Allure of the Seas, July 3-10, Decent but some issues

[pippersmom]

Seems like some unrealistic expectations on the list. Should RCCL be policing children's spending or should adults be monitoring and counseling their children on what not to do and do.

 

Maybe I am misunderstanding the issue but I think the problem is that charges were supposed to be blocked. Maybe the child gave it a try and it worked so he thought it was included in the cruise. I have never been to an arcade so I don't know what info they provide concerning costs - and how many kids read signs anyway? Maybe other parents want their children to be able to play in the arcade while not being able to charge other items and RCCL just caters to that idea. Perhaps the OP's brother did not read the fine print. Whatever. I don't think he was asking for RCCL to police his children's spending. He thought he was doing that by putting a block on the card.

[PlanoDebbie]

We were on the same cruise as the OP. First time on RCCL. TV service was the worst I've ever seen. Poor service or No Service a lot.

 

I have no favorite cruise line. We choose cruises based on ports and price mostly. NCL probably has the best interactive mobile app to use on a ship. We could book dinner reservations, look at the schedule of activities and even book excursions as well as check on our account balance on the app. The only thing missing was a deck map.

 

RCCL has the absolute best entertainment among any cruise we've ever been on.

 

Food was good in all venues. We ate in 5 different venues plus the MDR twice. I just wished the receipt was broken out to show how much tip our sever actually got. It simply said that a small fee was given to the server. We usually tip 20% and I didn't want to be cheap.

 

I did find it odd that they were selling popcorn, rather than just giving it away before the shows. It's pretty cheap, and could have been just handed out free. HAL and Carnival provided free popcorn for their movies.

 

We had a neighborhood balcony on deck 12 above Central Park. If we did it again, we would get an Oceanview room. There really wasn't much to watch and we rarely saw others on their balcony either. No big deal.

 

Boarding the ship was the best experience ever. We pulled into the Park and Go lot at 11:20 and we're on the ship less than 25 minutes later. We were worried about how long it would take in the ports to get on and off the ship. It was no problem at all. Much better than any others we've sailed on.

 

Excursions were priced pretty high on Royal, so we booked private tours. Most ships are the same way.

 

Overall, we enjoyed our first cruise on Royal. Every cruise line is going to have things that appear good or bad to guests. We've never been on Disney, so we can't compare to them. As I said earlier, we cruise based on the ports and price.

[Norway2]

Thanks for your review. I had a totally different experience than you in May of this year. Everyone I encountered on the ship were helpful and very friendly. I had no problem with the website and booked everything on line including spa treatments. I have to say that I don't understand why everyone needs an app for everything. What did we all do before cell phones and apps? A post it note works just as well to stay in touch with one another. Nothing in life is perfect and it's the people you travel with that make a vacation special. You can't please everyone. Glad you did enjoy your cruise. All the rest is just being picked in my opinion.

[Thetrail]

I'm still sticking to my theory that MOST (NOT ALL) people prefer the line they usually sail with, the one they started on and that's it, no matter how good the other cruise is, nada not as good as (Fill in the blank). Yes I agree with the negatives, would that make me say I wouldn't cruise with a line because of them, no. I think it's bias towards Disney. Same bias when you read a NCL or CCL review from an RCL loyalist. Thinks it's nice to see others perspective, but realistically people coming from Disney don't generally like RCL better, even Oasis class can't wow them, just like I can't be wow'd by the Getaway after Oasis class.

"But realistically people coming from Disney don't generally like RCL better" And you know this HOW???...:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

[dt126]

Thank you for many of these posts. Here are some comments/responses to posts:

 

1) I didn’t list all the positives as this wasn’t meant to be a full review. I was actually looking for responses just like I’ve been getting from more experienced travelers. The ability to call guest services from the phone, for example, was great to know. It seems like this does exist, it’s just not well documented. Had there been a label on the phone that said, “dial 0 for guest services” I would have tried doing so more than once and it would have helped. Here are a few more positives just so people don’t think I’m completely bashing the ship:

 

a. Most shows were good or at least decent. There wasn’t anything I felt was a waste of time. Mamma Mia was fantastic as was the comedy show.

 

b. The mixed drinks were good, once I realized that I could get the bartenders to add more alcohol if I asked.

 

c. Despite the large crowds I was always able to find at least 2 open chairs together on the pool deck. We’re from San Francisco and we’re not an early family, so we would head out to the pool deck on the late side, so being able to find something at mid-day was definitely a positive.

 

d. We had the ultimate drink package and my wife and I drink a lot of coffee. Starbucks is NOT INCLUDED on the ultimate drink package, so we were very pleased that both the Park Café and Café Promenade had good coffee. The morning coffee bar attendant at Park Café in particular understood how to make coffee drinks very well. Asking for a dry cappuccino is a good test. Also, the fresh squeezed orange juice was really good every day.

 

e. While talking about Park Café and Café Promenade, the food at both of these places was quite good. Many of the pastries are the same throughout the ship, but the muffins, panini’s, roast beef at Park Café, bay shrimp sandwiches at Café Promenade and many other items were really good. I thought Windjammer was mediocre, so finding these two cafes on the dining plan was fantastic.

 

2) @Crusinthrough – We purchased the VOOM Surf + Stream. As I said in my original post, I was very pleased with it and it fully met my expectations (for a ship). I say “for a ship” because it did drop sometimes and my speed tests were in the 5Mbps range. Ping was too high if you wanted to use it for anything but casual online gaming. My home internet speeds are 20X faster, so it doesn’t really compare with higher bandwidth home users. Again, this isn’t a complaint, it’s just a fact.

 

3) Arcade Questions – There was no $50 daily limit in the arcade. You didn’t check in anywhere and “load up” you card first. You merely go up to a game, swipe your Seapass card, and you are playing. My brother’s son was 11 years old and he did spend more than $150 in the arcade in less than 2 hours. The problem with the whole responsibility argument is that unlike a credit card, everyone pretty much has to have their Seapass card on them throughout the cruise. I would be very happy if they switched to a separate, pre-paid card where you could purchase $50 or $100 ahead of time and then use it. Or set a daily or cruise limit on the amount in the arcade or anything similar. To me, the way it’s set up now, is a “trap” to create more revenue and with what everyone pays for cruises I don’t think that’s a good solution.

 

4) 4-person limit on computer system – I realize that this is a limitation of their system, but if they have larger rooms that accommodate more than 4, they should fix their system to allow the same number of people on one reservation. I can’t image it’s that much programming to fix this (and yes, I have a technology background). This isn’t a huge issue but it’s a needless annoyance.

 

5) I did spend some time on this board in advance of the cruise. I didn’t know about it during my earlier cruises and I had nothing to post about beforehand, so I didn’t register. Most of my board research ahead of time involved My Time Dining and Dress Code at dinner. The dress code research was very helpful as RCL’s site makes their dining seem much more formal than it actually is, for example, RCL defines Smart Casual as “jackets and ties for men, dresses or pantsuits for women.” I don’t really think that there is a smart casual night, I wore a jacket and tie twice, nice slacks and collared shirts the other nights and was fine. Despite this, I don’t think that spending a lot of time reading an online forum before a vacation should be mandatory in terms of understanding everything available to you on a cruise ship. The ship’s staff and systems need to be set up assuming that a person is NOT going to research the ship ahead of time.

 

6) When I said, “not inclined to sail RCI at this time” I did mean “at this time”. However, nothing on my list of issues or complaints is that hard to correct. It’s really three things – training, technology updates and better communication with travelers.

 

a. Training - Not everyone has been on the ship before or traveled with the cruise line before. As a company with many competitors, if you want to attract repeat customers, which are the best kind, you need to make sure that their first experience is as positive as it can be. As a business owner myself, I would not expect my customers to get the huge variety of different interactions with the staff. There were fantastic employees and some downright rude and lazy employees on board. I would settle for fantastic on the top end and “just adequate” on the low end. This is just a matter of training. The majority of the staff is already very good they just need to impress upon the remaining group (the ones who deal directly with customers) that they are ambassadors and salespeople for the cruise line and they need to put their customers first.

 

b. Technology – I expect a ship the size of the Allure to have either a really good onboard phone app OR a detailed guidebook with really detailed maps, directories, and similar in the rooms (just like the book or binder you find in every decent hotel). What did they have on these ships 20 years ago? The problem with this particular ship is that there is no app at this time and there also is nothing in the room. Assume that you’ve never been on an RCL ship before and you now have to plan your day. Your only real source or information is interactive display in the elevator lobbies which isn’t that convenient. Fixable, of course, I’m sure at some point that RoyaliQ app will be up and running on all the ships, but at “this point in time” RCL is missing a very useful feature that their competitors (and some of their own ships) already have.

 

c. Communications – I posted the picture of my telephone yesterday. If there is a customer service, general information, or similar number to call, it doesn’t say it anywhere on the phone. It would be very easy to change one of the other buttons to this function or place a label on the phone that says, call “11” for customer service, call “12” for dining reservations, etc. I also stand by comments on the TV System. There were many more minor shows and activities on board such as movies, the Quest game show, and similar that I think should have been more fully described on the TV system (or in the Compass). Quest was actually one of my favorite shows and I probably missed other things like this because of inadequate descriptions.

 

7) None of these three items would be hard to implement and I find it hard to believe that anyone would state that these items would lessen their enjoyment of the cruise. Improve these areas and I’m willing to cruise on the ship again. We’re doing 1 cruise a year maximum. I have three children and we’ve been traveling with a total party size of 15. It’s a lot of work and cost to put that together. One thing I think that Disney had over RCL completely involves their training programs. I have yet to encounter a single rude or useless employee on a Disney cruise and there just is a consistency among the employees that I didn’t find on RCL. That said, I think that my dinner server on RCL was probably better than any single employee I had on any Disney cruise. A lot of the negative personnel comments on RCL were from other travelers that we met on board – people we met on excursions, sat next to at the pool, etc. We heard complaints from several people on board.

 

8) Staff not being ushers in entertainment venues – I understand this viewpoint and it’s fine when the shows aren’t sold out. However, as a cruise line, what do you think the opinions will be of the 50+ people standing throughout an entire show after being blocked from aisle when they notice many empty seats later on in the show? Do you think it’s going to be positive? They have one employee at every aisle just standing there. During the last 5-10 minutes before a crowded performance begins, how much extra work would be required to help those people find seats? I think it would be a better experience for everyone.

 

 

Thanks, again for the comments.