Emerald March 27-April 6-ALMOST Perfect

[teacherman]

Just arrived home after this cruise. It was our third time on the Emerald and it was "almost" perfect, except for the norovirus. I will be writing a separate review, but the weather, crew, ports, food, etc. were very good. We met A LOT of CC folk and enjoyed talking with them about their cruise experiences. MY OPINION OF THE NORO is that they handled it fairly well. I do not know how many people actually were sick. On about day 7, one waiter told me "about 100 people", which would be 3%. But on day 9, a matre'd told me about 25 cabins total during the week, which MAY have been 50 people. Anyway, the only way it really affected US, except for the "pall" on the ship was that we enjoy eating dinner in the buffet because we can try small bits of many dishes. Since the crew stared to serve us the food, rather than let us get our own, we ate most nights in the dining room. Also, since we are Platinum level, we get to have drinks and nice snacks in the Elite Lounge each afternoon. But on Day 6, they stopped having the snacks. I really did not understand this, as they always had a "cook" standing by the snacks to replenish them, so why didn't they just have him serve us on our plates rather than stop the whole thing. One criticism is that they hand you a pen to sign your receipts, and how many other people have touched the pen? Also, they take your cruise card to record your number, and how many cruise cards has the waiter touched? Anyway, I washed my hands every time I passed a restroom. I also used the back of my hand to open doors, knuckles to push elevator buttons, started showing the waiters my cruise card number rather than letting them hold the card, etc. Maybe I was paranoid, but I did not get sick. My review of the whole cruise will be on the review board in a few days. We put down a deposit on a future cruise, but they seem to have reduced the on-board credit by about a third. Stay healthy!

[caribill]

Also, since we are Platinum level, we get to have drinks and nice snacks in the Elite Lounge each afternoon. But on Day 6, they stopped having the snacks. I really did not understand this, as they always had a "cook" standing by the snacks to replenish them, so why didn't they just have him serve us on our plates rather than stop the whole thing.

 

On the Star recently when there were noro precaustions, they had servers at the lounge. Once the alert level was back to OK, the servers disappeared.

 

Snacks were there all the time.

[highheel girl]

What about the good part of the cruise?