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Mediterranean ALLURE Review sailing from Rome

justluv2cruisewithhubby
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justluv2cruisewithhubby

justluv2cruisewithhubby

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This was our second time on Allure of the Seas (first time was amazing) the second time on Allure was OK.

 

This is our 13th cruise and 4th cruise with RCCL. Embarkation was smooth and fast in Rome. We boarded around 11:30am and went straight to the Park Café to get the roast beef sandwiches which were just as good as I remember. Afterwards we checked to see if our cabin was ready and all hallway doors were open not closed so we went to our cabin with no issues at 12:30pm. We noticed our safe was locked and could not open it; tried to call customer service and the phone kept ringing then would hang up on you. Went to customer service and noticed there was already a huge line. When I informed the rep that I need to put items in the room safe he stated normally the room steward would leave it open but since she didn't start work till 4pm he would have maintenance open it for me. So we had to wait for him to arrive and open the safe.

 

We confirmed our first seating but saw the time changed from 6pm to 6:30pm which caused some glitches with our shows that were reserved for 7:30pm so we missed several shows. If you are not in line by 7pm to get a seat then when the show starts at 7:30 the room is already packed and there are no seats available even if you made online reservations

 

The only way to see a 7:30pm show was to eat at the Windjammer or try My Time dining which starts at 5:30pm. The largest show venue room is the “Amber Theatre” and the Air conditioning was not working all week; when we had to pile into the Amber theatre for our shore excursions it was so warm and when I mentioned this to three different employees they told me they were aware of the issue and were working on it.

 

The service on this cruise was lacking; in the two decades that I’ve cruised I’ve never experienced a room steward who was not attentive. First issue was she never left the safe open for us; she would leave us material with other passenger names on it. We never rec’d our laundry bag to take advantage of the special; she would shut off our A/C when we left the room. Our shampoo was empty and it seemed every day I was asking her to replace or change something that normally would be done by the steward. I asked where our excursion tickets were as we always get them on day one of our sailing she said she never got them. After three days our steward told us she was moving to the other side of the ship and that someone else was taking over she stated all stewards where changing cabins due to the inter-porting changes. When we met our new steward she was very attentive and much better than the first one (thank goodness)

 

This cruise was an inter-porting cruise where they embarked passengers in Barcelona on May 19th and then new cruisers from Rome May 21st and this is happening all summer long where they have two sets of passengers which causes much confusion with the help as they personally told me it makes it harder for them.

 

The crew seemed very confused and when I would ask a question the answer most of the time they were passing the buck and trying to send you to another department to fix your issue. Ex: We never received our shore excursion tickets; I tried to call customer service to ask and their was no answer. I had to walk to customer service as our tour was the next morning and they send me back to my cabin stating our room steward would have it. Surprise she didn't have them. Then back to customer service again ....huge lines and I informed them the rooms steward did not have our tour tickets then he stated he could just print them for me.

 

Two days later when we were preparing for our next tour I noticed the other 3 tours we had purchased the tickets had no meeting place listed only a time to meet. I tried to call customer service again and no answer. I had to go back down to customer service (more huge lines) I showed them my tickets and they said they couldn't help me and that I would need to go to the excursion desk. The excursion line was 40+ people deep and I was not going to wait in that line so I went back to customer service he then escorted me over to the excursion supervisor. She apologized and printed me new tickets with the time/location of where to meet. These sort of inconveniences happened throughout the entire week; so much time was wasted trying to get issues resolved waiting in long lines.

 

Another example was the daily compass showed what time and location of the Dream Work characters would be available for photos; several times they just didn’t show up at all. When I saw the cruise director I asked him if he knew where the characters where located as we had been waiting for over 20 minutes for them to appear for photos. He called someone and basically told them get the character down for photos as they must follow the Compass. I heard them giving him a hard time as they were not going to show up.

 

I noticed that the times listed on the shore excursions where constantly changing where the start times where later and return times where earlier which cut into our tours. The boarding times returning from ports where constantly changing as we were supposed to be in Barcelona till 7pm then it changed to 6pm then it changed to all aboard at 4:30pm.

 

There was such confusion during the day we ported in Marseilles; that morning we met in the Amber Theater the shore excursion reps (only 2) people working, they were passing out stickers to the tours and the line went from the stage all the out the door in the hallway with over 60 people deep. The tours were delayed; people received the wrong tour stickers and were getting on the wrong buses. There were no escorts to bring the groups to the bus until passengers started taking the paddles themselves at that time is when they started to call for extra help from RCCL reps to take passengers to the buses.

 

Most of the tours that day were delayed resulting in late arrivals back to the ship so the next day in Pisa was impacted as they had tours cut short to make sure they returned early as all aboard times changed again from 8:30pm to 7:15pm

 

Photo issues; their facial recognition tool was not working; when we tried to look for our photos it kept telling us at the Kiosk there were none. When we went to the photo desk the clerk told us this happened to several passengers where the photos are lost and you manually have to find them. It is like a treasure hunt we spend over an hour trying to find our lost photos. Once we found them he stated it was now fixed and all new photos taken would go into the profile folder. That was not accurate; all photos taken after that day never showed up and I didn’t want to spend another hour searching thru hundreds of other peoples photos to find mine.

 

We had dinner at 150 Central Park twice; Chops and Giovanni’s all were very good. My favorite is 150 Central Park as the pairings are excellent. I did notice a change where they had 6 pairing menu for $40pp and then when the menu changed it was only a 4 pairing meal for $30.00. I asked the waiter why it changed and he stated based on customer feedback they felt less food was better as previous passengers complained it was too much food. I personally like the 6 pairings. Service was excellent in all specialty restaurants.

 

We ate in the dining room 2 nights the food was just ok. We only had 1 Formal night for this 7 day cruise and I noticed on Formal night several men walked in the dining room with shorts; sneakers and one even had flip flops and a t-shirt. There was a passenger that complained to the head waiter about the dress code and why they allowed those men to come into the dining room dressed that way on Formal night, the head waiter did not respond.

 

The coffee in the Promenade Café was very good and much better than the Windjammer coffee in the morning.

 

The ports of call where all very good and we enjoyed our time offshore. 3 out of 4 tour guides were very good.

 

Disembarkation was not too smooth as embarkation as the RCCL reps outside had no idea where to send people if they needed a cab or had private drivers picking them up. They were sending passengers to the opposite side of the pier which was the wrong side so those passengers had to walk all the way back to the other side to find their taxis or private transfers.

 

Overall I give this cruise a 3 out of 5 star. Due to just coming out of dry dock and new personnel on board, I am hoping once they figure out all the quirks that any future cruisers will have a better experience.

 

Feel free to ask any questions

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Theredofshaw

Theredofshaw

Posted
Posted

How did the dual-disembarkation go for them trying to get their usual "zero count"?

 

Hopefully the quirks are worked out prior to our cruise from BCN next month. Thanks for the review! Subbing to see any other responses that come up.

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justluv2cruisewithhubby

justluv2cruisewithhubby

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How did the dual-disembarkation go for them trying to get their usual "zero count"?

 

Hopefully the quirks are worked out prior to our cruise from BCN next month. Thanks for the review! Subbing to see any other responses that come up.

 

Passengers disembarking Rome to get off the ship they confiscated our sea pass cards which has never happened before. In the previous 12 cruises I have always had them given back as I save them but they took our sea pass cards when we left the ship. The passengers still on board from Barcelona would use a different gangway to leave the ship for shore excursions.

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shay869

shay869

Posted
Posted (edited)

Did you embarke at Rome on May 21th? Beacause i have just saw the cruise compass of the Allure from May 22th and the show "How to train..." was there. only once at 8pm , but it was.

uploadfromtaptalk1433208743779.jpg.6522d7c713e90619a72fcc6e9baa3b73.jpg

Edited by shay869
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elleran

elleran

Posted
Posted

Thanks for sharing your review.

 

Adam Coulter, who did the allure live chat last week (http://live.cruisecritic.com/Event/Cruise_Critic_Live_Find_Out_Whats_New_on_Allure_of_the_Seas_2?Page=0) posted menus from 150 central park and they had 6 courses. I guess someone showed him the wrong menu? My cruise planner is still showing 150 for $44 too. I guess they will refund if you prebook at that rate? Do you know if the 150 menu changed mid-week? Or was it set or did some of the courses have choices?

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transam84

transam84

Posted
Posted

Thanks for your detailed review. I am hoping they get these issues sorted out by the time I sail from Rome in Oct! Sounds like the crew is new and confused! And they are not fully out of dry dock! No air conditioning in the theater is not good. Fingers crossed these are due to the change. I had so many choices for our first Mediterranean cruise and picked Allure over many luxury ships because she was tried and true to me.

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justluv2cruisewithhubby

justluv2cruisewithhubby

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Thanks for your detailed review. I am hoping they get these issues sorted out by the time I sail from Rome in Oct! Sounds like the crew is new and confused! And they are not fully out of dry dock! No air conditioning in the theater is not good. Fingers crossed these are due to the change. I had so many choices for our first Mediterranean cruise and picked Allure over many luxury ships because she was tried and true to me.

 

By October it should be seamless

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justluv2cruisewithhubby

justluv2cruisewithhubby

Posted
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Thanks for sharing your review.

 

Adam Coulter, who did the allure live chat last week (http://live.cruisecritic.com/Event/Cruise_Critic_Live_Find_Out_Whats_New_on_Allure_of_the_Seas_2?Page=0) posted menus from 150 central park and they had 6 courses. I guess someone showed him the wrong menu? My cruise planner is still showing 150 for $44 too. I guess they will refund if you prebook at that rate? Do you know if the 150 menu changed mid-week? Or was it set or did some of the courses have choices?

 

There are two pairings the 6 pairing is $40.00 pp. and the 4 pairing menu is $30.00. The menu changes Sunday thru Tues was the 4 pairing menu and then it changes Wednesday thru Saturday is the 6 pairing menu.

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MMOMOM

MMOMOM

Posted
Posted
This was our second time on Allure of the Seas (first time was amazing) the second time on Allure was OK.

 

This is our 13th cruise and 4th cruise with RCCL. Embarkation was smooth and fast in Rome. We boarded around 11:30am and went straight to the Park Café to get the roast beef sandwiches which were just as good as I remember. Afterwards we checked to see if our cabin was ready and all hallway doors were open not closed so we went to our cabin with no issues at 12:30pm. We noticed our safe was locked and could not open it; tried to call customer service and the phone kept ringing then would hang up on you. Went to customer service and noticed there was already a huge line. When I informed the rep that I need to put items in the room safe he stated normally the room steward would leave it open but since she didn't start work till 4pm he would have maintenance open it for me. So we had to wait for him to arrive and open the safe.

 

We confirmed our first seating but saw the time changed from 6pm to 6:30pm which caused some glitches with our shows that were reserved for 7:30pm so we missed several shows. If you are not in line by 7pm to get a seat then when the show starts at 7:30 the room is already packed and there are no seats available even if you made online reservations

 

The only way to see a 7:30pm show was to eat at the Windjammer or try My Time dining which starts at 5:30pm. The largest show venue room is the “Amber Theatre” and the Air conditioning was not working all week; when we had to pile into the Amber theatre for our shore excursions it was so warm and when I mentioned this to three different employees they told me they were aware of the issue and were working on it.

 

The service on this cruise was lacking; in the two decades that I’ve cruised I’ve never experienced a room steward who was not attentive. First issue was she never left the safe open for us; she would leave us material with other passenger names on it. We never rec’d our laundry bag to take advantage of the special; she would shut off our A/C when we left the room. Our shampoo was empty and it seemed every day I was asking her to replace or change something that normally would be done by the steward. I asked where our excursion tickets were as we always get them on day one of our sailing she said she never got them. After three days our steward told us she was moving to the other side of the ship and that someone else was taking over she stated all stewards where changing cabins due to the inter-porting changes. When we met our new steward she was very attentive and much better than the first one (thank goodness)

 

This cruise was an inter-porting cruise where they embarked passengers in Barcelona on May 19th and then new cruisers from Rome May 21st and this is happening all summer long where they have two sets of passengers which causes much confusion with the help as they personally told me it makes it harder for them.

 

The crew seemed very confused and when I would ask a question the answer most of the time they were passing the buck and trying to send you to another department to fix your issue. Ex: We never received our shore excursion tickets; I tried to call customer service to ask and their was no answer. I had to walk to customer service as our tour was the next morning and they send me back to my cabin stating our room steward would have it. Surprise she didn't have them. Then back to customer service again ....huge lines and I informed them the rooms steward did not have our tour tickets then he stated he could just print them for me.

 

Two days later when we were preparing for our next tour I noticed the other 3 tours we had purchased the tickets had no meeting place listed only a time to meet. I tried to call customer service again and no answer. I had to go back down to customer service (more huge lines) I showed them my tickets and they said they couldn't help me and that I would need to go to the excursion desk. The excursion line was 40+ people deep and I was not going to wait in that line so I went back to customer service he then escorted me over to the excursion supervisor. She apologized and printed me new tickets with the time/location of where to meet. These sort of inconveniences happened throughout the entire week; so much time was wasted trying to get issues resolved waiting in long lines.

 

Another example was the daily compass showed what time and location of the Dream Work characters would be available for photos; several times they just didn’t show up at all. When I saw the cruise director I asked him if he knew where the characters where located as we had been waiting for over 20 minutes for them to appear for photos. He called someone and basically told them get the character down for photos as they must follow the Compass. I heard them giving him a hard time as they were not going to show up.

 

I noticed that the times listed on the shore excursions where constantly changing where the start times where later and return times where earlier which cut into our tours. The boarding times returning from ports where constantly changing as we were supposed to be in Barcelona till 7pm then it changed to 6pm then it changed to all aboard at 4:30pm.

 

There was such confusion during the day we ported in Marseilles; that morning we met in the Amber Theater the shore excursion reps (only 2) people working, they were passing out stickers to the tours and the line went from the stage all the out the door in the hallway with over 60 people deep. The tours were delayed; people received the wrong tour stickers and were getting on the wrong buses. There were no escorts to bring the groups to the bus until passengers started taking the paddles themselves at that time is when they started to call for extra help from RCCL reps to take passengers to the buses.

 

Most of the tours that day were delayed resulting in late arrivals back to the ship so the next day in Pisa was impacted as they had tours cut short to make sure they returned early as all aboard times changed again from 8:30pm to 7:15pm

 

Photo issues; their facial recognition tool was not working; when we tried to look for our photos it kept telling us at the Kiosk there were none. When we went to the photo desk the clerk told us this happened to several passengers where the photos are lost and you manually have to find them. It is like a treasure hunt we spend over an hour trying to find our lost photos. Once we found them he stated it was now fixed and all new photos taken would go into the profile folder. That was not accurate; all photos taken after that day never showed up and I didn’t want to spend another hour searching thru hundreds of other peoples photos to find mine.

 

We had dinner at 150 Central Park twice; Chops and Giovanni’s all were very good. My favorite is 150 Central Park as the pairings are excellent. I did notice a change where they had 6 pairing menu for $40pp and then when the menu changed it was only a 4 pairing meal for $30.00. I asked the waiter why it changed and he stated based on customer feedback they felt less food was better as previous passengers complained it was too much food. I personally like the 6 pairings. Service was excellent in all specialty restaurants.

 

We ate in the dining room 2 nights the food was just ok. We only had 1 Formal night for this 7 day cruise and I noticed on Formal night several men walked in the dining room with shorts; sneakers and one even had flip flops and a t-shirt. There was a passenger that complained to the head waiter about the dress code and why they allowed those men to come into the dining room dressed that way on Formal night, the head waiter did not respond.

 

The coffee in the Promenade Café was very good and much better than the Windjammer coffee in the morning.

 

The ports of call where all very good and we enjoyed our time offshore. 3 out of 4 tour guides were very good.

 

Disembarkation was not too smooth as embarkation as the RCCL reps outside had no idea where to send people if they needed a cab or had private drivers picking them up. They were sending passengers to the opposite side of the pier which was the wrong side so those passengers had to walk all the way back to the other side to find their taxis or private transfers.

 

Overall I give this cruise a 3 out of 5 star. Due to just coming out of dry dock and new personnel on board, I am hoping once they figure out all the quirks that any future cruisers will have a better experience.

 

Feel free to ask any questions

 

I am so sorry to hear all the issues you had! I did hear someone else complaining earlier somewhere here on the boards regarding the inter-boarding on this cruise. However, I have to say, we had NO issues whatsoever! We loved every minute. I posted a review earlier today on this same cruise. We however boarded in Barcelona for the 5 day trip, if that made any difference, I don't know. We'd been on Oasis and anticipated the Allure would be much the same. We weren't disappointed. We thought the service was excellent. Our cabin steward was one of the best we've ever had. We usually like the food and this time we felt it was better than ever. Again, I'm sorry for your disappointment on this trip.

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transam84

transam84

Posted
Posted
By October it should be seamless

 

Thank you. I hope so. I love Royal. I have loved every one of my past cruises with them especially Oasis! It has been very hard getting my husband to Europe so I am hoping for a wonderful time. 😎

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A&L_Ont "Live from...." Rare

A&L_Ont

Posted
Posted
I am so sorry to hear all the issues you had! I did hear someone else complaining earlier somewhere here on the boards regarding the inter-boarding on this cruise. However, I have to say, we had NO issues whatsoever! We loved every minute. I posted a review earlier today on this same cruise. We however boarded in Barcelona for the 5 day trip, if that made any difference, I don't know. We'd been on Oasis and anticipated the Allure would be much the same. We weren't disappointed. We thought the service was excellent. Our cabin steward was one of the best we've ever had. We usually like the food and this time we felt it was better than ever. Again, I'm sorry for your disappointment on this trip.

 

We had the same experience that you had. We inter-ported and we are soon about to disembark in Rome. I am sad to read that the OP did not have the same experience that we did.

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Lealei

Lealei

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I would like to hear which excursions did you attend? Which one of them was not good in your opinion?

 

Were the coke freestyle machines in use (and with full selection so including the flavoured waters)? I don't seem to find clear information of this whether the machines are disabled for Med cruises or not...

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A&L_Ont "Live from...." Rare

A&L_Ont

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I would like to hear which excursions did you attend? Which one of them was not good in your opinion?

 

Were the coke freestyle machines in use (and with full selection so including the flavoured waters)? I don't seem to find clear information of this whether the machines are disabled for Med cruises or not...

 

We booked private excursions so we can't comment on RC ones. The freestyles machines were working in all locations and we serving all flavours of pop. I can not answer the flavoured waters question as I did not drink them.

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igmurray

igmurray

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Posted

We were on from 24th, excellent cruise. we were also assigned 6.30 for early seating however on reading the compass I noticed deck 4 dining room was 6.30 but deck 5 was 6pm so we spoke to someone outside dining room and he changed us, no problem. its first time I have encountered two times for early and late seatings

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