RC vs DCL

[jenf22]

The first couple days, when the weather was good and people were outdoors, were better. You had to get close to smell it. But once the weather acted like we were on an Alaskan cruise, with grey rainy skies and clouds forever, with the top deck totally closed due to winds and few people on the pool deck, that's when it got bad. Walking near guest services was impossible for me. DH had to take care of something there and even the employees were having a hard time with it.

Vision is smaller than jewel, and that weather made it really hard for me. Hopefully I included all the aspects of it to be as fair as possible.

I can see how that would have sucked on our cruise too. The casino was one of very few things to do on sea days. So if the weather was bad all the smokers would be in there. Then I would have had to stay in our room with really nothing to do! You would think they could have better ventilation and air handlers so it didn't get that bad. Did you put that on your comment card? I'm generally not big on extra comments, but I took the time to write on ours when we got the email. I thought it was beyond insane that their kids water slide was open from 3-5:30pm on port days and 11-4pm on sea days. Really? 5 hours? But again, I've only been on the one ship so I'm going to keep an open mind for future cruises. We saved SO MUCH money on this cruise over the DCL one we had originally booked. I'm sorry your cruise had the smoke issue. That must have been a real let down

 

[angiwright]

Wanted to chime in since we just took our first RC cruise after only cruising Disney before. We had a wonderful time on Freedom of the seas. I would have to say I have things I like on RC better and things I like on DCL better.

My kids are 7, 11 & 15. The 15 yr old preferred RC teen club over disney's. The younger two had fun at both but I think they even spent more time in the RC clubs than Disney. RC pool area is way better!

Also you mentioned since your kids are on the smaller side you are concerned about them not meeting height requirements. I can tell u on freedom they had ice skating, flow rider and rock wall. And the only thing my 7 yr old couldnt do was flow rider. I think it was 52 inches and she was too short.

Disney in my opinion has the heads up on theatre shows and family movies on the pool big screen. But other things made up for this and we had plenty to do!

 

[EmmaMagsMom]

Wanted to chime in since we just took our first RC cruise after only cruising Disney before. We had a wonderful time on Freedom of the seas. I would have to say I have things I like on RC better and things I like on DCL better. My kids are 7, 11 & 15. The 15 yr old preferred RC teen club over disney's. The younger two had fun at both but I think they even spent more time in the RC clubs than Disney. RC pool area is way better! Also you mentioned since your kids are on the smaller side you are concerned about them not meeting height requirements. I can tell u on freedom they had ice skating, flow rider and rock wall. And the only thing my 7 yr old couldnt do was flow rider. I think it was 52 inches and she was too short. Disney in my opinion has the heads up on theatre shows and family movies on the pool big screen. But other things made up for this and we had plenty to do!

I'm glad I found this thread. We are trying to figure out which cruise would be better for our family. We have two girls, ages 11 and 12. My DH and I have sailed on RCCL Freedom of the Seas twice and loved it. Our girls went with us when they were 3 and 4 so they don't remember . We are Disney lovers, and go to DW with them once a year. We are looking at either the Fantasy next Nov or Oasis. Would our girls be in the same age group for kids activities on Disney? How does the food compare between the two cruise lines? We thought the good on Freedom was pretty good. Any feedback would be great. Thanks

 

[angiwright]

I'm glad I found this thread. We are trying to figure out which cruise would be better for our family. We have two girls, ages 11 and 12. My DH and I have sailed on RCCL Freedom of the Seas twice and loved it. Our girls went with us when they were 3 and 4 so they don't remember . We are Disney lovers, and go to DW with them once a year. We are looking at either the Fantasy next Nov or Oasis. Would our girls be in the same age group for kids activities on Disney? How does the food compare between the two cruise lines? We thought the good on Freedom was pretty good. Any feedback would be great. Thanks

On Freedom Adventure Ocean went up to 11 yrs old and the teen club started at 12. I cant remember on Disney exactly where the age break is from going from the kids club to the teen area. Hopefully someone else can answer that.


We were on the Fantasy in 2013 and just on Freedom a few weeks ago. We thought the food as well as the service in the MDR was better on Freedom than the Fantasy.

The freedom also had so much for the tweens and teens like rock climbing, flow rider and ice skating. Oasis would have even more than that!

We are big WDW lovers too! This trip on freedom was actually our first non-disney trip since our 15 yr old was born! I still love a trip to WDW, but I think we will be looking at RC more often for cruises than DCL. I found them very comparable. Some things Disney did better and some things Royal did better.

 

[tidefan]

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...

 

[ldo]

tidefan, I have a 13-14 yr olds and we are booked for spring break 2016 with a great price. please let me know about that little movie theater and how many movies they play and what types. also, could you please save your daily compasses? I would really like to see them. We would be on a 10 day cruise to S. Carib, but want to make sure my teens will not be too bored. thanks, Elaine

 

[angiwright]

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...

Tidefan, Hope you have a great cruise! We just did our first RC cruise after only doing DCL before. I had some of the same concerns so thought I'd give you my experience on a few

- I agree its weird that there is not food place on the pool deck. We were on Freedom so don't know if Serenade is the same. But we had the buffet, windjammer on the same deck. We would just run into windjammer and get food to bring out if we wanted something. You do have to cover up if you have a swimsuit on, I saw people turned away for trying to wear swimsuits in. So poolside would be more convenient but it wasn't as bad as I thought.

- No toiletries was something I really thought I'd miss, but didn't.

- Kind of a bummer to pay for coke packages but even buying them we came out cheaper than having it included on DCL.

- also we are not big pay extra people either. No specialty restaurants, spa or anything like that. But we didn't find any reason to pay extra for things. I believe other than $14 for the kids club one night for my son, our only costs on the ship were souveniers. Hope it is the same on Serenade for you!

Let us know what you think!

 

[tidefan]

tidefan, I have a 13-14 yr olds and we are booked for spring break 2016 with a great price. please let me know about that little movie theater and how many movies they play and what types. also, could you please save your daily compasses? I would really like to see them. We would be on a 10 day cruise to S. Carib, but want to make sure my teens will not be too bored. thanks, Elaine

Will do!

 

[hoffman1]

I will start by saying I am not a cruise expert. I have only been on the Dream, Fantasy, and most recently Liberty of the Seas (just got off 11/13). I had high hopes for Liberty because of the price difference-- I thought it would allow us to cruise more often. BUT I TOTALLY MISSED THE DISNEY EXPERIENCE! And we don't even have kids! The level of service we receive on the Disney ships was far superior. The staff is just friendlier, more accommodating. And the level of cleanliness was better on Disney ships too--on the Liberty there were some dusty areas, the public restrooms were not spotless, there were some rusty spots, etc.
I did like that Liberty had a casino but it was so smoky that I could not breathe in there. The promenade was a nice place to hang out. I thought the food in the main dining room was better than on the Disney ships but I preferred Cabanas over the Windjammer.
I didn't like that I bought the Royal Replenish package (the package with soda, bottled water, fresh squeezed juice, and non-alcoholic beverages) and it was difficult to get anything to drink--bartenders gave me attitude when I asked for bottled water and most of the time in the dining room I never got my soda. I ordered the fresh squeezed juice a couple of mornings for breakfast and it was always hot so I gave up on that.
It was nice that there were not long lines for characters. We never really looked for them on the schedule but ran into them for photo ops several times with no wait times.
The DreamWorks parade was kind of crazy though. It was in the Promenade and was a frantic back and forth kind of thing.
I am not sure I would choose Royal Caribbean again even at the cheaper price.

 

[ldo]

we were on Liberty after Christmas last year. Here were the pros:
Johnny Rockets
mini golf
rock climbing
ice skating
ice skating show
flow rider
promenade--loved the Café area with free reg coffee/tea, and good snacks, great place to people watch
cupcake cupboard decorating classes
pizza place with good antipasto in promenade--set up like an old fashioned pizzeria with seating--my 12-13 yr olds had dinner together there one night and felt very grown up--they frequently popped down to grab pizza, fun atmosphere--not just grab and go pizza
3D Movie
Saturday Night Fever
the price and cabin--we took 6 persons in a huge family ocean view on a 4 day cruise to Cozumel over Christmas break for under $3K!

cons:
no movie theater--only 1 3D movie and 2 moves on deck, at 8 and 10 pm
sea days were very boring for kids 12-13--who were too young/shy for flow rider, rock climbing, kids club b/c the age group is 12-14 and the teens do a lot of sports--and no cool place just to go and hang out
dining in MDR was OK, but subpar--DCL MDR dining much better

bottom line: our next cruise will likely be on RCCL, with adjusted expectations--the spring break cruise is less than 1/2 price. We will do upgraded dining for at least 1-2 meals.

 

[tidefan]

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...

 

[tidefan]

The Stateroom

We had an E1 Balcony Stateroom that ended up having a large oversized balcony. The balcony was great, the Stateroom, however, was noticeably smaller than what we have come accustomed to on DCL. I also think that it was a bit smaller than what we had on Princess. As my Daughter had a Medical condition that requires specialized medication that needs to be refrigerated, I had filled out a special needs form for a fridge to be put in the room and had received a nice e-mail confirmation that this would be ready for me when I got on the ship. So… no fridge. I go to guest services to ask about the fridge. There is already a very long line, so I get in and wait. After a few minutes I notice that there is only 1 person working the guest services desk (but 3 at the adjacent Shore Excursions desk (??) ). I eventually get up to the woman at the GS desk and explain my situation and show her my e-mail.

Her: "I am sorry, but we only have refrigerators for guest that fill out special needs forms"
Me: "That is what I am showing you in this e-mail. It is my confirmation from the special needs department letting me know that it will be in the room"
Her: "I am sorry, but all of the fridges have been given out to those who filled out the form that had a need for it, not just to keep food cold" (exact quote)
Me: "Um, you mean like the form I filled out and got this confirmation on?"
Her: "We are not showing this in our system, Did you request the correct sailing?"
Me: "You mean the one listed here with today's date and this ship on it?"
Her: "I am sorry, but we do not have a record of that and we do not have any more refrigerators. You can give your medicine to the medical staff and they will keep it for you"

At that point, I just left and went back upstairs, explained the situation to my better half, who promptly sent me back down. When I got back down, there was another staff member "screening" people in the line. I explained that I was coming back to check on the fridge. She looked at my e-mail, went over to the GS desk, made a call, and 2 minutes later came over and told me I'd have a fridge by 4pm. Go figure…

So, get back to the stateroom and start to put stuff away. Open the cabinets over the TV. There are half empty water bottles in there. Great… Head to muster drill and come back to hopefully find the fridge. Not there. I call, and the person tells me it is on the way. OK, not a problem. This is when I looked out and notice, hey, they are still boarding people on the ship (I don't know how they did muster…). I walked the ship a bit and then we got ready to go to dinner around 7-ish. We had 10 of us and walked up to the Matre'd.

Them: "Do you have a reservation?"
Me: "No"
Them: "Here is a buzzer. Should be about 15 minutes"

We ended up in the Card Room (which is adjacent to the dining room on deck 4) with our eventual servers Claudiu and Francisco, who proved to be one of the highlights of the ship. I'll discuss food later…

Anyway, we get back to our room around 9pm. No fridge. Our room steward comes up and introduces herself. I asked about the fridge. She said she had not heard, but would check. About 20 minutes later, she says it should be coming shortly, it "had to wait until the watertight doors were shut" (??). OK… So, about 9:30, here comes the fridge!.. First, they want to put it on the small little table in the room, but I point out that is not really stable. Then (and this was more funny than bad…), the maintenance guy suggests we put it on the loveseat! Um, no. At any rate, we took the chair out from the desk and put it on our balcony and put the fridge under there.

This was sort of the story of the cruise. We all started calling it the Excuses of the Seas because it seemed like whenever we would ask about something, it wasn't "Yes, I'll see what we can do to fix that", it was "Well, that is because…" The worst was the next night at dinner, but I'll get to that in a bit. We only held on to the fridge for a few days because I had heard from a cabin in our group that had an infant and had also pre-registered for a fridge and had not gotten one. In addition, the crib/pack-n-play that they had confirmed had not been put in the room. They requested it around 4. They finally got one into their stateroom at 9pm. It was one of the big square ones and since the loveseat was too big to move out of the stateroom, they had about a foot to get by between the pack-n-play and the desk. They ended up finding them a rectangular pack-n-play the next day.

I then heard from another in our party that RCCL had no record of their pre-paid shore excursions (which had been charged on their card). Once again, the ship had no record of items that had been confirmed on the RCCL website. I don't know if the issue was at RCCL IT or at the ship, but they need to get that fixed. They went ahead and got them tickets. I haven't heard if they got charged multiple times.

Other Service issues

On Day 1, I went to the main pool bar to purchase the Diet Coke drink package for myself and the "Royal Refreshment" package for my daughter. There was only 1 person working the bar (this was the same for the first 2 sea days). When he finally got to me I asked about the package. He told me "we are out of the package here". I think that he meant that he didn't have the plastic coke cups. I said I didn't really need them, and could get them later. He told me to check the bar up a deck and then went to another customer. I walked up to the other bar (who also only had 1 person working a full bar) and those folks did finally get me the drink packages.

On night 2, we only had 4 of us and sat in a different part of the dining room. We sat and waited, and waited, and waited. After 20 minutes, someone finally came up and poured us waters. After another few minutes, a head waiter came over to take our order. A different person brought us our food, and yet a different person came over to take our dessert order. After a few minutes, the other 3 at our table had their desserts brought out. I had ordered the Banana Baileys Creme Brûlée, and it was not out. After a few minutes, I asked what I think was the assistant waiter about it. He said that he was going to check. Another 10 minutes pass. No dessert. Everyone else done. Ask the first head waiter about the dessert. He goes to check. Comes back a few minutes later with dessert.

Well, what really took the cake was that I mentioned this to the maitre'd as we are leaving to let them know the issues in that section. His exact quote to me was "Well, that waiter in that section had waited on 52 people that night". What I really wanted to say was "well, he didn't wait on numbers 53-56"… He then told me that I needed to understand that he was busy with a number of tables and was doing me a favor by waiting on us in this section. Now, I am pretty accommodating of things, but I have to say, I was speechless as I was listening to this. Isn't it RCCL's job to make sure they have enough waiters to cover their Dining Room?

Later that night, we got a call from one of the GS folks to ask about the fridge. My wife detailed our discussions with the maitre'd and the GS person said "He said WHAT?" and told us to hold on. We were then connected to the head of Food and Beverage. We explained our conversation and he wanted to look into it. We got a call back profusely apologizing. We had a nice conversation and mentioned how much we enjoyed our first nights wait staff. He set up for us to have them every night for up to 16 people and to just show up. I have to say, this gentleman was extremely nice and accommodating. He went on to tell us that the ship would be picking up a number of staff when we made our first stop in Jamaica.

I came to find out a few days later that the rumor was that RCCL had changed pay scales between contracts and that a number of staff had walked off of the boat as this was in between the Europe and Caribbean contracts. I also heard a rumor that RCCL couldn't bring on the new staff in the US and had to wait until the first international port. Whatever the reason, we sure enough picked up a bunch of staff in Falmouth, Jamaica.

I just wish they'd have told us that up front…

Next: General Observations between the lines

 

[tidefan]

General Observations

The Ship

The Serenade of the Seas is a "Radiance Class" vessel. Out of the 7 ships I had sailed prior, the Serenade was probably my least favorite. What really bugged me was the flow of the ship. There is a big 11 story high "Centrum" in the midship that serves as the focal point of the ship. It is an OK space, but somewhat nondescript. There are 6 elevators off to one side of the Centrum that look out over the ocean or the Centrum itself. There are also 3 elevators in the forward part of the ship. However, that was it. There were no aft elevators (nor aft stairs). I would not recommend being in the back of this class of ship.

The pool areas are smaller than what I am used to on either Princess or Disney. It consisted of one main pool, an adult pool area (Solarium), then a small kids pool with a waterside in the back. One thing to note. While it was nice to have a waterside, it is only open from 11am-3pm on sea days and 3:30-5:30pm on port days. In the back of the pool deck is the "Windjammer Cafe", which is the buffet for the ship. We were very disappointed in the buffet. The food was so-so at best (compared to the MDR food, which was pretty good - about the same as Disney, not quite as good as Princess). Also, this was where you had to get Pizza/Hot Dogs/Burgers as there is not a poolside grill. There is a small "Park Cafe" in the Solarium area, but it has a limited selection. The buffet is also much more limited in hours than on other lines as it closes by 8:30.

Another weird thing is that they would shut off the Windjammer between 4:30 and 6:00pm. There is a for charge Tex-Mex place in the back of the Windjammer called "Rita's Cantina". It was open from 1pm to 9pm, but the weird thing was, you couldn't get to it from 4:30 to 6:00 because to get to it, you had to go through the Windjammer, but they locked that off between 4:30 to 6:00.

General Observations

- There is a charge for the kids club after 10pm. I don't remember being charged at any time for the kids club on DCL (don't remember on Princess). Of course, with Murphy being in charge, my DD only wanted to go after 10…

- Go to the casino to fill up your diet coke habit. They use either 2 liter or canned DC instead of the soft drink "gun"

- Our stateroom attendant would not put more than 3 towels in our stateroom. We asked her everyday for a 4th towel, however, she never would put a 4th in the room.

- We did the "Bobsled Jamaica and Dunn's River Falls" excursion in Falmouth. I have to say that this was by far the best cruise excursion that I have ever done. If you go to Jamaica, it is definitely worth doing.

- One thing I did not like. If you are on Deck 6 and want to go forward from the Centrum, you have to walk through the Casino. This went for the kids too…

- There is a fun 70's night party on the cruise.

- There is a small cinema on the ship, but it does not play first-run movies.

- RCCL is big on the specialty dining venues, however, we rarely saw many people in them. In fact, the Japanese place was pretty much deserted most of the cruise.

SUMMARY

So, would I sail RCCL again? Yes, probably so. Even with all of the aforementioned issues, things did smooth out towards the end of the cruise. I probably would not choose this class of ship again as it was not my favorite layout. The cruise was fun and we did have a good time. I would say to try not to have the same expectations as say DCL, and you will be fine. Now, all of that being said, I still think that all other things being equal, we would pick DCL first, then Princess, then RCCL.

 

[holula]

I haven't done Royal yet so will leave most of your review. BUT we have done one DCL and one Princess after a repositioning cruise (one TA, one from Canada) and had the same issues with embarkation. Long, long lines and not enough staff clearing people. So I think that was more to do with the customs issues than anything else.

 

[ldo]

thanks for posting your review. I have been on 4 RCCL, which were "good" cruises and 1 great cruise, but would agree about RCCL's customer service. DCL is much more "can do/fix it" than RCCL, IMHO. We have a 10 day S. Carib. with 5 port stops (but 4 sea days) on Serenade booked for Spring 2016--the prices was the same as a 5 day on the Wonder going to CC and Cozumel---still debating. Do you recall what movies played in the cinema and if they played movies at night by the pool? thanks, Elaine

 

[tidefan]

thanks for posting your review. I have been on 4 RCCL, which were "good" cruises and 1 great cruise, but would agree about RCCL's customer service. DCL is much more "can do/fix it" than RCCL, IMHO. We have a 10 day S. Carib. with 5 port stops (but 4 sea days) on Serenade booked for Spring 2016--the prices was the same as a 5 day on the Wonder going to CC and Cozumel---still debating. Do you recall what movies played in the cinema and if they played movies at night by the pool? thanks, Elaine

Cinema: Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Heaven is for Real.

Poolside: only one I remember was Guardians of the Galaxy...

 

[papertraveller]

Thank you for taking the time to write about your trip. It's really helpful for those of us who have sailed on DCL, and are contemplating RCCL.

Could you please explain about the 'wine inspection' when you were boarding? I assume this is to check that you have only one bottle in your bag?

How did the pool towel sign-out situation work?

Are there any other notable differences between the two cruise lines? (I mean other than the subjective, food, service, etc.) I'm looking for "On Disney it's done this way, and on RCCL it's this way". For example, your Windjammer hours point is very useful.

We will be with a large family group on a port-centric cruise. It seemed to me that some of the ship's amenities and attractions might not be that important to us since we'd be off touring almost every day. Still, when everyone comes back onboard ravenous, I wonder where the teenagers will find something to eat?

 

[tidefan]

Thank you for taking the time to write about your trip. It's really helpful for those of us who have sailed on DCL, and are contemplating RCCL. Could you please explain about the 'wine inspection' when you were boarding? I assume this is to check that you have only one bottle in your bag? How did the pool towel sign-out situation work? Are there any other notable differences between the two cruise lines? (I mean other than the subjective, food, service, etc.) I'm looking for "On Disney it's done this way, and on RCCL it's this way". For example, your Windjammer hours point is very useful. We will be with a large family group on a port-centric cruise. It seemed to me that some of the ship's amenities and attractions might not be that important to us since we'd be off touring almost every day. Still, when everyone comes back onboard ravenous, I wonder where the teenagers will find something to eat?

Wine inspection was they checked your 2 bottles of wine at Security.

For pool towels, you only had to scan them out on port days. They'd scan your card for the number of towels you took and scan them back in when you returned. Conversely, you could just go get them at the pool the night prior to a port day and just not have to worry about it.

One thing to mention. Remember, this was just one experience on one particular ship. I don't really have a good sample size to judge the rest of the ships in the fleet. Embarkation may just have been an off day, as the customer service. Things smoothed out by the end of our cruise.

 

[ldo]

I have been on 4 RCCL cruises, all different ships--last one was 1 year ago. Customer service is OK, and sometimes (rarely, in my experience) poor--for example, a few years ago, a RCCL shore excursion's time was changed (kayak tour or something), but some passengers were unaware of the change. When they arrived @ 10am, they were told the RCCL tour had departed at 9:30 and that there had been a time change---RCCL did not seem to be too concerned about it on the dock. We were leaving on our tour, so don't know what happened--but I recall thinking that was not a "can do" attitude-like hustle them to meet the tour, call the tour operator and make arrangements, etc. When our DCL tour was changed--we got a letter and also a voicemail. Don't know what RCCL did.
Then, last year, we took the Liberty, which highly advertised DreamWorks #D Movies. On 4 nights, they had 1 3D Movie and 2 late night movies by the pool. When I inquired at customer service about any other movies, they were somewhat clueless and then just said there will be a movie later in the week. Towel return--told to go to one end of the pool--walked there and found a closed sign--stuff like that, but really nothing that is a big deal in 4 cruises.
I just have somewhat lower expectations than DCL, and the cruises are fine. But, my kids always ask "What cruise is it--and if I say RCCL, they say, "oh," vs. if I say DCL, they say, "YES!"

 

[mwins78]

Just did my first rccl after 3 Dcl!!!! Group of forty All I can say is that I gave it a chance back to dcl I go! The two things I enjoyed that Disney lacks for me is the adult entertainment at night I was up to the wee hours in the morning having fun while on dcl nights pretty much over at 11. Second thing is my 9 yr old son enjoyed the kids club on rccl hates Disney to many kids just running around rccl is more structured. Thats it!!! Food was terrible lost a couple of pounds while cruising usually I gain about five. Stateroom was like staying in a two star hotel, omg the showers where tiny I could barely move without banging my elbows on shower doors. But I made the best of it had fun with friends in family Just won't be back any time soon!!!!