The Sunset Glow

Exactly this! We paid the auto grats when it first statred years ago and the "other hotel services" was around $1 then (I think I remember the first one being $0.90). We stopped auto grats when the "other" category went over $3-$4 but the other positions barely went up back then. We saw the writing on the wall in that RC had found a sneeky way to supplement salary positions by using money from the tip pool. "Other hotel services" is now around $6.50. When auto grats were $14.50 per day Dining staff was about $6.25 and "other" was $4.70. Now at $18 per day Dining staff is about $6.95 (11% increase) and "other" is about $6.50 (40% increase). You don't have to be a genious to see what RC is doing here and I won't partake in it. Our $18 pp/pd (and more) will still be given out to the staff that serves us but it will be transacted from us to the staff directly.

We are D+ and have been sailing only Royal since our first cruise in 2000. We tried some other lines early on but settled with Royal as it fit our needs, preferences and price point the best. We have one more Royal cruise this year (booked when prcing was still very good) but that's it. This is the first time over a decade that we have not had multiple bookings in our planner. We will be looking at more higer-end/inclusive lines or land vacations going forward. And this is not just because of the cost. Royal's pricing has gone way up but the food quality and service has been cut big time. The value for dollars is no longer there for us so we are moving on. This is not to say that we'll never be back - it would just have to be a better value than what they currently offer.

Been cruising with Royal since 2000 and can never remember the popcorn being free.

Every ship needs a food venue on the pool deck - one where you can get a quick meal with your bathing suit on.

I have not prepaid for my May 2024 cruise and I have not received an email.

IE pay them the minimum guaranteed wage as agreed in the employment contract. Maybe if there is often a deficit RC should re-evaluate the payment process and stop raising the gratuities to make up this deficit. Continually raising the gratuities only angers customers each time and causes even more people to remove them thus causing an even greater deficit. It's a never ending circle of cause and effect that won't change until the format changes.

Well said. Agree with you 100%. The tradeoff comment is spot on. My tradeoff is I'm willing to give up my loyalty perks with Royal and cruise on a different cruiseline so I can get some decent food. If I have to pay more but get less on Royal then I will look elsewhere for better value/higher quality. Royal has awesome ships, especially for families, and I'm sure you will have a great time. Our kids are grown and in University so the bells and whistles are not as important as they used to be. My hubby loves the FlowRider but even that will no longer keep us coming back. We've hit the breaking point for us. I hear about lots of Loyal to Royal cruisers that are also moving on. Royal still has record breaking bookings but will those bookings continue? Will the bubble burst at some point and will Royal need those Loyal cruisers again? If that does happen will those once loyal customers come back? Some will, some won't. Some will have found another product that they are happy with. To me they are taking a gamble in alienating their long-time frequent cruisers by focusing on the new cruisers who are willing to pay more for less - and I'm not disbararging new cruisers, I just mean that they don't know what it once was so their perspective is different. Many first-time cruisers are one-and-done - a bucket list item for some. Other first time cruisers will try different cruise lines for their next ones - we did. So how many of the new cruisers will become loyal repeats and will it be enough to offset the loyal cruisers they lose? Time will tell. I hope it works for them - I just won't be a part of this new era. I still remember our first cruise on Rhapsody of the Seas in 2000 - we were amazed! Now that ship is the smallest class they have. So many things have changed since then - but the only constant in life is change. I hope you and your family have an absolutely fantastic cruise.

I have not eaten at Golden Corral but Olive garden, Red Lobster and Outback have way better food than the MDR on Royal ships now. I've eaten better food in a hospital cafeteria than what I had on my recent B2B. Now, since this your first curise, you may think it's fine but for those of us who have been cruising for 20+ years it is hard to accept the current offerings.Truly disappointing.

Making record profits but killing the brand. They had a good product but the deep cuts in the food budget have made me look elsewhere for the first time in 15 years. Other than the cruise I have booked for next year (booked at a reasonable price before the huge increases), I'm done with Royal. High prices, reduced service and crap food has no value for me. The 5 free drinks per day and 2 days of internet will not keep me loyal to Royal the way it is now.

Totally agree. I wil keep an eye on food reviews and see what the general concensus is throughout the fleet. But if we have 2 bad experiences in a row then the odds are not in our favour and we will switch to something where we have a better chance of getting decent food - If that makes sense. I don't want to spend a lot of money and maybe get decent food. I'll take my money elsewhere.

We just did a B2B on Explorer and I couldn't agree with you more. We are NOT foodies, by any stretch of the imagination, but we appreciate some decent quality food while on vacation. Our standards are a bit above "well I don't have to cook or clean and I won't starve so I'm good". We, as a minimum, want to at least enjoy what we are eating. I don't like complaining so after a few times I just gave up because I figured this was the quality we were going to get so what's the point? Complaining only to get another crappy meal did nothing but cause more work for the servers and extend our dining time. On our cruises the steak quality hit a low - and I mean low. The New York Strip looked similar to the McDonald's McRib (if anyone remembers that). It looked like fake meat or poached meat with a grill stamp on it. It was only about 1/3" thick and the texture was similar to a sponge - all the beef we tried seemed to have holes(porus like) except the tenderloin but you only got a very small portion of that. There was no point in asking for another one becasue they were all the same. I suspect the wait staff knew this as well because I took 3 bites of my steak and was done. They took my plate and never asked me why I didn't eat it, nor did they ask if I would like something else instead (but that's another story). I ordered the WARM chocolate cake and it was ice cold. We left that night and went to the windjammer (the food there was slightly better than the MDR but not by much - the beef was too tough to chew).The side veggies in the MDR were always 1 scoop of mashed potaotes, 1 piece of broccoli and 2 slices of carrot. It looked and tasted like something served at a hospital cafeteria - no joke Some of you will say I'm eaggerating, but I'm not. And some will say they were on the same cruise and had a different experience - I'm happy if you were satisfied and all was good for you. It was not good for us - Food was consistantly bad. We've been cruising on Royal since 2000 (when the food was great) and up to this point we've always said the food on Royal was good and we were happy with it. We had MTD with a reserved time of 7:15 every evening but there was always a wait. We often heard the staff that were checking on available tables tell the staff at the podium that there were no tables currently available. 10-15 mins would go by with no one being seated and the line just kept getting longer. Once seated, dinners were at least 90 mins long and up to 2.5 hours one night. It was jsut the 2 of us. We've been doing MTD since it started and, with just 2 of us, dinner was always 45-60 mins. Whaterver they've done to MTD they've completely screwed it up. The food was so bad and the dining room so disorganized, we only ate there twice the second week - both times we had a bad experience. We have one more Royal cruise booked for May and we're hoping things have improved by then. After this last experience we were going to cancel the May cruise but my in-laws are going as well and have already purchased airfare. If the food and MTD experience has not improved by then, our sailings on RC will be very few going forward. I can't believe the drastic drop in food quality - and don't come at me with the excuses of the money they lost with COVID or the cost of food due to inflation - look at what they are charging for cruise fares now! The 5 free drinks per day and 2 days of internet we get for CAS loyalty is not enough to keep me cruising on Royal if this is what they are providing for food and cruise fares through the roof. For us, the value is no longer there. YMMV Sorry about the long, ranting post. I am truly sad about my favorite cuise line's race to the bottom with their food. The bean counters are killing the brand.

Wow - that would be a hard no for me. I am an athiest but I respect that others are not. If someone expected/insisted that I partake in their grace then we are going to have a problem. That would be the same as me insiting they cannot say grace - it doesn't work that way. We have to respect each other and understand that your beliefs are just that - YOURS. Religion and politics do not belong at the dinner table. Like you said, bow your head and say a silent grace and everything is fine. Heck, I don't even care if you say it out loud. I just don't want to partake in it.

Thank you for this. I will definitely check them out. River cruises are on the bucket list so they may check two boxes for us.

Thanks Don. I have been wondering about Viking - don't know much about them though. What's the big differences when compared to the mass markets lines? Obviously, they are more expensive but what is included etc.?

I think Jason Liberty's email address is killingthebrand@rccl.com or deathbyathousandcuts@rccl.com From our latest cruise experiences, either of those are fitting😒

See that's my concern with Celebrity - it's under the RCG umbrella and the head guy (who used to be the CFO I think) is cutting everything to save money. He is killing the brand. Celebrity used to have great food - maybe I need to check out the Celebrity boards. HAL had the best food of all the cruiselines we've tried but we haven't sailed with them since 2006 so a lot has probably changed over there as well. Guess I will check their boards as well ☺️

Thanks, I'll look into it - Regent just always seemed way too "Rich" for us lol

We've been interested in trying MSC for awhile now. How is the food in the MDR and buffet? Do you need to sail in the YC to get quality included food? Are they still matching black card for Diamond plus on RC? And what perks do you get for that?

Thanks Aquahound. I've thought of trying Celebrity and HAL again because they were good back then, it's just we were younger with young kids so RCI was a better fit. The food on both Celebrity and HAL were better than RCI back then but RCI was still very good so it worked for us. I've heard the food on all the mass market lines have gone downhill but to what extent, I don't know. That's my biggest concern - the food quality. Then I'd say it's the atmosphere - more laid back and less chaotic. So I think Celbrity and HAL might be a better atmosphere than RCI but what about the food? Have you sailed on them recently to give an opinion? Hubby does love the flowrider and we are just common people. But I think his obsession is waning a bit so we are ready to try other things. I'm not sure a luxury line would suit us but I'd be willing to try it if the price was right. Oceania might be an option. BTW To me, you still hold the award for "Best thread on Cruise Critic" with your tale about the lost camera. Especially loved the part about the turtle😂 Great detective work on your part👍

Sorry, this is a little long but I want to give enough info so that your suggestions would be more fitting. We have been cruising mass market lines since 2000 but have become disenchanted and looking for something different. We tried RCL, Celebrity, Carnival and HAL early on and settled with RCL as it fit our preferences best at the time. We have sailed RC about 30 times. We typically sail in balconies but will choose a suite for special occasions or when the price is right. Before the pandemic we were noticing the food quality dropping and started to pay for specialty dining some nights. The last couple of cruises this year the included food has completely lost its luster to us and even the specialty restaurant offerings have declined while the price has gone up. I believe the combination of the drastic drop in food quality and sailing the same cruiseline all this time has caused us to lose the wow factor we once felt and I think it's time to try something new. We should have changed things up about 5 years ago when we first started to feel this way but the Loyalty program perks from being Diamond plus with Royal made us hang on longer than we should have (They know how to get ya 😉). We are now ready to let that go. Now, my hubby loves the FlowRider so I'm sure we will go back to RC every now and then but we want to try something else that offers a more suitable experience for us and I, honestly, don't know where to start and need some guidance. We are just regular people, not rich by any means, but we want something more inclusive. We don't drink heavily but we do enjoy an occasional drink by the pool and evening wine or cocktails. We are not foodies but the MDR and buffet food is not cutting it for us anymore. We are also at the stage where a quieter, less chaotic environment is appreciated and we prefer to dine as a couple instead of with a group of strangers. We enjoy getting dressed up for some formal dinners but would not want to deal with ball gowns or tuxedos or HAVE to dress formal on certain nights (formal optionial would work - sometimes you just don't feel like getting dressed up). We wold also be ok with no formal nights at all. We both still work full time and typically cuise around 3-4 weeks per year. What are your experiences with different lines and do you have any suggestions on what might be a good fit for us? I appreaciate any and all feedback☺️

Yes, this is for the Lavender Daiquiri. I make them at home and they taste just like on the ship☺️

I bought some Monin Lavender syrup on Amazon (Canada)

Thanks Biker!

When are fall 2025 TA sailings supposed to be released? And what ships are likely in the mix? Looking for ones with a FlowRider.

I agree with these comments. This is not a fair gauge of a true, full non-smoking casino. I only play a few types of slots and if they are not in there then I won't play in there. Simple. It's a great start but it's just that, a start. I don't know why they just can't make the smoking sections completely closed in. The smoke smell goes everywhere, including into the elevators (up to deck 12 sometimes) and also in the dining room on Oasis class ships. It permeates onto the promenade and in the centrum on ships with those. Just confine the smoke and the smoking complaints will stop for the most part.