First Royal Cruise Thoughts

[Lesverts]

Background

8 Celebrity Cruises
1 Disney

Ship; Voyager of the Seas - Cape Town to Singapore

Good:
The staff and crew have been at or near the level that I have experienced on my previous 8 cruises with one notable best and one worst
Best: my room attendant. He learned the schedules of his cabins and always was in and out while you went about your morning routine

Bad
The food. Has been mediocre to outright terrible. Including an absolute worst main dining experience I’ve ever had. Crew that don’t know the menu. Takes 20+ minutes to bring you things and multiple times brought the wrong thing

Lessons Learned:
Main dining experience is important to me. I didn’t realize how important until I went on this cruise. So I am taking away from this voyage that I either need to be on a ship that offers traditional dining or on a ship that has so many causal and grab and go options that I can skip the main dining and be ok. So I would sail Royal again. I would only select the Anthem class or higher.

Highlight
Dinner at Izumi. I didn’t get any sushi just a few apps and Japanese beer and it was fantastic. Only meal I walked away from and went wow that was good.

Also: people take trivia far too seriously

 

[Bad Pink Tink 2.0]

Interesting. What about the entertainment? Did you go to the ice skating show Ice Odyssey? One of the skaters Jordan Bauth has a YouTube Channel and Vlogs her time on the ship. She does the Sun solo in the ice skating show. Her next vlog will probably be your cruise, as her latest video is the cruise before, Barcelona to Cape Town.

 

[starvenger]

I have heard that My Time Dining can be chaotic as you may not get the same servers every night. If you go the more traditional route you'll probably get better service.

Food-wise, I think MDR food quality has been trending downward. As for Izumi... I think the apps are great, but everything else is just not up to the level you can get on land.

 

[LoveDaisy]

Thanks for the review!

I’ve not been on that class ship. I’m confused as to why this ship did not offer traditional dining. Is this something they are testing? Or do you mean you opted for my time dining instead of the traditional early or late dining option? If you opted for my time I’m guessing you did not make reservations? When I have made reservations I always got the same table same wait staff.

I usually opt for my time because we mostly eat at the specialty restaurants and I don’t want to tie up a table. I’ve never had an issue with My time dining but I always make a reservation if we plan to eat in the main dining rooms.

I hope if you opt to cruise them again you have a better dining experience. While I like the smaller ships I usually cruise on their larger ships for more dining options.