Sue

Age: 48
Occupation: Marine Terminal Supervisor
Number of Cruises: 15
Cruise Line: Royal Caribbean
Name of Ship: Legend of the Seas
Sailing Date: August 1st, 2003
Itinerary: Alaska

This cruise departs from Seward, AK, a pleasant and scenic 3-hour bus ride from Anchorage. Embarkation in Seward was smooth and efficient; just be certain to have a passport or your birth certificate and photo ID!

We had a roomy oceanview cabin on deck 3 which was centrally located amidship and convenient to both the elevators and Romeo & Juliet dining room.

On this trip we elected to book all shore excursions online prior to embarkation which was a plus since it allowed us to avoid long lines at the shore excursion desk. In addition to the receipt I printed after booking the excursions on the RCI website, all shore excursion tickets and another receipt were promptly delivered to our stateroom. The floatplane trips we booked for Juneau and Ketchikan were outstanding and well worth the cost!

While the cabin steward, waiter, and assistant waiter were extremely friendly and provided excellent service we were disappointed in several aspects of this cruise. For the first time in nine cruises on RCI (including 3 on the Legend of the Seas), the food was really not very good. The scrambled eggs at breakfast tasted as if they were made with powdered eggs and the hash browns were like eating cardboard! If you really like eggs in the morning I would strongly suggest ordering a "made to order" omelet (quite good). At dinner the beef tenderloin and prime rib were fine but most of the fish dishes were terrible and not fresh (even fishy tasting)!

On the formal nights, the social hostess no longer introduces you to the captain and there were no opportunities to have your photo taken with the ship's master as in the past. While complimentary drinks were served at the captain's party, the hors d'oeuvres have been eliminated taking away from the "specialness" of the event.

Debarkation was a mess! Passengers were called in groups off the ship only to have to wait 45-minutes halfway down the gangway due to a "luggage mix-up." We then got on a beautiful new coach for the trip from Vancouver, B.C. to Seattle, WA only to learn that half our personal luggage did not arrive (approximately 15-20 pieces of luggage were missing for the passengers on our bus)! After filling out the requisite RCI claim form for lost luggage and being assured by the RCI representative that it would be brought to our Seattle home later that day, it never arrived. After numerous calls to RCI (not much help) and to the ship's port agent in Vancouver, I was finally able to track down the shoreside baggage handling company and locate our missing suitcase in Seattle three days after getting off the ship! I was then told that I could wait an extra two more days to have the bag sent to my home via FedEx or could drive to the airport on my own to pick it up if I wanted it sooner. When I suggested that RCI send it to our home via taxi, I was told that that was not an option as it was "too expensive."

Overall we had a wonderful cruise and the itinerary was great but the problems with debarkation and the subsequent lost luggage hassle really left us with a poor impression of RCI!
 

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