Brilliance just okay.

[bilyclub]

I was on the Brilliance TransAlantic on 16 April 2007 with my wife. I am not a super-cruiser, but manage to take 2 or 3 cruises a year, all of them on RCI. The Brilliance trip was the worse I have ever been on. Either I have been lucky, or things are changing on RCI. Granted no cruise is a bad one, this one was alright, instead of great like the previous ones.

My main problem is the threads saying how great the Brilliance was. This ship had a major problems with the Purser’s Desk and the Cruise Director and staff. I am not going into details, because I fear that this post will not last very long before its deleted. If the thread lasts more that a day, details will be posted. The worst part about it, was all the non RCI cruisers stated they would not return and would do other lines.

[Sue L]

I was on the sailing a couple of weeks before yours and I am sorry you had such a poor experience. Ours was totally opposite, it was our favorite in 11 of them. The food, service, staff were fantastic and when we did have an issue the purser's desk was fabulous.

 

They will not pull this thread just because it is negative of RCCL, please post the details.

[Dolby1000]

We took the last Panama Canal cruise before it crossed the Atlantic. Most of the staff we encountered was rotating off and a lot of new staff was coming aboard.

 

The only issue we had was (sometimes) a tired and indifferent staff. Otherwise, I would also have to say it was one of our best trips ever.

 

BTW: I have seen many a posting that is critical of RCCL. This is not a board owned and operated by RCCL, so opinions that are not in favor are not removed.

 

In fact, I would believe a post that had favorable and unfavorable items about their cruise than one that just gushes wonderful everything was without going into details.

 

Dolby1000

[bilyclub]

Yes, posts that I have made in the Meet and Mingle and on a couple of other threads have been deleted. I was not profane, rude, or talking crazy. The purser's desk gave me wrong information all but one time, and when questioned they always got snippy. The dining room staff and cabin steward were great. The Windjammer was the pits. I always have read the posts about how bad they are, and laugh, but this one was the worst. You could always find a seat, but the selection and quality of food was terrible. The Cruise Director was a ghost till the last couple of days. The Cruise Compass often had activities that were listed for the wrong time or venue. The C/D's staff was often late or did not show up at all for activities. There were not enough activities for the first five days, which were sea days. Most of the activities, such as trivia twice a day, were on port days. The entertainment was mainly aimed at the Hispanic cruisers, and was in Spanish half the time. Probably because there was 500 Mexicans onboard, but what about the 1500 from the USA? Being on the ship for 13 days, you get to know and talk to the same persons. Everyone of the non-regular RCI people were adamant that they would not sail RCI again. I am just hoping this ship is not the direction the line is going. I even booked NextCruise onboard.

[dramaqueen4lyfe]

Bilyclub, I'm the one whom Dolby1000 probably refers to as one who "Gushes" so I guess we are on opposite sides of the fence on this one. I agree that the large group on board were annoying but I disagree that things are changing on RCI. Our experience was totally different. We enjoyed the food in the Windjammer. The selection was such that I would have thought that anyone could have found something they liked. The fact that the CD was not around much (and I agree she was scarce) did not affect me in the least. We had no problems with Guest Relations. Had a bit of a problem with the Excursion Desk but it was immediately resolved to our satisfaction. I agree that the Dining Room staff and the room steward were great. You are most certainly entitled to your opinion as I am so I would not think this thread would disappear. We do have free speech on this board up to a point. Brenda and Jerry (MACOP) had a bad experience so she would probably applaud your thread. On the opposite side of the coin, Marilyn Stone fell on board and broke her femor and her husband Roger (Stonerb) cannot say enough in his posts about RCI and how they handled the situation. He even posted the fact that he enjoyed what he could about the crossing even although Marilyn was in the Infirmary.

In conclusion: Find something interesting to book for your Next Cruise and try RCI again. We have 4 booked and a Next Cruise to decide on. Nothing that ever happened on board would deter us.

Still your friendly fellow poster, Sheila

[Bestbubba]

Bilyclub, sorry you had a less than great time. I've read so often on CC that you can read two reviews of the same cruise and they will be polar opposites. I'm with Sheila on this though, we had the best time. We are quite new to RCI, this was just our 4th cruise with them and the first was in 1994! We are usually Princess cheerleaders;) CDs never make or break a cruise for me, I thought the food was great (perhaps that doesn't say a lot for my cooking or our dining choices when we dine out - who knows:D ) but of course food is such a personal thing, on sea days I'm happy to chat/eat/snooze/eat/read/eat - you get the picture? We met the nicest people, our roll call buddies were the best, I guess it's different strokes for different folks but again, I'm sorry you were disappointed, hope your next cruise really blows you away:)

 

Sue

[Nliedel]

Cruising is, in many ways subjective. I've never liked the Windjammer, always opting to eat in the dining rooms. I am sorry you had an unfortunate experience and wish you would give RCI another try. I've heard WONDERFUL things about the Empress. Our table, Tuesday night was filled with Empress fans. So many, that I am seriously thinking about sailing her.

 

Even if you don't sail RCI in the future, I hope your good memories outweigh your bad and sustain you.

[dramaqueen4lyfe]

Cruising is, in many ways subjective. I've never liked the Windjammer, always opting to eat in the dining rooms. I am sorry you had an unfortunate experience and wish you would give RCI another try. I've heard WONDERFUL things about the Empress. Our table, Tuesday night was filled with Empress fans. So many, that I am seriously thinking about sailing her.

 

Even if you don't sail RCI in the future, I hope your good memories outweigh your bad and sustain you.

 

We have heard some of the same stories about Empress so much so that we have booked her in Oct out of Phila which is an easy 1 hour car trip for us. We are taking 4, 1st time cruisers with us that is how confident we are that it will be great. Sad however is the fact that she will be leaving RCI next year. Sheila

[ClipperMiami]

My wife and I were on that trip and I'd have to side with the other positive reports. Frankly if I never saw the CD I wouldn't miss her/him; the food was good and plentiful (I did manage to lose 6 pounds but certainly not due to quality or quantity of food available :-)' everyone on the staff that I encountered was terrific. I guess it depends on individual taste and tolerance.

 

We enjoyed it enough that we booked the Dec 2 return trip onboard and are planning our 2008 RCI trips. To each his own.

[Nliedel]

We have heard some of the same stories about Empress so much so that we have booked her in Oct out of Phila which is an easy 1 hour car trip for us. We are taking 4, 1st time cruisers with us that is how confident we are that it will be great. Sad however is the fact that she will be leaving RCI next year. Sheila

 

Four people at our table of eight, had sailed her. They went on and on and. I'm looking at her sailings right now.

[Sue L]

Everyone of the non-regular RCI people were adamant that they would not sail RCI again. I am just hoping this ship is not the direction the line is going. I even booked NextCruise onboard.

 

 

 

I saw your posts on the roll call before they got deleted and that could have been to you being so blatantly negative (my guess though) or they thought you didn't belong on the roll call which there was an issue with a while back. Also I don't think you can make such a false statement as above. You could not have possibly spoken to every non-regular RCL people to make this statement. Granted I know you probably spoke to a few but definitely not ALL.

 

Isn't it wonderful though that we have so many different cruise lines to choose from? If RCL doesn't fit your life then you should try another line

[cruisenfever]

Everyone of the non-regular RCI people were adamant that they would not sail RCI again. I am just hoping this ship is not the direction the line is going. I even booked NextCruise onboard.

I don't understand why, if you had such a miserable cruise and you are concerned with the direction the line is going...........why did you book a NextCruise booking? Just curious, I guess.

[Ephraim]

This was our first RCI cruise (both Yves and I) are we certainly were happy with the cruise. Was everything perfect? It never is.

 

I was at the desk only twice during the cruise. Once because I wanted them to split our credit between our two accounts. They said they couldn't, but told me to remove the money at the casino and I could put the cash in against the other account. The other was when MACOP and I went to ask for a room for the Murder Mystery. We asked for a specific bar and they gave us a conference room instead. (Though, I have to admit that maybe we should have started at 1PM instead of noon.)

 

As far as food, I can only compare it to Princess and NCL. It far out shined NCL. It was on a par with Princess, though I like the fact that Princess has an alternate dessert (cheesecake) that is really a nice choice for people who don't like chocolate (like me). There were too many chocolate and exotic fruit desserts, but that's just personal opinion. And RCI's day three is the worst menu. I contemplated ordering the mac and cheese from the children's menu. I was happy to see that RCI didn't compromise on a few things, including the usage of fresh eggs. We didn't realize until the Grand Buffet that they had sushi at the Windjammer at night.

 

As for the CD. Frankly, I believe that her remote control had a very limited range and so we only saw her on stage. She did do a good job managing the other cruise staff and there were plenty of activities. I got shanghaied into pool games by Gail, but I had fun and it's one of the few pictures of myself that I purchased. We enjoyed the trivia and met a lot of people at trivia. (Oh, Gail taught me the Electric Slide!) We were up there for game shows and any other fun on the ship.

 

The shows? Well, that's always personal. I liked the Magician and the Celine thing would have been much better as a tribute than trying to act and talk like Celine.... but maybe that has to do with the fact that I know the Quebecois accent and well Celine is a bit well known and famous around here. Saw Lance on the TV and it wasn't really my kind of thing. We liked the magician as well as his close-up show (where we got front row seats.)

 

Certainly, Yves and I will cruise with RCI again. Heck, we were on another RCI cruise about 4 days later, thanks to TheMoon.

 

As usual, it's always a personal thing. You don't really want my opinion of the assistant cruise director, because it's just not good. The rest of the cruise staff was great though. We had some great laughs with Elvis and company. They even got me on the floor to sing for live karaoke.

 

And we met a lot of really nice people on this cruise. And we hope to see many of them again. Sue and Steve and Norma and Harvey are invited to our B&B anytime they want to visit, so are Liz and Peter. Anyone else who wants a free tour around Montreal and maybe go out to dinner together, just drop us a note. We had a great time. I guess it's a measure of the people you met and just overlooking some of the things that can and will go wrong.

 

Oh, and we loved our room. It was our first balcony. We loved the new bedding. And despite Yves' having to spend so much time and money at the doctor, it was grand. The one thing that was most problematic for us was the FoD meetings... 11PM at the Champagne bar was either too early or too late for us most nights.

[leoandhugh]

Ephraim, concerning the FoD meetings - on Brilliance last Nov TA Barcelona-Miami, they did not schedule them on the daily activities sheet, but we were able to schedule several ourselves by posting on the bulletin board near the shore excursion desk - just selected a time and place and whomever wanted to showed up. And at that meeting we would agree on a time and place for the next time and filled out a card and posted it. Different CD of course, so somewhat different procedure But it worked fine for us.:)

[hobie33]

Bilyclub , pity you, you will run into RCI junkies that will try to run you of the board.

In my opinion it was average cruise, some will say fantastic and amazing but I do discount them , for them leaving the house constitute a fantastic voyage.

Front desk to us was good, took care of our disembarkation in valencia with only two screw ups, needed to get up 5 am to bring my passport to them after being told twice not to worry.

Food not as good Carnival Celebrity or Holland America.

Room , good but cover is too heavy, had to change to regular blanket and sheet. shower to small and very little water pressure, to many pillows on the bed just took to much room at night.

Room service excellent.

They had Fox news, very good.

Need more comedy at nights, good to go sleep smiling.

Pools, chairs to close, nobody to help.

Spa our 12am whirlpool was the best.

Ship, need dry dock soon, and I know what I am talking about.

Robes , only platinum and suites get them Ha..

CD, need a sense of humor.

Overall, average.

Alex.

[Ephraim]

Ephraim, concerning the FoD meetings - on Brilliance last Nov TA Barcelona-Miami, they did not schedule them on the daily activities sheet, but we were able to schedule several ourselves by posting on the bulletin board near the shore excursion desk - just selected a time and place and whomever wanted to showed up. And at that meeting we would agree on a time and place for the next time and filled out a card and posted it. Different CD of course, so somewhat different procedure But it worked fine for us.:)

 

They had a standard card posted on the Bulletin Board. It's one of the permanent cards. Here is a picture of the Bulletin Board. The standard meeting was set for 11PM. Someone called one for 5PM one day, but otherwise it was more sporadic.

[Fran Harp]

Bilyclub, I'm the one whom Dolby1000 probably refers to as one who "Gushes" so I guess we are on opposite sides of the fence on this one. I agree that the large group on board were annoying but I disagree that things are changing on RCI. Our experience was totally different. We enjoyed the food in the Windjammer. The selection was such that I would have thought that anyone could have found something they liked. The fact that the CD was not around much (and I agree she was scarce) did not affect me in the least. We had no problems with Guest Relations. Had a bit of a problem with the Excursion Desk but it was immediately resolved to our satisfaction. I agree that the Dining Room staff and the room steward were great. You are most certainly entitled to your opinion as I am so I would not think this thread would disappear. We do have free speech on this board up to a point. Brenda and Jerry (MACOP) had a bad experience so she would probably applaud your thread. On the opposite side of the coin, Marilyn Stone fell on board and broke her femor and her husband Roger (Stonerb) cannot say enough in his posts about RCI and how they handled the situation. He even posted the fact that he enjoyed what he could about the crossing even although Marilyn was in the Infirmary.

 

In conclusion: Find something interesting to book for your Next Cruise and try RCI again. We have 4 booked and a Next Cruise to decide on. Nothing that ever happened on board would deter us.

 

Still your friendly fellow poster, Sheila

 

It's always interesting to me how people can be so different in their assessments. I went on the Brilliance TA last year, and as practically everyone knows, I'm on it in December for the westbound cruise. I couldn't have cared less if there were activities on the sea days. I was happy to just be still and rest, after a crazy and hectic year, and some health trouble. My DH was the same. We never had trouble finding anything in the WJ, and ate there often....I thought the food was more than good for a buffet feeding 3000. But then, I was also glad I didn't have to cook it. We had one problem with the guy in the next room smoking cigars non-stop till the whole of our side of the ship began to reek, but Guest Relations bent over backwards to help us, and called often to check as to how we were. We loved it so much, we booked the next one a month after getting off the ship.

 

The upcoming one has an active roll call, and lots of activities planned. I fully expect to enjoy myself. There might some food which isn't so good, there might be activities I don't care for. I don't care. I'm going to sleep, read, eat, sleep, drink, sleep, visit ports, eat, sleep, drink - and generally have a good time. But I usually have a good time doing next to nothing anyway. :D

 

Fran in Toronto

[Fran Harp]

My wife and I were on that trip and I'd have to side with the other positive reports. Frankly if I never saw the CD I wouldn't miss her/him; the food was good and plentiful (I did manage to lose 6 pounds but certainly not due to quality or quantity of food available :-)' everyone on the staff that I encountered was terrific. I guess it depends on individual taste and tolerance.

 

We enjoyed it enough that we booked the Dec 2 return trip onboard and are planning our 2008 RCI trips. To each his own.

 

See you in December. :D:D I haven't been to the roll call too regularly, so will check for you over there. I am taking orders for T-shirts...are you ready for the chorus line?

 

franota at rogers dot com

 

Fran in Toronto

 

Fran

[bilyclub]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bilyclub

Everyone of the non-regular RCI people were adamant that they would not sail RCI again. I am just hoping this ship is not the direction the line is going. I even booked NextCruise onboard.

 

I don't understand why, if you had such a miserable cruise and you are concerned with the direction the line is going...........why did you book a NextCruise booking? Just curious, I guess.

 

Ok, I will clarify that statment: Everyone of the non-RCI cruisers that I spoke with were not impressed and would not come back. I never said miserable. I took this cruise using 14 days of time due along with regular days off from work expecting a great cruise. Instead it was just OK. What is wrong is deleting my posts. I booked the nextcruise on the 2nd day. You know what? Maybe its Tom Jones fault? He was playing the Knight Center on the 15th. of April, which screwed up traffic and led me to bail out of the cab on the off ramp to walk to the Hyatt with the luggage. Yea, thats the ticket. Sorry, RCI is great. Ashley Kerr deserves a raise. Elvis was never late. All hail Richard Fain.

[TEXASMUNK]

Blame Global Warming.

[Merion_Mom]

Blame Canada.

[Fran Harp]

Blame Canada.

 

Even if it wasn't us. Go ahead. We're used to it. :D:D:D

 

Fran

[Merion_Mom]

Sorry, Fran. Youth-culture reference. :) (South Park)

[Ephraim]

Quote: Originally Posted by bilyclub

I took this cruise using 14 days of time due along with regular days off from work expecting a great cruise. Instead it was just OK.... Sorry, RCI is great. Ashley Kerr deserves a raise. Elvis was never late. All hail Richard Fain.

 

Why are you going from one extreme to another? I'm not saying that everything was great and I don't think others are, either. Yes, Ashley was almost invisible. Yes, Elvis was late twice. Sure that lady in the round hat was so annoying we all wanted to give her a lobotomy. Sure the meal of stir fry vegetables that I ordered at "Bistro 30" one day was so lacking vegetables that I had to order a salad instead.

 

But what people are saying is that a cruise is what you make of it and that they enjoyed while you were disappointed. And the same way that you want people to respect your opinion, you need to respect others.

 

There will always be people around who herald the cruise company of their choice. I get flamed when I give people the real low-down on some of the nitty-gritty that they really don't want to know about cruise lines. They want to wear blinkers and that's fine, as long as they know it.

 

A few years ago, Yves and I were on a fantastic cruise on the Golden Princess. A few months later we were back on the same ship, again. All the cruise staff had changed and the atmosphere on the ship was different. Sure, they were fun, but not as fun as the earlier cruise staff had been and not as memorable a cruise... except of course being in a Beaufort 11, spending an extra day at sea and being green an entire morning as I tried not to lose it.

 

Your observations are valid. In fact, so valid that I would urge you to send a letter to RCL and tell them what you liked, what you didn't like and what you think was horrid. They can't improve if people don't really tell them. On one side, it's cathartic to put pen to paper and tell them. For another, it allows them to make a better product and make it better for you, the next time.

 

Yves and I were on the Voyager of the Seas just a few days later with a different CD. She was energetic, at the front of everything, running around the ship. She was funny, open and great to talk to. And yet, Yves and I were sometimes the only people to show up to a Game Show and we were 4 people at trivia one afternoon and 6 one morning... and it's a bigger ship. The people on the ship also affect your trip.

[Bestbubba]

In my opinion it was average cruise, some will say fantastic and amazing but I do discount them , for them leaving the house constitute a fantastic voyage.

 

.

 

Alex I was disappointed that along with several other posters from our roll call, I never had the pleasure of meeting you on board. Reading your comments now perhaps I was lucky. No one has been rude to Bilyclub or been derogatory about his comments, if fact most posts have said how subjective cruising is. There is a very fine line between being funny and being rude, to my mind you crossed it but hey - that's just MY opinion:rolleyes:

 

Sue