Cruise thoughts
The more I sit with it, I am not as fully irritated by what happened on our recent cruise. That said, I cannot deny my feelings of irritation at the time, and those thoughts cement in my mind that cruising is not my thing. I would hesitate to say that I am an explorer. However, I generally like to do my own thing.
Let me start with the cruise itself. We went on a Royal Caribbean (RCI) cruise on the Adventure of the Seas. This is a Voyager-class ship that has been in service for RCI since 2001. It cost about $500MM to build and can hold about 3,800 passengers and 1,200 crew. This thing is massive, yet when we were parked at their private island, their Utopia of the Seas was next to it. It dwarfed the Adventure. That boat can hold twice as many passengers and crew and is the 3rd largest cruise ship in the world.
The last time I went on a cruise, in 2002, I was very aware of the movement of the boat. I was queasy and had to take Bonine daily to stay comfortable. I was prepped to do so again, but I never had to take it. There were times when I could feel the boat swaying, but it was more the sensation of being in a hammock. It only occurred at night when the boat was really moving.
We left from Port Canaveral because we could more easily drive there. I'm not a fan of the process of flying. (Don't get me started about the TSA/airport experience. Maybe that will be another post.) We arrived overnight at Coco Cay which is their private island. Another overnight, and we landed in Nassau. A full day at sea to get to Grand Turk. Finally, another day at sea until arriving back at Port Canaveral.
I get a little nervous before leaving on vacation because I like to be prepared. I want to make sure I'm covered for every kind of situation. Driving, no big deal. Flying, I know how it works. Going on a cruise was a novel experience. How do you check your bags? How do you check into your room? Can we truly eat all the time? Anyway, I printed and prepped our bag tags, read everything they sent, and poured through the app. I felt I was ready, but there seemed to be many details missing.
We arrived relatively early for our departure as we drove in the night before and stayed in a local hotel. I wanted to give us a lot of time. We found a parking place in a deck and made our way to the terminal. I asked no less than five people where we take our bags to check them. Every one of them told us to keep going along this path. There were no obvious signs pointing us to where to check our bags. I chalked that up to construction, but, like I said, I asked five separate people where to go. Eventually, we got to a place like a mini-TSA where you put your bags through a scanner. We collected our things and moved on. We showed our passports and were checked in to the cruise itself. Three more touchpoints: all of them told us to take our bags to the next point.
Then, we were on the ship, all humping our bags like idiots. Chloe looked around and asked why no one else has their bags. I had no idea. Three other people came up trying to sell us pictures or fine dining experiences. I found someone who had an "Ask me" vest on. I asked her where we were supposed to check our bags. She didn't know. What?! You work for the cruise line, and you don't know where people check their bags. We sat in a little lounge with all our stuff for about 30 minutes when we decided to just go to our room and see the status, as the app was no help.
We made it up to our room to find they were still cleaning all the rooms. Someone who must have been the head of housekeeping told us our rooms weren't ready. I told him no one told us where to check our bags, so we had to carry them all on board. People were either telling us where we shouldn't be or trying to sell us something. No one was actually being helpful. The man who was assigned to clean our hall, Gerald, came up and told us we could leave the bags on the window ledge as he only had to vacuum. Finally, someone with a sense of customer service.
We went back down to the lounge to relax until our room was ready and texted my mom, who is an experienced cruiser. She was flummoxed by the situation and told us they must have a place to eat on board. We dug into the app and, indeed, found that the main buffet area was open and serving food. We made our way there and found someone who actually knew what they were talking about. I politely vented that we couldn't check our bags and no one was being helpful. He was very nice and explained how the dining service worked, and he apologized for the difficulties we had in checking in.
I'll move on from this as things were pretty smooth from here on out. However, there were a lot of little things that bugged me. I can laugh about it now, but at the time, it was really irritating.
The customer service, overall, was excellent. The person cleaning our room was pleasant and always took care of us even though our room was generally a disaster because we had tons of crap in it. Our two servers at dinner were terrific. They had service down pat. Not overly aggressive but attentive. I never had to ask for my water glass to be filled. They never interrupted us while we were talking, which brings me to the most annoying part of the cruise.
We were eating breakfast in the main buffet dining room. This was open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and had a wide variety of choices. I will highlight a few instances. We were all eating together on the second morning when a young man came up who I think was the service manager for that section of the dining room. He stood there silently for a few moments as we were talking when he suddenly bent down about 18 inches from my face and said, "Excuse me," in a sing-songy voice. Obviously, it ground our conversation to a halt. He introduced himself and asked if he could get anything for us. We said no thank you, and he wished us a good time on the cruise. It was a very bizarre interaction.
On the first boat day, I still got up early to go exercise and get a coffee while everyone else was still sleeping. I went to the dining room and got a piece of toast with butter and jelly and coffee. I found a small table where I could sit and read. I was holding my iPad reading, and my coffee was 3/4 full. I was good. It was fairly obvious I didn't need any help, and I was reading. Once again, the same service manager bent down, almost bumping his head into my iPad and said, "What can I get for you this morning?" Again, I politely declined a need for anything, and he went away. I felt like I was being punked. What the hell was going on?
That same morning, the rest of the family was ready, and we were eating breakfast together. At one point, a man in a head chef's outfit came up to our table with a menu pimping one of their fancier dinner places for an upcharge, of course. Except if we made a reservation right then, we could save 30%. We declined, but he kept pushing it. To which I said, "Look, we're here on this cruise to be together as a family. The food is secondary. We're good." He seemed flustered by this response, and he went away.
This was one of the things that really got to me as the cruise wore on. Everyone was trying to sell you something. Photographers came up to use during dinner. They were stationed all over the boat with cheesy backgrounds to get pictures. I felt like I was walking around San Francisco or Savannah, dodging homeless people.
I would have spent $500/person more for the cruise for a little tag we could have worn that was a signal to stop trying to sell me stuff. It's kind of like the fee you pay to Amazon monthly to not see ads in Prime Video.
Everything on the boat seemed to have a Trump-like veneer of "class." It was gilded average stuff. Everything was nice. That's OK. I don't need opulent and fancy. I just want a vacation. The cruise director came out and introduced one of the shows, saying something to the effect that the singers and dancers were of the quality you would find on Broadway or the West End in London. Sure. Whatever. It was a good musical revue and entertaining. It stunk of knowing it was just fine, but it had to be pumped up.
On the next-to-last day, the same service manager came up to us at breakfast. (Interrupting us, of course.) He asked us how our service was on a scale of one to ten. I told him it was a ten. The annoyances notwithstanding, our service was truly excellent. Then, he asked us how the food was. If I were being honest, I would have said six out of ten. However, I was feeling charitable and said eight out of ten. He was taken aback and asked why it wasn't ten out of ten. I told him the ten out of ten was a really high bar. We had just been to New York, where we ate at two Michelin-rated restaurants. Those were ten out of ten. He asked us our room number and left in a hurry.
It was like I told the chef; the food was not the point. We can eat out for a great meal whenever we want. They have to feed 4,000 people. I get it. It's not going to be the best food we ever had. Anyway, because I had realistic expectations about the food, they comped us a couple of free drinks at the bar. If I were honest, maybe they would have comped us another cruise that I wouldn't want to take.
I had a great time being with the family on the cruise. With all of us leading busy lives, we don't always get to eat together. This was a time when we ate every meal with each other. We laughed and had a good time together. It's all I wanted from the cruise, and it delivered.
I won't ever go on another, though.
