Quote:
Originally Posted by ASUADPi
I have only traveled on Carnival and Royal Caribbean. Out of the two I preferred Carnival. Mainly because Carnival plans TONS of activities on sea days and even port days. The one Royal Caribbean I was on did absolutely NOTHING on port day. Our port of call was Catalina Island, which unless you get a golf cart and drive around is pretty boring. We got back to the ship at around 12, but we didn't leave port until like 8. There was nothing planned all day. It was so incredibly boring. Now, I don't need to be entertained 24/7 but I like how Carnival will have little "games" (like name that tune or name that star). Heck, there wasn't even music playing at the pools. I went to the pool and I was seriously that youngest person sitting in the hot tub (and I was 30 at the time).
I love cruising. I would love to go on a Disney cruise, I've heard they are amazing!
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That wasn't our experience with Royal Caribbean last month but we had a 7 day cruise with three ports of call and several days at sea. I went on a Carnival cruise back in '89 (first honeymoon) so it probably isn't fair to compare because I think most of the changes that surprised me are probably across the board, not just Royal Caribbean vs. Carnival. Everybody used to rave about food on cruises and I found the food to be incredible in '89, but just 'pretty good' now. The tradition on Carnival at that time was that there was a flaming dessert every night in the main dining room and the waiters danced with it on their heads in a conga line each night! There was also a midnight buffet that people would wait up for with incredible ice sculptures, animals made of fruits.. very cool! I was sad that didn't happen on this cruise. Back in the day, all the restaurants were included and now, on RC, some of them cost extra. Those restaurants had the caliber of food I remembered from my first cruise... but they were way too pricey. I was also shocked.. really shocked... that soft drinks were not free. Soda fountain drinks are so cheap yet they charged an arm & a leg for them. I bought the week long unlimited soda package for both hypo and I (at $42 each) and I only ended up drinking two sodas because they were Coke products and I really like Diet Pepsi. You could get iced tea, water and lemonade for free at any time so why bother with the soda package? Rip off!
I don't know if I was just less aware last time, but every time we turned around it seemed like they wanted more money for something. I think cruises have gone down in price, but not as much is included. I'd rather have everything included and pay a little more up front.
The other disappointment was the main dining room dinners. Not just the quality of the food, but the quality of the service. I don't know if our assistant waiter was new, lazy or if they just assigned our waiters too many tables, but our service was painfully slow. Painfully. Slow. I didn't want dinner to take two hours. I wanted to go do other things, especially since we had an 8 pm seating.
Overall though, I thought the service was great and there was a lot to do all the time on our ship. I'm not really sure about the days at port because we were only in port from 8 am - 5 pm and we stayed off the ship until around 3 or 4 each of those days. We left out of Galveston with the ship leaving around 4:30 pm on Sunday. We had gotten on board at 1 pm so we had a lot of time on Sunday onboard. Monday and Tuesday were days at sea. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were all ports of call and then Saturday we were at sea again. Sunday we reached port early and got off the ship early. Getting off the ship was a NIGHTMARE of the nth degree. We stood in line for 3 hours between getting off the ship, getting our luggage and going through customs. I don't know what the problem was. We did discover that if we had used a porter for our luggage, we would not have had to wait in the two hour line to get through customs. They had a special line for those people using porters. I will use a porter next time. There was also a problem with our transfer to the airport. Hypo and I weren't on the list of people who had paid, but I had paid a few weeks prior. I was frantically going through my phone trying to find the confirmation email and couldn't find it. One of the workers said "That's happened with a lot of people today, just get on the bus". So, bring paper confirmation of everything, just in case.
There were a lot of things that were wonderful and I'd do a Royal Caribbean cruise again. I did like that there was a mix of ages on the ship.. families, elderly, etc. My dad prefers Princess but says himself that it is mostly senior citizens. I have heard that Carnival is the party line these days. RC had some major partying available, but it also had things for other age groups too.
I can't wait for my next cruise
My expectations will be a little different and there were some lessons learned, but it was the best vacation I've had .. possibly ever.
) RC I went on was in 2008. It has been almost 4 years. I'm sure it also had to do with the duration. We left LA and had a port of call in San Diego (which I was pleased as I love San Diego) we then went to Catalina Island, then Mexico (totally blanking on the city right now) and back to LA. 
Hybrid Mode
