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| Member Cruise Review |
We've cruised before but this time took our grown up children with us ages 24,28,30 for their first cruise Overall it was a good experience and we enjoyed the family holiday but there were many niggles from a lot of the passengers about various aspects of the cruise that encroached on what could have been an excellent rating. Firstly let me deal with the good points. The ports of call were excellent with a good choice of things to do and see. Docking and tendering was very efficient with the exception of Livorno – see below. The ship is in good/excellent condition and the fittings and furnishings were fine. We had our stateroom carpet changed during the cruise as part of an ongoing refurbishment and we wouldn't have known the workmen had been in if they hadn't moved the shoes from next to the bed - an excellent job with no mess. The beds and linen are great and very comfortable. The ship is spotless and the cleaners were very apparent all hours of the day and evenings cleaning and polishing public areas but not intrusive and always very friendly. The cabin steward Ahmed was excellent. Often around and about and did a great job with the cabin. Loved the animals he made from the towels every evening when we got back from dinner. Plenty to do during the days at sea with a very varied programme from dance lessons, lectures, bingo, fitness activities etc. The main problems that people were talking about were the lack of communication and information, misinformation, poor control of the younger passengers - mainly teenagers - by parents and staff, the poor service in the dining room at night, and the confusion about the published itinerary. Dealing with the last point first many of the passengers had expected 2 days in Livorno from the way the cruise was advertised when in fact it was 1 day, leaving at 01.00 during that night with the following day cruising. There was no mention of a sea day/ cruising for that second day in the published itinerary, but it was there on the Daily Compass Day 1 we received in our stateroom on arrival. This meant that we had 30 hours cruising time set aside to go from Livorno to Portofino, a distance of only about 70 nautical miles. A wasted opportunity as many passengers had planned for a trip to Florence on day 1 and a local trip to Pizza/ Lucca on day 2. We decided to do the Pisa/Lucca trip and had a great day, but missed not having the chance to go to Florence. When I asked about the wording of the itinerary at Customer relations I was told that as the ship was in port from midnight to 01.00 hrs, i.e. for 1 hour of that day, it counts as a day in Livorno. This seems to be something someone has made up to try to explain away a mistake that the company has made and avoid taking responsibility. The Captain occupied the time by sailing up to Nice and along the French and north Italian coast before returning towards Portofino. A nice cruise but not the same as seeing Florence! We actually docked in Genoa as the forecast was for rough seas and as we were due to tender in Portofino we may have been unable to disembark. A good decision as it was only a short trip to Portofino and all the ship’s tours were re-scheduled to pick up from Genoa. On a positive note the ship also put on a free bus shuttle into Genoa town centre so well done for arranging that at short notice. The ship had a lot of teenagers on board but the problem was that they were left unsupervised by their parents and allowed into the adult only areas or during adult only times in other areas i.e. solarium. The staff seemed to ignore this unless specifically asked to deal with it. I saw teenagers eating pizza actually in the solarium swimming pool late at night whilst the staff watched. The dining room staff were very friendly but either had too many tables to cover or were poorly organized so repeatedly forgot things like serving bread and water despite being asked for them more than once. On our last cruise I didn’t know who our headwaiter was, but this time she was busy on our waiters tables helping out serving water and wine to keep the service going. There were also problems with the behind the scenes communication, information, and administration which was poor. At Livorno we were told we could only leave the ship by taxi, private transfer, ships tour or shuttle bus, as we were not allowed to walk through the docks on a safety basis. That seemed sensible but the unreasonable part was that there was a charge to use the shuttle bus - imposed by RCCL. The ship should have arranged for the port authority to lay on a free shuttle out of the port if it didn't allow pedestrians traffic on the dockside. The final straw was when we got our disembarkation luggage tags and times. We had submitted two forms, one for each of our 2 staterooms but fixed together and each cross-referenced to the other. We were given times that were 75 minutes apart with one actually getting a time 15 minutes after our transfer pick up time that we had notified on the forms. There was no problem in changing them to the same time but it required a long queue at Customer Relations, following which they had to alter the tags from showing number 5 to number 1, and it was no surprise when we got off and couldn’t find one of the suitcases that it was in with those marked number 5!! From reading previous reports and talking to other passengers it seems that the standards on this cruise have slipped but hopefully RCCL will turn them around quickly and put this ship back near the top of the table for excellent cruising experience. On this cruise our experience could only rate a fair to good overall. Not decided yet about cruising with RCCL again but will keep an eye on future reviews and comments as I am sure this cruise isn't typical of RCCL's usual high standards described in the reviews that we based our original choice on. |
Royal Caribbean International Legend of the Seas August 2007 by derekP Italy & Croatia |