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.

 

[sam_gordon]

I’m confused as to why this ship did not offer traditional dining

I have not heard of a ship that didn't have traditional dining. I have heard, and experienced, ships that have "filled" traditional dining and everyone from that point forward got assigned MyTime, whether they wanted it or not.

 

[Bad Pink Tink 2.0]

@Lesverts
Jordan Bauth, one of the ice skaters has started putting up videos from your cruise.

Her first one is some of the ice cast sightseeing in Cape Town

 

[Lesverts]

I have not heard of a ship that didn't have traditional dining. I have heard, and experienced, ships that have "filled" traditional dining and everyone from that point forward got assigned MyTime, whether they wanted it or not.

There was some unique issues with my cruise. There wasn’t enough crew on board to offer the full normal dining experience. So the main dining room was a slow mess.

The entertainment was pretty typical for a ship that doesn’t offer the specialized and production shows. Mostly meh but understandable considering the length and position of the cruise

 

[pjacobi]

There was some unique issues with my cruise. There wasn’t enough crew on board to offer the full normal dining experience.

I wonder if RCCL staffing issues are caused by experienced crew promoted to newer ICON-class ships leaving older ships to hire and train new crew members. Maybe that's why ICON-class ships command a higher price while the older ships are discounted.


-Paul

 

[Lesverts]

Ship was at controlled capacity. For the cruises from Barcelona to Cape Town and Cape Town to Singapore there was roughly 2400-2600 guests and Royal had timed a lot of contracts for crew to end in Barcelona and start for the Singapore to Brisbane leg. So lots of crew ended in Barcelona and weren’t replaced until Singapore.

 

[peacefrogdog]

Too bad about the crew issues. That sounds like a mess.

I've switched from fixed dining to my time dining, but have reserved the same time in the cruise planner. I've been assigned the same table and servers as when I chose the fixed dining option.

I suspect the crew issue is an isolated one, and not representative of the experience on Voyageur-class ships. I've found service, including main dining room service on smaller ships to be better than on Oasis and Icon class. I've attributed it to a lower passenger: worker ratio. I now look for Voyageur or Freedom class deals.

I too think less about the quality of the main dining room food has gone down since I started cruising 20 years ago. I've wondered to what extent this was me having more opportunities to taste good food than when I was in my late 20s. I also realize we get less for our buck in all aspects of life than 20 years ago, whether it's cruise food or paying a ton more for a Big Mac. When we last cruised (on Mariner, another Voyageur class ship), I found the Main dining room food decent enough for me. For comparison, my 20-something kids (who used to cooking for themselves at college) thought it was fantastic.

I typically characterize outright terrible food as dishes I've tried to make myself, so I'm curious to hear examples of the bad food dishes you ate on your sailing. I assume the main dining room food you've recently ate on Celebrity was better?

 

[peacefrogdog]

Also, I 100% share your take on the trivia Many who participate seem to be very proud of their knowledge.

 

[Lesverts]

I would characterize the ships specialty dining as on par with the quality of Celebrity's main dining. Windjammer was just very inconsistent in quality. Indian/Asian food was usually very good, everything else was pretty meh.

I did a galley tour and one of the heads in the department outright said they were simplifying the menus to increase speed of service and reduce food cost and waste.

I did a flag trivia and won. Someone went and complained that I clearly cheated and she looks at the person and goes, he could pronounce Djibouti and Timor-Leste properly. He clearly won.

 

[peacefrogdog]

Good to know. I'm eager now to try Celebrity, especially since they mentioned points for sailing on Celebrity can be used to build my Royal Caribbean status.

The trivia story sounds outrageous - but I can totally see it happening. The person who complained was probably really looking forward to winning that trivia competition.