Pre- and Post/During- COVID Cruise Thoughts

[Mr. Commonwealth]

 

 

We are recently off of the Eurodam (11 day Caribbean Sunfarer cruise) after last cruising on the Nieuw Statendam (7 day Caribbean) almost exactly 4 years ago.  I wanted to share some differences that we noticed between those two cruises and our general thoughts on our cruise.

 

Food

We overall found the food be around the same quality as on our previous cruise – depending on the dish, good to very good.

NY Pizza we found to be very good when we ordered a custom-made pizza.  The pre-cooked slices did not look very good.  We also very much liked Dive In for their hotdogs, we just wished both of those restaurants opened at 11:00am instead of 11:30am.  Both were nice early or late lunch choices when we were either out in the sun or when we were returning late from an excursion.  The consistency of Dive In and NY Pizza meant we mostly skipped the Lido for lunch.  We did find the Lido breakfast to be somewhat disappointing, perhaps just in the lack of variety after 11 days straight that I don't recall on our previous 7-day cruise.

Dinner in the Main Dining Room was good; perhaps the portion sizes were a bit smaller but we didn't mind – it was nice to be able to try several appetizers or several entrees and not waste any food.  Service was excellent in the Main Dining Room and they were very accommodating of different dish options, ordering drinks, substitutions, etc.

Our only complaint was the timing of going to the MDR – our booking clearly stated “anytime” dining, but our ship cards stated that we were on set dining at 5:30pm.  When we raised this issue to the maître d on the first night, our options were either: set dining at either 5:30pm or 7:45pm (too early and too late), or to wait around 45 minutes for our buzzer to go off for anytime dining.  We found that 40-45 minute wait to be consistent the first several evenings, so ultimately agreed to a set dining time of 5:45.  HAL basically won that round, forcing us to eat earlier than we wished because it was at least better than hanging around a lounge near the main dining room with no idea how long we would be waiting.

We did not have similar issues with waiting on our previous cruise (while we did have to wait 10-15 minutes, this was a perfect amount of time to get a cocktail and then take it to dinner. 40-45 minutes we found to be too much).

As part of our Have It All Package, we had two specialty restaurant credits to use.  We enjoyed the Tamarind very much – it was a nice change from the food at the MDR partway through our cruise, and the food and service were both excellent.  The Pinnacle Grill was a completely different story – we waited 30 minutes after being seated before being provided menus or asked if we wanted drinks, and then we found the food (both appetizers and entrees) to actually be worse quality than the MDR.  If we had actually had to pay for the meal, I would have been pretty angry.  We might have ordered something different, but that would have incurred an upcharge!

 

Entertainment

 

We were not much interested in the evening dancing on the Main Stage on our last cruise, but did find the Music Walk to provide an interesting array of music choices.  On the Eurodam, without the Music Walk, you did not have the music seemingly “competing” against one another, but I also liked how on the Pinnacle class ships you could more easily move from one venue to another.

            On this cruise, the classical music was excellent, but it is put in a small open room while other passengers walk by the open walkway, meaning both that there isn’t enough seating, and that on occasion you can hear talking from passengers walking by.  We only attended a brief portion of some of the Main Stage performances, but found that they were a decrease in quality from our previous cruise.  We did enjoy the addition of multiple comedy shows, which were non-existent on our last cruise, but again, they were placed in the BB King Lounge, which meant they were absolutely packed (even though they seemed like the most popular event in the evening).  I am sure some of this is trying to fit the “Pinnacle” model into a “Signature” class ship, but it didn’t seem well thought out at times.

 

Bars

Perhaps due to the Have It All Package, we felt like the bar service had several issues.  First, there was frequently a crowd around any bar area and at least a 5-10 minute wait to provide your order; longer to have your drink made.  The bar servers were all working incredibly hard, but at one point we waited 35 minutes at the Ocean Bar before we were served.  I noted this complaint on the Navigator app, and the bar manager called me the next morning with an offer of a bottle of wine at dinner, and sure enough, provided a very nice bottle of white at dinner.  That was excellent service, though it didn’t at all change the wait time for drinks for the rest of the cruise (or the fact that with a drink package, a bottle of wine isn’t quite the same compensation it could be).

The slowness of the bar service appeared to also be compounded by the fact the same bartenders are also making drinks for people ordering through servers and it appears at times, also making drinks to be sent to the Dining Room.

In comparison, we recall quite frequent bar service on our previous cruise, with little wait time, I imagine largely because significantly fewer people had a drink package.  Not that this is HAL’s direct fault (other than it appearing that around 75% of passengers had a drink package), and in some bars there would simply not be space to staff more bartenders, but it was something that slightly marred our cruise when comparing it to the previous one.

            Additionally, perhaps again because of the HIA package, we found that the drinks, not just in taste but also in watching the bartenders make drinks, were noticeably weaker than we recalled on our previous cruise.  We recalled ordering a cocktail before dinner (and paying $11 for it) and feeling like that was all the alcohol we needed for a while, but by around the third day of this cruise, we were basically ordering doubles of every drink to make it more like a standard cocktail.

Internet

            As part of our Have It All Package, we also received free Wifi.  As my partner had some work meetings to attend on the first two days, we also upgraded one device to the Premium Wifi.  She had surprisingly good performance the first two days (one of which was while most passengers were at Half Moon Cay while she stayed on the ship) and was able to get what she needed to get accomplished, but after that, we felt like the Wifi speed was extremely slow.

            Even with the Premium Wifi, loading a website such as the New York Times on either a laptop or a phone often took repeated tries of turning on and off Wifi, reconnecting through the App (the only way of connecting), and then loading the website.  I admittedly cannot compare the Wifi speed to our previous cruise, as we did not pay for it then, but anecdotally it seemed like people were very frustrated by the speed on this cruise.  Again, I wonder if this is because there are many more passengers with free Wifi than last cruise.  The Navigator Chat app can also be helpful when coordinating plans with others, but at times cannot be replied upon (several times I received messages that had been sent hours earlier).

Inconsistencies

One thing we found generally in the service that we didn’t notice last cruise was just some general small inconsistencies.  We would receive a towel animal one evening while our friends in the stateroom next door would not; certain cocktails would be made one way at a certain bar or by a bartender and made a different way elsewhere.  Some bartenders, when presented with two cards for two drinks, would run both drinks on one card, while others would run them separately; some would have no issue running one card for multiple drinks, others would warn that it would incur a charge outside of the package, and others would give no warning.

The first day, NY Pizza had no prosciutto; they had it the next day; another night had no more ricotta until the next day.  Part way through the cruise, the Explorations Café ran out of lids for coffee, then had lids later in the cruise.  Frequently, specific wines were not available and apparently never available; other times specific beers were available but had to be retrieved from a different bar.  While these may be supply chain related and not HAL specific, we didn’t recall any of these issues previously.

 

In Conclusion

We enjoyed our cruise overall, but maybe one point fewer on a ten-point scale than we did the last cruise we took.  We disliked the clear corporate strategy of increasingly going to pushing upcharges (upcharges for steak and shrimp in the MDR, additional charges for additional entrees and appetizers in Tamarind and Pinnacle, mixology classes for additional fees, almost everything for a charge on Half Moon Cay, etc.), the minor service inconsistencies, and what felt like more time waiting for food or drinks than previously.

We are cruising later this year on Celebrity, so I will be interested to see if this is simply an industry-wide phenomenon of increasing costs and decreasing revenue, difficulty to train/maintain staff due to Covid, and supply chain issues, or if these are HAL-specific issues that have developed in the past four years.

 

[Mary229]

Thank you for a balanced review.  

[fsufancc]

I have stated in other threads that the cruise industry as a whole is coming out of the post-pandemic hangover.  We sailed RCL Voyager OTS back in October and the "fit-n-finish" was not there from trips we had taken pre-pandemic.  New hires, supply chain issues, ships appearing to be sailing without a full staff (even though they want to be fully staffed).  I think things will work out over time as all the lines have done massive recruitment efforts to hire personnel, get them onboarded and trained.  Time will be our friend as the new hires will learn the ropes and become more experienced.