home regularly. There must be something fabulous that I am missing out on that I am unaware of.
Glad you enjoyed your cruise, we have been on a couple RCCL ships as recently as end of Sept and we ate in the MDR every night and the food was delicious.
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