We leave in a few weeks for our first RCCL cruise on the Serenade after 4 cruises on Princess and 6 on DCL. Looking forward to it, but there are a few things that bug me in doing research:
- No poolside burger/dog/brat grill on RCCL. Find that weird.
- No dedicated pizza place (apparently they will have them in the Windjammer at times). I must say that I LOVED Princess' Pizza
- Small movie theater
- No toiletries, just a dispenser in the shower.
- Paying for Diet Coke (OK, we had to do that on Princess too
)
- I will miss being able to bring alcohol on board like you can do on DCL.
- I am looking forward to the casino.
I also am not a big "Pay Extra" person on cruising. I like to pay once and be done. We don't do specialty dining, etc., so we like that we don't feel the need to do so on either DCL or Princess. Hoping RCCL will be the same. Probably rules out Norwegian in our future...
One thing I've noticed lately is that RCCL really isn't that much cheaper than DCL (especially Oasis and Allure) and it is quite a bit more expensive than Princess. It will be interesting as we are trying to decide for Spring on an Eastern Itinerary. We had looked at the Independence, but as of now, we are leaning towards the Regal Princess.
Will report back as to how our cruise was...
Well, we are back and I can report how our cruise on the Serenade of the Seas went. In a nutshell, I came away surprisingly unimpressed with RCCL, mainly in the areas of customer service, food availability/quality, and logistical issues.
First off, let me preface by saying that my comparison for this cruise was 4 Princess cruises and 6 on DCL, so it may not be apples to apples, but having been on a number of cruises, there were just a number of little (and some big) things that added up to at this point to put RCCL a good bit behind both DCL and Princess. I should also add that we had a group sailing, so I got to hear a number of other people's issues as well, so that may have skewed things a bit as well. All that being said, we really did have a good time on the cruise (is there a bad one?), but there were a number of things that we noticed.
Embarkation in New Orleans
So, we had a notice that the ship "may be backed up" because it was the first sailing of the Serenade after her transatlantic voyage. We were encouraged to board by deck in times from noon to 3:30 and the ship was scheduled to depart at 4pm. We had spent the night prior in a hotel within walking distance of the port, so we walked over and got in line about 12:30. Here is where I started noticing differences. It took us about an hour and a half to embark. First, we waited in a security line, this wasn't bad, took about 20 minutes and went through wine check. Then we waited in a line to get into the main waiting room. This took about another 20 minutes. So, after about 40 minutes, we get into the main room with all of the agents checking people into the ship. LONG lines. There were probably about 20 stations checking in passengers. We waited in this line about 40 minutes before we got to the agent to check us in. After that, we were on the ship in about 10 minutes. Good news was since it was about 2pm, our stateroom was ready. Bad news was the lady at check-in never gave me my credit card back, so after I noticed it was gone, I had to go back to check in and get it (which, fortunately, was still there).
While back in the room, I noticed that it was even more jammed than before. I came to find out that we had people in our group that got in line about the same time as us, but did not board the ship until 4pm. It was a huge mess. Not real sure what the issue was and if it was RCCL or the Port of New Orleans (as this was the first sailing of the Serenade of the season), but it took just about everyone at least an hour and a half to 2 hours to board. My parents, who are Diamond with RCCL said this was by far the worst embarkation they had ever had, so I'll write this off as a one-time incident, but it was a harbinger of things to come.
First impressions of the ship
As soon as I boarded (for real after I had relocated my CC), I immediately noticed some differences. First, you scan your "Sea Pass" (like a KTTW card) out on the Promenade deck once off of the boarding ramp. Then you walk around a narrow part of that deck to doors by the back of the ship at the entrance to the restaurant. First, we encountered a station that issued the kids wristbands with their muster stations. OK, not a problem. As soon as we leave that, we are "accosted" by a number of dining room people asking us about our dining.
Them: "Do you have MyTime Dining"
Me: "Yes, we have a large group and all want to split up who we eat with every night".
Them: "You need to go ahead and put in reservations".
Me: "Do you have to have reservations? I was told I could just show up when I was ready to eat".
Them: "Yes, you can show up, but you need a reservation"
Me: "What happens if I show up without a reservation?"
Them: "We will make you a reservation for the next seating time, or make you a reservation for an open table and seat you there"
I just left it at that
So, once in, we are in the "Centrum" area on Deck 5 midship and need to go to Deck 8 to get to our stateroom. There are 6 elevators off of the Centrum (More on this later), so I think to myself, great, we will be up shortly. So about 5 minutes go by with no elevator stopping. At this point, there are a number of passengers congregating in the elevator lobby with the same idea. After about another 3-4 minutes, we finally get an elevator. Weird, I thought. Well, we found out why once we got up to Deck 8. As we get off of the elevator on the Deck 8 lobby, we are greeted by
most of Deck 8's luggage. Just sitting right out there. The ship's staff had commandeered 4 of the 6 elevators to transport all of the luggage up to the staterooms. This explained why the logjam at the elevators. This was new to me. In all of my cruises, I had never seen luggage just piled up in public areas like this. Really strange. On a good note, I found all of our luggage and moved it to our room.
Next up
The Stateroom...