Royal Caribbean
Legend of the Seas Cruise Review
Western Europe

Dave Clark
Age: 41
Occupation: IT Manager
Number of Cruises: 2
Sailing Date: July 8th.  2006

Embarkation was really quick and we were on within 1 hour of arriving at port. There was a good selection of food available in the buffet when we go on board. It took around 7 hours for our cases to be delivered to our cabins, which I thought was a bit long.

The cabin attendant didn't introduce herself to us and to be honest was really miserable for the duration of the cruise. We always keep our cabin fairly tidy anyway, but the actual cleaning she did was non-existent. The dust on the TV screen when we left, which we hadn't noticed before, was thick. Which would suggest it had not been cleaned at all. We had the bottom sheets on our bed changed once for the whole two weeks and the service over all was very poor.

The service in the disco was ridiculous. It is advertised as waiter service and for the duration of the trip, the staffing in this area was minimal and you had to get your own drinks from the bar, which was time consuming. When my wife complained to the door manager that we had been sitting for 40 minutes with no waiters coming round, he said try using the bar! I did go to the bar and waited 30 minutes to get served. We stopped using this.

The entertainment was very, very poor and most of the customers complained about this. It was the Royal Caribbean singers and dancers for most of the time and when it wasn't the acts were sub standard and one was no more than a kids entertainer who done the same act as last year. In fact, four of the entertainers were exactly the same as last year with the same poor repetoir. No one knew whether to clap at and what was supposed to be a daring or funny bit of the act. When we mentioned this to a cruise member, we were told that Royal Caribbean doesn't manager the entertainment. Why are they called the Royal Caribbean singers and dancers then?

The activities staff were conspicuous by their absence. Last time we were on a Royal Caribbean cruise, they were everywhere you went with a smile on their face. This time they were rarely around to see you off and back on board at ports of call. And if they were, they looked fed up.

The gratuity charge of 15% on everything on board is wrong. If you are getting waiter service then fair enough. But if you have to go to a bar or a shop to get served, why should you have to pay 15%?

The excursions we went on were expensive and poor. We went to see a cathedral in Barcelona that was getting built. So basically we were walking through a dust covered building site in 30 degree heat. There wasn't really much to see. This wasn't explained in detail in the excursion book.

On days at sea, if your bum wasn't on a sun lounger by early morning, then you weren't getting one. There are notices advising customers that they could not reserve loungers and towels etc.. would be removed if they were away from the lounger for more than 5 minutes. This didn't happen and they were being reserved!

The shops on board were expensive and you could actually get most of the items cheaper off the ship. They tried to give the impression they were having sales in the middle of the shopping boutique. But they were just taking items out the shops, arranging them differently and making them more visible. But not reducing them!

We also asked if we could disembark early as we had a train to catch to Scotland and the pursers desk told us twice that it would be arranged that we would be one of the first off. When we got our disembark stickers for our cases they were purple 7, which was one of the later departures. When my wife asked about this, the purser told her that the colors and numbers don't mean anything and we would be off before 0800hrs. This was obviously nonsense, but I was so annoyed with the service I just left it. Last year when we asked for this they changed our stickers from purple to white 2. Needless to say we got off at 0845 and missed our train and had to wait over 2 hours for the next one.

Maybe they treat customers on lower decks differently? But I still paid nearly £5K for two cabins, so expect good honest service.

Apart from the quickness to get on board, cleanliness of the ship and the politeness from a few of the staff, I have little positive to say about this cruise and feel I can get a lot better value for money trying another company. This was not a good cruising experience.

Contrary to what it may seem in this review, I don't like moaning and if I get a good service I acknowledge this as well.

 

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