Majesty 1/19 - 1/24

[baileymouse]

I arrived home on the 24thbut work has been busy so I haven't been able to put my thoughts down yet.

We'd booked this cruisewhen they first announced it would be going to Grand Bahama Island, so it was along wait. This was our second time on Majesty, and I liked this trip better.

The good: the crew. Weencountered a lot of truly friendly crew members. Our stateroom attendant(Richard Wong), our waiter (Alexander) and assistant waiter (Han), and manyothers were fantastic.

We made it to Coco Cay! Itwas chilly, overcast, and it started to drizzle, but we made it. :)

Despite the age of the shipand the impending drydock, most of the ship didn't look bad at all. Food in thedining room was good, and mornings in the Windjammer were all right. I tendedto go early so I didn't have any issues getting a seat.

The weather was comfortablewhen we were in Nassau so we took the opportunity to see things we hadn't seenbefore.

The bad:

The damned freestylemachines kept breaking. They're a pain in the tuchus.

We lost water for an houror so after returning to the ship on our Grand Bahama Island day. They had apipe rupture or something. It was fixed but many people who wanted a showerwere SOL.

The tour we signed up forwas so bad it was comical! More on that later.

The head waiter or whoeverhe was who lectured us at dinner on the 4th & 5th nights went on way toolong. The sound system was bad, making it worse, but the guy sounded like afrustrated preacher. I'm there for dinner, not for a sermon.

Day 1:

Embarkation was abreeze. We had taken Cortrans from MCO to the port, and they were great. We’d taken the chance of flying down on theday of our journey due to work issues, but we made it. Phew. Glad we had tripinsurance just in case. I definitely recommend Cortrans. This was our secondtime utilizing their services with no issues whatsoever.

 

We got our bags and we were on the ship in about 10 minutes. We had a juniorsuite (sooo glad I was able to snag that) and enjoyed our location. Our roomwas 1544. We were close to the elevators but not so close that we couldhear anything, and the room was very quiet. After we were checked in we went tothe Schooner bar for trivia and our small team (us and a lovely lady namedGail) won.

Our dining companions weregreat, and we enjoyed the service. Our waiter, Alexander, was hard-working andpleasant, as was our assistant waiter, Han. Alexander doubled as the ordertaker at the omelet station in the Windjammer in the morning. We often saw Hanwaiting tables in the Windjammer.

I had wanted to seeVictoria & Abdul that night but it was a little too cold out on the deck,so we passed on it.

Day 2:

The next day we were inNassau. We decided to take a walk to Fort Charlotte, which was veryinteresting. I was comparing it to my childhood tours of Fort Wadsworth andFort Hamilton. After that we walked to the John Watling's Distillery for thetour and some libations. Nice piece of property, and for some reason they havetwo of the largest roosters I've ever seen walking around the place. They wereso fluffy they looked like they were wearing pants. As we were walkingback to the ship we found the Dunkin Donuts so I stopped for a coffee. I’m a DDaddict, I admit. Couldn’t use my app there but that’s all right.

We had no issues withwalking around Nassau, everything was fine. I’m glad we got to see some of thehistory. This is my 4th time in Nassau and I always find somethingto do.

I enjoyed the music in theevenings on Majesty much more than I enjoyed the music on Anthem. There was agood variety of music going on in the different lounges and it was enjoyable.

Day 3:

I’m glad we were able toget to Coco Cay. I wish the weather had been nicer than it was, but at least wemade it! Minor quibble: I asked for adiet Coke and it was expired, which I didn’t realize until I had walked back towhere we were sitting. Also, the bar charged me for it even though I had a sodapackage, which I thought was weird. I didn’t check my receipt closely, nexttime I know better.

We stayed until a littleafter lunch and then went back to the ship. Most of the families had stayed onCoco Cay so we were FINALLY able to get into a hot tub. All 4 hot tubs werekiddie wading pools all the time. I am not joking. Often there weren’t anyparents in with them. Not having an adult-only area of the ship was a bit of abummer, I will admit. Next time: a ship with a solarium!

The nightly shows in theChorus Line Theater were good, but please, RC, can we leave the 70s? Please?

Day 4:

Grand Bahama Island – I’dnever been there before! I was excited! It looked like Newark, NJ with palmtrees!

Since I hadn’t been therebefore I signed us up for a shore excursion. The first one I wanted was soldout, so I settled on a shopping & beach excursion, figuring that would beall right. OMG what a comedy of errors!

 

Here’s the description from Royal Caribbean:

 

Island Highlight Beachand Shopping Tour - FR39

Enjoy the tropical climate andvibrant culture of Freeport. This tour takes you to the capital of Grand BahamaIsland and growing international business site. The Port Lucaya Marketplace isan open-air shopping and entertainment hub that overlooks the waterfront. It’sfilled with hand-crafted treasures. You’ll visit the candle factory, andopen-air fruit market. Enjoy shopping or swimming at the beach.

Highlights:

• City of Freeport: Visit the candle factory, the open-air fruitmarket, enjoy shopping for souvenirs and swim at the beach

We get on the bus, andthere’s a broken lever on my seat that’s hitting me in the leg. I put my bagover it and was fine, but the bus was dirty, half the seats were broken, theceiling was peeling, and the air conditioning didn’t work. The driver tells usour first stop is going to be a store with hand-made Bahamian crafts andcandles. Sounds nice, right? Is this the candle factory? Nooooo. We pull up toa roadside souvenir stand with an auto body place on one side, an empty, gatedstorefront on the other, and directly across the street is the only nicelooking building we’ve seen so far and it’s a mid-century modern crematoriumand funeral home.

Inside the store wasn’tmuch better. It was crappy tchotchkes which definitely weren’t made in theBahamas. They even had questionable souvenirs – there was a figurine of a manwith exaggerated features, wearing Rasta clothes & holding a giant blunt,and when the blunt was removed another exaggerated feature was revealed. It’sthe kind of thing I haven’t seen since the 70s and didn’t need to see again,lol.

OK, we get back outside andthey have called for another bus because of the broken a/c. We get the secondbus and it’s fine but the PA system kept going out. That wasn’t much of anissue because most of the commentary was on stuff we could see – this is abank, this is a supermarket, this is an insurance agency.

The driver tells us he’staking us to another handmade Bahamian crafts market but that this one is alsoa farmer’s market. Is this the open airfruit market??? We drive through a rather questionable looking area and pull upnext to this one-street market which is selling the same crap as the lastplace. Only difference is that there are a couple of fruit stands and a placeselling conch, none of which looked healthy. We walked out of the “market” andwent next door to a convenience store to buy a bottle of water.

Our trip continues on. Inoticed that someone who had bought the questionable conch fritters took a biteand threw the rest out of the window. Oy! We drive through some pretty run-down neighborhoods and then we get tothe Grand Lucayan Marketplace. Finally, someplace nice! Real food, real shops,some truly handmade stuff (loved the ornaments) but we only had an hour toenjoy it. If we hadn’t hit those first two stops we could have had more timehere. It was worth seeing. I bought a pendant and earrings for my daughter andmy friend bought a conch shell ornament.

After that it was off tothe beach. Wow, the beach was gorgeous! The water was incredible. I had a great time walking along the beach,feeling the sun, and enjoying the afternoon. This definitely redeemed the day.

Although we passed a streetof nice houses near the golf course on the way to the beach, the rest of thetour was pretty bogus. He actually drove down one street to show us the abandonedInternational Marketplace and hotel complex that have been out of businesssince the hurricanes of 2007-2008.

I got the feeling that thefirst two stops on the tour were not the ones they were supposed to be, andthat the guy diverted us to someplace that was giving him a kickback. Nowherewas there a candle factory, haha. Also, the beach at the end, while nice, was notthe one that was advertised as being part of the tour. It would be like you getting off the Anthem,signing up for a tour of Liberty State Park and the Statue of Liberty withlocal highlights, and being taken to a store in the industrial neighborhood onCommunipaw Avenue in Jersey City, with a scenic tour of the burnt-out housesaround Ocean Ave.

Back on the ship I was able to take some pictures of Adventure and Allure in drydock. My next cruise is on Adventure in May, can't wait!

Dinner was nice, butinterrupted by the head waiter or whatever he was giving his sermon. It went onway too long and I was surprised he was doing it on day 4 instead of day 5. No,I really don’t want to do the Macarena at dinner, and no, I don’t want tosomeone go on and on about every little thing. Yes, I appreciate the staff.Yes, I fill out the survey. No, I don’t need to have a half hour of this atdinner.

We took part in some of theevening’s entertainment and then headed to bed. I was tired after the day inFreeport.

Day 5:

Our sea day was spentplaying trivia games, eating, attending different events. We caught the BellyFlop contest, the Battle of the Sexes, the Love & Marriage Game Show, andwe even played Bingo. We didn’t win, but we had a good time. We tried again toget into the hot tubs but they were packed with the pint-sized crowd so I didn’tmake any attempts to get in.

This was the only day wehad breakfast in the main dining room. Service was incredibly slow and we wereseated with one other couple. The wife was very nice but the husband acted likehe didn’t want to be there. He had a puss on, was miserable. If he’d wanted tosit alone with his wife, he should have said something to the person seatingus. I wouldn’t have minded and it would have been easier than sitting there inthat weird, awkward way.

Dinner was the same as thenight before. We had our big lecture again on the bad sound system, where wewere implored to fill out the form and we were invited to do some conga linedancing. Again, way too long. Our table mates were not happy. One got up andleft early, saying she’d had enough.

We went to the Quest. Ithink I liked it better the last time I was on Majesty, I think Susan had a lotof energy as cruise director and she added a fun, bawdy level to it that wasmissing this time around. It was good but not great. Then it was time to goback to the room.

Not having to fill outcustoms forms – didn’t expect that. We were not putting our luggage out for thenext day because we were self-carry.

Home:

I woke up to some heavyrocking at 6:30 AM, not sure why, and it was quickly over. We got ready toleave, had breakfast, and walked off the ship. We weren’t flying out until2:22, so we had a 10:30 reservation with Cortrans, but the guy had room on the9AM shuttle so we took that one and had fun at the airport. I like Orlando –free wifi, a decent food court, free supplies for the ladies and lots ofcharging ports in the main building.

Link to pictures on Facebook, it swears you'll be able to see them even if you don't have an account: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10155911016385149.1073741899.633705148&type=1&l=d49522851f

[champagne123]

Thank you so much for your extensive and wonderful review. :cool:

[Clarea]

Very nice report of one of our favorite ships, thanks much!

[mondsd]

Thanks for the review! Looking forward to our cruise on her in July. :-)

[Keith1010]

I very much enjoyed your report.

 

Thanks for taking the time to write this.

 

Keith

[Rjh8842]

Lucky. I was on the cruise before you and no cococay for us.

[island lady]

Glad you enjoyed your cruise! :) And thanks for the review.

 

Announcements in the VCL during cocktail hours were incredibly long and loud also. We complained to one of the drifting officers that were constantly walking through, and I noted it on my after cruise survey. Everything the CD rambled on about is already in the Cruise Compass...no need to blare it loudly in the lounge.

 

Did not realize they were making long and loud announcements in the MTD also. :o

 

Indeed was nice to make Coco Cay...though the weather could have been nicer, was interesting to see the progress on the new pier. Shame they have let the nature trail go "back to nature" though. We always enjoyed that walk (though this time I had to pass on it with the broken foot)...Bucky still did it and came back covered in dirt from branches and spider webs. Yuck! :(