First RCCL post-pandemic cruise

Item: Serenade of the Seas
Rating: 3.9
Author: Run2Wanderlust

Serenade of the Seas Cruise Review

Run2Wanderlust

Contributor Level: Third Mate

Cruises: 7+ cruises

Reviews: 4

Helpful Votes: 40

Overall rating:

3.9 out of 5

4 Night Western Caribbean (Tampa Roundtrip)

Sail date: December 02, 2021

Ship: Serenade of the Seas

Cabin type: Balcony

Cabin number: 8648

Traveled as: Couple

Reviewed: 2 years ago

Review summary

This was an okay cruise for a last minute getaway. I don’t know that I would choose this ship or embarkation port again if planning in advance.

Embarkation

5 out of 5

Port staff were amazing at embarkation. The process was super simple and were onboard within 30 minutes of arrival.

Ship experiences

Food and Dining

3 out of 5

For the most part everything was just okay. Main dining was better than the buffet, but many times we entered the buffet to find it shut down early or the food old and room temp and best. Definitely not the worst I’ve seen, but not RCCL standards either.

Onboard Activities

3 out of 5

The pool deck was pretty uneventful.

Entertainment

4 out of 5

There wasn’t a lot going on. The nightly musicians in the atrium were great.

Ship Quality

3 out of 5

Okay, so this is where I was a little put off on this sailing. So many areas of the ship were dirty by pre-pandemic standards. I’ve honestly never been on a RCCL ship that was anywhere near this bad. But if I’m looking at it as a post-pandemic return to cruising standard, this was terrible. No more than 4 in an elevator at a time, but touch the handrail and you’ll walk out with visibly dirty hands. I honestly think the staff just needed a little refresher on how to keep up with cleaning during the constant flow of people.

Disembarkation

2 out of 5

This experience was one for the books. My husband has a victim of identity theft alert on his passport to make sure it is double-checked when being used. We 100% prefer that, but during debarkation, when his passport was scanned with the flag, ship security grabbed him by the arm and referred to him as a “security threat” and escorted him (with me running behind them) to port authority. Port authority scanned his passport, asked for his passcode to verify his identity (as is listed in the system), and apologized profusely for the way it was handled on the ship. I contacted Royal in hopes they would educate their staff a little better on this type of thing and never received any follow-up despite my attempts to contact them for a response.