Just got back from a cruise with Royal Caribbean

[dairyou]

Hi Everyone,

Being an advid DCL cruiser we ventured out and went on the Mariner of the Sea with Royal Caribbean. I think we are ruined for life.

We chose the Mariner because it was a little cheaper and had the rock wall, ice skating rink, roller blading and miniture golf which my sons (11 and 13) love to do. By the 4th day we were more than ready to get off the ship. I am not saying the Mariner is a bad ship, it is just not for us. First, the rock wall and the other activities were only open about 3 hours a day. My kids didn't enjoy the Adventurer Club. My 13 year old said there was too much "hanging out" time. No one was ever in the club. He said he would go during an activitiy session and a few boys would show up and the counslers would never start the game advertised. It seems like the arcade is the place to hang out. We spent over 300.00 in arcade money and that was both my sons playing 1 hour of arcade a day. Not many kids were roller blading or miniture golfing We took my youngest to computer time at 1:00 pm...waited...waited... until 1:30. Some one next door (I think the 15 year old room) was nice enough to let us know they were still playing around at another room on the ship. Of course the Adventure Clubs are all surrounded by the arcade...what do you think we did that half an hour while we waited to be told they weren't having computer time? On movie night they picked movies that only girls would enjoy... The 13 year old activities started around 8 or 9... The 11 year old activities ended at 10:00. If you wanted your 9-11 to stay later you had to pay extra. So hubby and I never really had alot of time together to see the late night shows. I'd feel bad leaving the 11 year old alone in the room and he didn't want to stay late at the club.

There was one show that the family could enjoy a night. It just seems like Royal Caribbean didn't promote family time together like Disney did.

We thought the food was a little better than DCL...but if you ask my 11 year old he wouldn't agree since they didn't have kid friendly food at the buffet. No Mickey Bars or macaroni and cheese...

Enclosing I'm not trying to dis Royal Caribbean...just saying it is not the cruise line for us. I guess we weren't the only ones since the family behind us disliked it more than us. Of course they cruised Disney before

So my warning...if you have cruised with DCL and want to cruise on another ship... don't make our mistake and try to compare the two... If you like to gamble and drink, Royal Caribbean will do fine. If you want more family activities...stay with DCL

Thanks for listening,
Deb

 

[Mickeyhugger]

Thanks for the review. DH, DD and I have thought of RCCL for a future cruise, but since their prices are not that much lower than DCL (at least for our family of three, with very advanced bookings and Cat 9), we might as well stay w/DCL. (Carnival Glory, though was a tremendous savings at spring break, but still didn't have the Disney 'magic', pun intended!)

 

[xlRacerXlx]

I went on a royal carribean and it wasn't very good... The teen counselours were there for 2 hours and day and the kids had sex, drank, etc IN the teen lounge... I thought it was absurd...

 

[Dreamer04]

Over on the cruise critic board, someone complained that RCCL was a big disappointment, after sailing on DCL, and a bunch of people jumped on her for comparing them. LOL. This was on the RCCL board. They were all offended, saying that it isn't fair, that DCL is a premium line and that you get what you pay for. It sounded like they were pushing DCL!

I've sailed other lines before, but since sailing DCL? I don't know if I could.

I am, sadly, hooked on DCL!

 

[markey]

Well my DH and I are sailing on RCCL in 2 weeks after 5 DCL cruises, but we are not taking our GK's this time, so the kids prograns are not important. It's a 5 day out of Baltimore, no air needed, to Bermuda. In case you hear of a women being thrown overboard in that time frame it would be me. My DH has told me that if he hears, "Well DCL is better" more then once a day that will be my swim for the day. All kidding aside I am really looking forward to Bermuda and will consider the ship my transportation there. Now on the other had I know I will be in tears in December because we are also booked on the Carnival Glory which will be right next to the Magic at Cape Canaveral for an anniversary cruise, could not pass up the $499 per person for a 7 day cruise. At least I will get my fix in August, with GK's for a 4 day on the Wonder.

 

[Laura24]

Your post is just what I needed! Have sailed DCL 4x's and thought just maybe we'd test the waters with RCCL. I had a hold on DCL, let it go and booked with RCCL (Mariner). I then tortured myself for two weeks about the what if's and I knew I'd miss Disney so......I cancelled RCCL and am happy to say DH and I are on board once again on The Magic. We've always been pleased with Disney's standards so.....If it ain't broke....why try to fix it.

 

[bhoffman]

My husband and I had a GREAT time on a Royal Caribbean cruise last winter. We did not have the kids with us so I have no idea what the kids clubs are like (they sound horrid! ). I am anxious to compare to our first Disney cruise this summer! We did do the mini golf, art auctions, ice skating, rock wall, etc. We really did have a great time. We are not sit still very long people so we figured cruising is the way to go for us! Sorry your trip was not great!

 

[dizcrazy]

Thanks for the post OP!

I have heard so many times that the cruise lines are a lot cheaper. I now feel better than ever about my decision to take our first cruise on DCL!

 

[UGAFan0829]

Thanks for posting your thoughts. It puts my mind at ease a little. I had thought about trying another cruise line besides DCL, and to be quite honest RCCL was the only other one that I would consider trying. Now the DH and I don't have any children yet, but we still love the Disney atmosphere. I don't think I would enjoy the atmospehere of another cruise line as much!
Thanks for putting my mind at ease!

 

[westjones]

Thanks for posting! We had considered RCCL also, but we love DCL so much. After reading your post I think we may just stick with what we know we love.
DJ

 

[dairyou]

Hi Everyone!

I'm glad I was able to help. In no way am I telling people this is not as good as DCL. Just not the cruise line for us. There maybe others who are like us and I hate for them to waste the money and time off and not have a good time.

Oh and one more important thing. We missed the fresh water pools alot. I think our experience would not have been so bad if it was fresh water. The boys would have been more apt to swim if it wasn't salt water. As soon as they jumped in they said, "Yuk! Salt water!"

Now, will I be brave enough to post this on the RCI board on the Cruise Critic

Deb

 

[westjones]

Oh and one more important thing. We missed the fresh water pools alot. I think our experience would not have been so bad if it was fresh water. The boys would have been more apt to swim if it wasn't salt water. As soon as they jumped in they said, "Yuk! Salt water!"
Deb

Oh, my kids wouldn't like that either! I didn't realize they used salt water! I am SO glad to know that. This really helps me make the decision not to try RCCL for us (at least not right now). Thanks so much for the info!
DJ

 

[beachpal]

My husband and I are going on the RCI ship to Bermuda this summer without the kids. We talked about taking them with us but decided against it since we didn't know if the kids would like it as much as DCL. We wanted to check it out ourselves first (plus get a little alone time as well). I am really curious to see how much of a difference there is. We are booked on the Thanksgiving cuise on the Magic so if we are disappointed, we will have that to look forward too. The kids hate the idea of waiting so long though.

 

[Lisa D]

Everyone seems to think I'm nuts for being so "Disney-fied". We just left the four-day Wonder a week ago (and miss it terribly) and rebooked a 7-day while on board. Alot of people say to me "Well, now that your kids are older (10 & 13) you should try a cruise line other than Disney", but I'm afraid we are used to the best and will stick with it! Even the level of service at WDW pales in comparison to the ship. Just my opinion!

Lisa

Aargh! Pirate Night was awesome!

 

[barkley]

we did a holland american cruise (through dvc) to alaska last summer. we knew full well that the alaskan cruises (and holland american esp.) are geared to older travelers, however holland american (hal) realy emphasizes it's committment to "family cruising" and promotes it's club hal for kids. my husband and i feel that we have been both as adults and parents completly spoiled by disney cruises. our entire cruise experience (with the exception of the beauty of cruising the inside passage and seeing alaska) was such a dissapointment! "club hal" offers VERY limited hours of service (which happen to conflict with the dining seatings-you either lose your child for the end of first seating or cannot stay for the entire second seating: we ate in the dining room one night out of seven) with an area of space dedicated to the kids that was smaller than some of the staterooms on disney. activities were limited to a few board games, some organized sports and a couple of computers that the kids could only use during "designated computer time" (which had every kid in line and then only getting to use them for a very short period). if a child (like our son) did not have the attention span to play board games continually they would make no attempt to engage them in any other activity (and were very quick to kick kids out of the program "because they don't fit in"). the director of the kids program was a former disney cruiseline kids program person and our discussions with him had him openly admit that many of disney's competitors were trying to hire away disney staff to better their kid's programs, but that the competitors were not willing to put the space and money into better kids programs for the non teen set. he also said that disney staff is trained to work with the kids and vary activies. as far as being an adult on hal-we found that disney had spoiled us into expecting smiling, friendly staff. we encountered very overworked and overextended staff who did the bare minimum. in fact the only realy friendly staff we encountered worked in the spa-when we remarked on this to the spa staff they advised us that this was likely due to the fact that they were contracted employees with the spa and worked regular scheduals, unlike the ship's staff who were regularly called back on thier schedualed break times and heavily overworked. at the time we sailed with hal they had recently instituted a new tipping policy that disallowed private tipping of ship's staff (if you opt not to have tips auto posted /at hal's established per person daily rate to your on board account-and it takes a personal request from you to opt out at the front desk-any tip you give to a staff member must be reported and turned in by the staff member to be pooled to all of the people you normaly tip), we asked the spa staff if they had seen any change in behaviour or morale of staff since this was instituted, and they replied that they definatly had-a decrease in the customer service, it was as though making tips an automatic given for the staff lessened their incentive to go the extra mile for passangers.

all in all our experiences with disney cruises (despite both trips resulting in no castaway cay due to hurricanes) have been steller. we are going for our third cruise in november, and i know that we will recieve top notch service, come to love the staff members (how many other vacation albums include so many photos of the kids with the wait and stateroom staff ?) and have both family and private adult time. i encourage anyone who asks about disney cruises to go-i believe it's an incredible testament to disney when you look at their rate of returning cruisers and ADULT only passengers!

now if we could get disney to keep the west coast cruises a permanant fixture and add a few more destinations

all hail disney cruises

 

[kplatt]

We found such a cheap last minute fare for Xmas 2003 on Carnival Destiny that we couldn't pass it up. Plus we were able to use frequent flyer miles to/from San Juan. A really cheap vacation.

I would definitely return to Puerto Rico, but I'd definitely pass on another Carnival cruise. It was OK, but not worth repeating, no matter how cheap.

Karen
Wonder 11/01
Magic 3/02
Magic 11/02
Carnival Destiny 12/03
Booked on Magic Eastbound Panama Canal 8/05

 

[dairyou]

Oh, I forgot to mention the Royal Caribbean's private beach at Labadee. It was not even comparable to Castaway Cay. The area is gated off and small compared to Castaway Cay. They have a water park area, but of course there is a fee to use it! 15.00 for 50 minutes to jump on the trampoline and climb the ice peaks... It was not prestine and beautiful like Disney's.

Well... we saw the travel channel last night. Guess what they were showing? The Disney boats... After this I'm going on Dreams Unlimited to try and book a cruise for 2006. Hope we can afford it after the mistake we made with RCI. Here we thought our cruising journey would end for now...Wish me luck!

Deb

 

[westjones]

Well... we saw the travel channel last night. Guess what they were showing? The Disney boats... After this I'm going on Dreams Unlimited to try and book a cruise for 2006. Hope we can afford it after the mistake we made with RCI. Here we thought our cruising journey would end for now...Wish me luck!

Deb

That show always makes me long for my Disney Cruise!!! We have had to settle for the 3 or 4 night cruises because the 7 nights are out of our price range (at least in the time frames we now have to vacation--school break times).

Good Luck! There is nothing like being on a Disney Ship!
DJ

 

[Ariel&Flounder'sMom]

Thank you so much for this thread. DH and I have been debating the cost of Disney for a cruise in 2006, and have heard many good things about RCCL. This opened my eyes a lot.

I have another question, though. My DD's would be 3 and 5. Most of the posts above are geared to older kids. My guess is this is not the cruise for younger ones, but does any one have any experiences they could share on RCCL? What are the kids club hours for the little ones? What types of activities do they do? (on their website, all I found was finger painting and playdoh???)

Thanks!

 

[Melrosgirl]

I've been on 2 RCCL cruises, 1 Princess and 1 Disney. Each has its pros and cons.

Disney's biggest con is the price.

RCCL and Princess are good lines. Princess's kids' program was actually very nice. Small and somewhat limited hours, but dd had a great time (she was 4 at the time). She didn't like Disney's kids' club as much only b/c it was so big. She couldn't tell you the name of one camp counselor on Disney. Knew all 5 on Princess. (See , much smaller, lol.)

Princess's rooms were bigger than Disney's. At least the category we had (mini suite which is comparable to a category 5 or 6 on Disney).

I'm still wanting to do another DIsney cruise though. 7 night, but the summer prices are outrageous. $1000 a night basically for a cat. 6. that's crazy, but not totally ruling it out yet (hence, the high prices on Disney: people still pay the prices!)