Game changer!

Symphony of the Seas Cruise Review to Europe - Western Mediterranean

purununa

Contributor Level: Purser

Cruises: 4-6 cruises

Review: 1

Helpful Votes: 44

Overall rating:

4.8 out of 5

7 Night Western Mediterranean (Barcelona Roundtrip)

Sail date: August 26, 2018

Ship: Symphony of the Seas

Cabin type: Balcony

Traveled as: Couple

Reviewed: 5 years ago

Review summary

This cruise was a belated honeymoon for my husband and me (late 30s and late 40s) and it was a game changer. We have cruised 5 times before, 4 of those in RC older ships. The Symphony is in another category. Everything looks and feels high end, fun and carefully planned. Even though our sailing was jammed packed, we can honestly say that it never felt like more than 8,000 people were on that ship at the same time. Embarkation was at the most 15 minutes, and self-debarkation not even that. Our balcony stateroom was perfect, much larger than in older RC ships, and even though it was right by the elevators, no noise came in. This sailing had an exhausting 6 port days, so we for the first time ever we could not explore the whole ship, but we sure tried! We always found a table quickly at the Windjammer, and the food was plentiful and good. I did miss the omelet station, that was not set up daily. El Loco Fresh was a great fast lunch, and Park Cafe served great little sandwiches. We took some sandwich bags with us from home and those made a great snack midmorning on several ports. The Main Dining room was great every day. The crab cakes were a particular highlight. The new My Time Dining means that you don't get the same tables every day, but you can request a specific table or section. We did this because we loved our servers, Juan and Eduard from table 469. Late at night, Sorrento's pizza was a must, as well as the little deserts on Cafe Promenade. We only did one specialty restaurant, Wonderland, and it was very good, but not what I expected. More fusion and less molecular. The shows were extremely good, especially Hairspray and the comedy ones. 1967 was entertaining because of the skating and music, but the plot was meh. We took 3 shore excursions: Pisa and Florence on your own with a GPS device (the devices were never given to us but they were not necessary, and we got a credit for those); Imperial Rome (really cool); and Capri, Sorrento, and Pompeii. This one we don't recommend to anyone. To start you spend most of the time going from one place to another and not nearly enough time at the destinations: from the ship to Capri, one hour on a jetfoil and then at the most 40 minutes in Capri. From there to Sorrento, half an hour, where we spend half an hour having a bite to eat (literally, two lightly filled canelonnis followed but ONE small potato and a sliver of dry chicken), and 20 minutes in the city. And from there one hour on a bus to Pompeii, where we wasted 20 minutes on a cameo factory "tour" that no one asked for but was clearly meant to gather sale commissions for our tour guides, one hour in Pompeii and 35 minutes to get back to the bus. We should just have done Capri, or just Sorrento and Pompeii. The best part of the cruise was the staff. Every single person that we talked to had a smile on their face and worked hard to accommodate us. We will definitely try to cruise on the Symphony again, being more selective with the shore excurtions!