Will I get a good idea of the full Azamara Experience on a 5 night repositioning?

[ccletzgo]

Well my head is spinning.  (actually rocking like crazy)  rough seas first night and really chopping coming into Mia on last night.  I have so many thoughts.  The ease of embarkation and debarkation was seriously unbelievable for a cruise !!   Pulled up, checked in, walked on.  Yesterday had breakfast and walked off. No lines either way.  Loved how easy it was to get around but missed the glitz a bit.  Bar service was mostly horrendous.  Yep, that bad. 😞  A few happy servers but overall, just bad.  Impossible to get a drink actually delivered to you at the pool.  

 

Loved the bed and bedding was the BEST!!!    Yep, small as expected.  Bathroom smelled bad.  It was the shower curtain.  Once we had it changed out to clean one, (they should do every turn around) all was good. 🙂 

 

Cabin stewards excellent and happy.  Rooms service staff excellent and happy.  dining staff excellent and happy.  Sunset bar grouchy!  Windows Cafe excellent happy.  Patio, well? kinda lost, like maybe is that where they first start there positions? Never did receive the drinks we ordered.  Pool bar, I don't even know what to think.  See my signature.  Never had this issue. Discoveries bar and restaurant, phenomenal.   White night, fun.  Great food choices.  Cabaret entertainment.  Corny. Made me miss the the big ships.   Eric did his best even with the virus he was fighting all week. 

 

Husband says he would do it again in a min. loved no lines easy tenders and small ship.  I'm still on the fence.   I love me a Celebrity M class ship. 🙂 

 

I do believe Azamara would be a great way to see Europe on a very port intensive itinerary that has few sea days.  

[excitedofharpenden]

Thanks for coming back and giving your thoughts afterwards.  Always useful.  I’m glad that overall you enjoyed the trip.  I totally get your Patio comments about service.  I love evenings there, but often the service lets it down.

 

Phil

 

 

[hamrag]

On 12/9/2019 at 12:57 PM, excitedofharpenden said:

If you choose a GTY then you take pot luck as to where you'll end up and have to assume your cabin is in a poor location. If you have special needs or preferences then you need to book a specific cabin.  

Absolutely, and I do not understand how a poster with >35k posts would describe the GTY allocation as 'just strange'! As you rightly point out, best to book a specific cabin.

[OC Cruisers]

6 hours ago, ccletzgo said:

Well my head is spinning.  (actually rocking like crazy)  rough seas first night and really chopping coming into Mia on last night.  I have so many thoughts.  The ease of embarkation and debarkation was seriously unbelievable for a cruise !!   Pulled up, checked in, walked on.  Yesterday had breakfast and walked off. No lines either way.  Loved how easy it was to get around but missed the glitz a bit.  Bar service was mostly horrendous.  Yep, that bad. 😞  A few happy servers but overall, just bad.  Impossible to get a drink actually delivered to you at the pool.  

 

Loved the bed and bedding was the BEST!!!    Yep, small as expected.  Bathroom smelled bad.  It was the shower curtain.  Once we had it changed out to clean one, (they should do every turn around) all was good. 🙂 

 

Cabin stewards excellent and happy.  Rooms service staff excellent and happy.  dining staff excellent and happy.  Sunset bar grouchy!  Windows Cafe excellent happy.  Patio, well? kinda lost, like maybe is that where they first start there positions? Never did receive the drinks we ordered.  Pool bar, I don't even know what to think.  See my signature.  Never had this issue. Discoveries bar and restaurant, phenomenal.   White night, fun.  Great food choices.  Cabaret entertainment.  Corny. Made me miss the the big ships.   Eric did his best even with the virus he was fighting all week. 

 

Husband says he would do it again in a min. loved no lines easy tenders and small ship.  I'm still on the fence.   I love me a Celebrity M class ship. 🙂 

 

I do believe Azamara would be a great way to see Europe on a very port intensive itinerary that has few sea days.  

Hi 🙂 

 

We were also on this cruise. This was our 2nd Azamara this year and our 5th Azamara overall. We found this cruise to be very different like you said in terms of zero poolside drink service (but drink service everywhere else was great). We found service in the Patio to be a bit off during the day but good the one night we were there. Overall, the crew seemed off the us—like maybe they had just started working together. Little things like an itemized menu being posted in the evenings in Windows were also missing (until the last night). Our previous Azamara cruises were all at least 12 nights and we wondered if that made the difference. Also wondered if the company had fewer staff—it sure looked that way on the pool deck. Also wondered if Azamara had cut costs overall or only on shorter voyages since there was no lobster at White Night. We were glad to have one at all and the weather was perfect. 

[uktog]

Agree the Patio needs looking at, our post survey scores reflect that. In the evening if it is as I believe a trial area for those seeking promotion it needs constant not shared supervision  and at lunch it needs one waiter in charge of orders at the pass -  conflicting egos between speciality waiters working there just created confusion on our cruise 

[excitedofharpenden]

On the shorter cruises or if there is, how to put this politely, a rather different demographic than you’d normally find on an Azamara cruise the poolside drinks service is definitely slowed down.  Whether this is through an active effort by the management or the fact that they get swamped by the number of guests I’m not sure.  I suspect it’s a bit of both.  The Pool Bar isn’t a big place.

 

Phil

[uktog]

On the 7 night  cruise at the end of November I don’t know how the bar staff coped on the sea day.  Pitoon, who is such a hard worker had four blenders going trying to keep up with orders.  We saw him just before midnight that evening and they had only just finished clearing down and restocking it was such a crazy day. (That was also the night of some onboard “not like Azamara” behaviour from a few). 

Bar service poolside that cruise was a little slower as they moved some of the roving servers to behind the bars to avoid delays- didn’t bother me, the exercise to get a drink did me good.  

[Ayden]

On 12/3/2019 at 8:13 PM, uktog said:

Not sure I agree a heavily discounted 5 night cruise will have a boutique cruise experience. It all depends what has encouraged the majority of guests to hop onboard. Go with an open mind but a five nighter may not give the usual relaxed experience 

Couldn't agree more....We just disembarked from the 7 day previous which was quite different from the next 5 days.  Lots of newbies, a younger, more lively crowd which was heavily represented by US guests. Not saying we didn't enjoy the 5 day, but it was definitely not as enjoyable as our previous cruises.

[newmexicoNita]

Well it is amazing how we all see things in a different light. First, let me say, i don't mean to be negative but our experience was a bit different. I will keep this short or will try.

 

Food: we were pretty disappointed over all. Not that is wasn't good, it just wasn't any different than any other ship. In fact some Mass marketed lines we thought the food was better. The best part of our eating days was breakfast in the MDR. We loved everything we had and the service was very good. My husband is mobility challenged and the staff bent over backwards to help him. Some of the better food we had included the lamb but we missed good beef and no Lobster or Crab. I think this is becoming more common on all cruise lines, upscale or Mass Marketed. Also love the morning brunch next to the last day. Though of course it was crowded it was fantastic and fun. 

 

Entertainment: supper  fun, might have been the highlight of the cruise. The entertainers who are part of everything were great. We loved the trivia, the Christmas caroling and the White night for starters. I am happy the casino will go out when the Journey goes into dry dock next fall. though there wasn't much variety what they did have was well planned and just plain fun. We loved the way the crew got involved in White Night. Have any of you ever seen a captain of a cruise ship serving the potatoes, much less with a smile and a great attitude? The entire staff was that way almost all the time.  

 

CAbins: wow, when someone mentions comfortable beds, they didn't sleep in ours The need replacing so bad. My back has never hurt so bad, I think a 400 lb elephant must have slept on our mattress before we did. The bathroom had almost no storage and the layout overall of the cabin was horrible. The only positive thing was the cleanliness of the cabin, in fact the entire ship was spotless. 

 

Service: we could not have asked for better service and nicer people. We never had a bit of trouble with the bar service anywhere including the pool bar. This goes for the dining room as well. We have been on many cruises where you are lucky to get your water glass filled without begging. On the Journey they were always filling our and someone was pouring our wine every 5 minutes. No problems there for sure. In fact, next to the entertainment the best part of the cruise was the service. 

 

I could go on and on, but will just say, maybe a longer Azamara cruise would be better, but we a bit disappointed this time around. I will agree with other,  embarkation and debarkation were wonderful. Oh, the lack of selection in the gift shop was somewhat of a downer. And of course the bad seas on the last night didn't help our overall view, but of course that has absolutely nothing to do with Azamara and we loved the captain, his overall humor and his ability to keep us fully informed on what to expect at all times.  

[hiccups]

We've fallen into a pattern of the mass market cruise lines for Caribbean itineraries and Azamara elsewhere.  With the smaller ships being able to get to some ports larger ships can't, the easy disembarkation, the (usually) free shuttles and longer port stays, Azamara has a lot of advantages.

We've been able to book Caribbean cruises on Celebrity with all four perks (so nothing out of pocket) for about $150 PP per night for a veranda cabin.  We've been to most of the ports before, so for those itineraries, we go for the bargains.  It's great to have choices 🙂 

[Deval]

On 12/20/2019 at 2:33 PM, ccletzgo said:

I do believe Azamara would be a great way to see Europe on a very port intensive itinerary that has few sea days.

Definitely agree, and we experienced it this summer - we did the 10 night Italy/Croatia intensive.  We always do land in Europe but thought it would be a good way to get a taste of Sicily and Croatia.  We were so glad we did, only had 1 sea day.  We liked it so much before we got off last week we booked 11 day Greek islands for Apr 2020!  
 

The 5 days was a good sample for those wanting to try Azamara (which our friends did that joined us) but the longer cruises are overall better, food, entertainment, and service wise.  We still had a fantastic time, barring almost getting flung out of bed twice the last night with the bad storm we went through coming back to Miami!!

[newmexicoNita]

8 hours ago, Deval said:

Definitely agree, and we experienced it this summer - we did the 10 night Italy/Croatia intensive.  We always do land in Europe but thought it would be a good way to get a taste of Sicily and Croatia.  We were so glad we did, only had 1 sea day.  We liked it so much before we got off last week we booked 11 day Greek islands for Apr 2020!  
 

The 5 days was a good sample for those wanting to try Azamara (which our friends did that joined us) but the longer cruises are overall better, food, entertainment, and service wise.  We still had a fantastic time, barring almost getting flung out of bed twice the last night with the bad storm we went through coming back to Miami!!

I am inclined to agree with you on 5 day versus normal length cruises. We have been on about 6 or 7 short cruises in our cruising life and non have given us the sane enjoyment of feelings we get from 7 to 14 day cruises. 

[hubofhockey]

On 12/20/2019 at 2:33 PM, ccletzgo said:

 

 

Husband says he would do it again in a min. loved no lines easy tenders and small ship.  I'm still on the fence.   I love me a Celebrity M class ship. 🙂 

 

I do believe Azamara would be a great way to see Europe on a very port intensive itinerary that has few sea days.  

 

I saw your original post and didn't respond as your post cruise thought is where I am on Azamara.  Our Azamara cruise was our favorite cruise or even vacation ever, but that's mainly because they do destination immersion really well, have more time in ports, do multiple days in ports, and we had a great port lecturer. We're actually doing another 15-day destination immersion cruise on Azamara in about 16 months.   I'll disagree with you on sea days and I'll explain.  Because Azamara does destination immersion so well, we loved the port lecturers.  That's a great part of a day at sea and was about 90 minutes.  On the sea days on the great port intensive itineraries, we also loved the special themed brunches in the MDR.  Combine those couple of things with some time in the gym, and we loved the days at sea.  Also, if you are doing a port intensive cruise, especially one with overnights where you're getting up early and have really long days, those sea days really hit the spot.  It's another reason why I would never say that a 5-day repositioning cruise would give you a great feeling for Azamara.  Azamara is great for longer itineraries, especially those that can be culturely rewarding.  We did southeast Asia and I found that doing it on Azamara enhanced our experience on so many levels.  Even with all of the research we had done ahead of time, it helped doing it on Azamara.

 

However, if it's just a cruise to relax, we're good spending much less for an M class Aqua Class cabin, taking the two perks, knowing Celebrity's classic beverage package is superior to the included drinks on Azamara.  At the same time, I always felt that Azamara staff is more friendly and that actually then extends to your fellow passengers on the ship.  

 

Our first time experience was different as to the bar and I wonder if that may be attributable to a 5-day repositioning cruise.  We also upgraded to a suite, so our fears on the small bathroom on our original booking were never realized.  We will have one on our next one.  We'll make do.  One of the regulars told me here that if you want to do Azamara, you live with the small shower, and if it's a deal breaker, find another line (or pay for the suite).