RCCL to expand China capacity by 66%

[greatam]

If you are American, Canadian, Australian or even European, China capacity is being heavily expanded. BUT you will also more than likely have a "CHINESE" cruise. When RCCL first tried this and mixed Westerners and Chinese, complaints from all sides. Food is different, announcements were different, activities were different and the casual US style of dress simply shocked the Chinese (middle class Chinese dress even going to the grocery store). So while I am a huge capitalist and believe in global expansion, I personally would not be taking a China cruise on a ship based year round in China if I wanted a more Westernized type cruise. JMHO and something I think the majority of those that post on CC should be aware of.

 

Nothing wrong with a very CHINESE based cruise marketing primarily to Chinese. It will just be very different from what you may be expecting. Very much like our first Yangtze River cruise on the Princess Jeanie. VERY, VERY Asian with a Captain who spoke about 8 words of English and staff who didn't speak much more. Lots of hand signals or running down to the receptionist to translate. I booked it specifically FOR the more Chinese experience. It truly was what I wanted. Other than the food (I don't like Chinese anyplace and lived on large breakfasts, salads and dumplings for 5 days), it was a great experience. But a few other Americans were rather upset because it was so Asian. Second Yangtze River cruise on a Victoria ship was VERY, VERY Americanized. And to me, boring as hell. Guess it all depends on whether you want to be a tourist or a traveler.

 

http://www.seatrade-insider.com/news/news-headlines/fain-royal-caribbean-synonymous-with-cruising-in-china.html

[LXA350]

I was on the Mariner last year out of Singapore on which there maybe were around 50 westerners and the rest all from China. I found the experience very interesting and found various positive aspects, especially in the Windjammer that had a much larger variety for lunch compared to my last Caribbean cruise on the Adventure where the choices were very limited, and mainly consisted of burgers, burgers and again burgers. I guess I can't really blame RCL for that as they need to adjust to the crowd from which many didn't look like they would have been willing to have tried something else :D

 

As the Chinese don't seem to like to sit for hours in the sun, we had the upper deck almost for ourselves on the sea day at which we had great weather and around 30 degrees Celsius:

 

 

 

It is a complete different culture, I noticed in the Main dining room for dinner that quite a few tables ordered already the dessert while receiving the main courses, and I was told that the Chinese don't like to sit long in the Restaurant and preferably would have preferred to receive all courses at once. Of course this is different but doesn't disturb me as we still got our full relaxed service. On the Sea day in the MDR for lunch there was no salad bar, only the a la carte Brasserie 32 lunch menu, only thing I was missing.

 

At the end the most important thing for me is that the Captain and his officers are up to the quality standards we are used to from all other ships of the RCL fleet and if you need to talk to a staff member, there will be no communication issues because they don't speak English very well. Yes you do have a lot of Chinese staff on Mariner but I don't remember this being a huge issue as you always find someone that is non Chinese / speaks good english.

 

If you are someone that likes to participate / enjoys to watch the day activites such as belly flop competition etc you will not find these. On the evening entertainment front you get the Broadway shows etc, however also probably specific things catered only to the Chinese market.

[timtam2]

I have taken 3 Mariner Asia cruises and have no complaints whatsoever. I always expected it to be a different experience and it was and I thoroughly enjoyed each cruise. 1 cruise had predominantly Chinese passengers, one was a real mix with 40 different natonalities, and the other was predominantly European/Australian.

Of course the ship is tailored to the Chinese if the ship is based in China - the RCI ships based in Australia also tweak a few things to cater to Australian tastes

[Ashland]

I am getting ready to sail on Mariner in a couple of weeks...going with an open mind and looking forward to the adventure. My understanding on the particular itinerary I'm doing Singapore-Shanghai the demographics is very mixed but leans heavily toward the Aussie's. I've been on several cruises, the Baltics and the western med in particular where we westerner's were definitely in the minority and have enjoyed them immensely. For us it's where we're going not specifically who's going there too. :)

[Grandma Nomad]

We did a cruise out of Shanghai two years ago and it was a totally different experience. There were only 200 hundred non Chinese on board plus we did not realise it was school holidays over there. The food was great and included many western items as well as few more Asian dishes. The bars were just about empty at night as the Chinese are not big drinkers. The casino was packed. Bingo was cancelled every day as not enough players and trivia only had about 4 teams. One night I played trivia and my partner was lovely young chinese man who couldn't speak much English but wanted to improve. We won.

If you go without too may expectations and just enjoy the ports and experience you will have a great time. Just different.

[LXA350]

I fully agree the experience is different but definitely worth it.