Royal Caribbean International
Monarch of the Seas Cruise Review
Baja, Mexico

Mike
Age: 43
Occupation: Computer Programmer
Number of Cruises: 3
Sailing Date: July 4th, 2005

We sailed on the Monarch of the Seas, from the port of Long Beach, California. This was our third cruise, with the two preceding voyages aboard the Disney Cruise Line. The ages of our children are 22, 20 and 14. It actually was the youngest member of our family, our daughter who tilted the scales from going on RCL verses Carnival (who offered similar cruises during the time we had allotted for this vacation). She recorded shows from the Travel Channel on RCL, the grand look of your ships and the service provided to your guests was very apparent to anyone watching the show. We even sold the idea to my sister and her family ( four children), and my mother and step father. All in all, we had a good size group traveling together on your ship. Our goal was simple, take a short cruise to determine if we want to take a longer cruise on RCL in the summer of 2006 (perhaps even the Freedom Of The Seas). We wanted to share our experience with you, in hopes that RCL could learn from the things we saw (both good and bad). My wife is a Travel Agent and I am in the IT Department for the same company.

Dinner
I wanted to start with things that stuck out most in my mind, those things I would discuss with friends/ co workers who asked me about RCL. The first night on the ship sticks out clearly in my mind; had I written this that night, I might have been less gentle with my choice of words. With two previous sailings under my belt, I was aware of how crew members are relying on gratuities to supplement their pay, so we prepaid our gratuities up front hoping for exception service. At the first nights dinner, the drink waiter (assistant waiter) totally ignored my wife and I. Never once did he offer us drinks, nor could we get his attention. The other families in our traveling group seemed to get good service from him. My wife and I were upset to say the least; our thought was that since we prepaid gratuities, then he must want to please the other families (who did not pre-pay). He totally ruined our preconception of the quality service we thought we were to receive on this trip from RCL. This only compounded the problems, the kitchen staff seemed to have trouble with getting food from the galley to the guest’s tables. The entire cruise was a repeated event at dinner with us waiting 10 to 15 minutes between courses. We often found ourselves rushing to finish our desert because the next seating of guests were entering the dinning room. To her credit, our waiter was exceptional; she received not only the prepaid tip, but an additional bonus as well. After the first dinner, I went to my stateroom and called the customer relations. I received a return call from the head waiter a short time later. We discussed the level of service we received. He indicated that he would correct the situation. The assistant waiter was more attentive in the days that followed, but it left a sour experience with our family. I have read reviews of other travelers on the Monarch who have said that the food quality and presentation were poor. I strongly disagree, we found the food to be tasty and presented well. While we would give Disney a 9 rating, RCL was very close with an 8. Disney offered a little more flair and quantity of food. The area for improvement is with the scheduling of food to the table, the service was just too slow. In contrast, Disney had a cadence with the delivery of the food. You finished one part of your meal, the dishes were removed, new silverware was put down and the next part of your meal arrived shortly after. We would have given RCL a 3 compared to Disney’s perfect 10 when it came to service at dinner time.

Cabins and cabin service
Our cabin was an outside cabin with a window. Having researched Monarch, we knew that the cabin would be smaller than when we sailed on the Disney ships. I don’t think it would be fair to RCL for a 1 to 1 comparison based on size of the cabin. Where they have room for improvement lays in the maintenance of the room. The first thing we noticed about the room was when we unpacked to put things away. The drawer in our room was broken and hanging from the desk. We called maintenance for a repair. Maintenance arrived several hours later, picked up the drawer and forced it back into the desk. It was still broken and still unusable. Again, not the solution we thought that they would have come up with. Our cabin attendant was friendly; our sole complaint was that we asked for two days to have them remove the soda and water from our room. Our children were not going to drink them; we really wanted the desk space for my laptop and digital camera. The cabin attendant never removed the drinks, instead, just moved them to somewhere else in the room.

My mother had a little larger problem with her room. Her linens on the bed were soiled with a variety of body fluids. She is a Registered Nurse, she knew what the fluids were but took care not to say too much in front of the younger travelers in our group. She called for housekeeping to report the problem and change the linens. Instead they appeared to have just “rinsed out” the bedding under running water. She was not happy about this; she questioned how often they actually changed the linen in the rooms between cruises. After a few calls, she managed to get someone to bring new sheets. Once again, a simple thing soured the trip for them. I can’t imagine that this is part of RCL’s policies and procedures.

I saved my sisters story for last when discussing room attendants. I need to preface this by comparing my sister’s household to my wife and I. My sister has six children and we only have three. She relies solely on her husband’s income which is much less than what my wife and I make. So when she looks at the cost of this trip, she would say it was expensive, while we would classify it as reasonable. With that being said, the amount of tip she gave to the room attendant was not very good. My nephew told me what she gave. I was embarrassed; I believe that they received good service.

While we have no direct evidence of this, we are very confident that their room attendant took all of their luggage tags off of their luggage when he picked up their bags prior to debarkation. My mother’s bags and our bags arrived to the pick up area safely, my sisters were lost and scattered through out the luggage claim area. Again to emphasize, all of their tags were removed and the bags put in different areas of the pick up location. I can see where the room attendant would be upset, but you still have to conduct yourself a high degree of professionalism. Clearly this was a bad situation. It compounded the problem because we were all traveling together as a group. None of us could leave until all bags were located. His retribution was taken out on not only the guests he dealt with, but also with other guests who had nothing to do with his grievance. From my wife’s perspective, should she warn our cusatomers booking on RCL to be sure to tip properly so you don’t lose you luggage? That would not sound too good and poses a problem for her. How to even keep a strait face with someone asks about RCL?

Entertainment and other things to do on board ship
We found the entertainment to be pretty good. The felt that comedian that was there had the best show. One thing that stuck out was the fact that coffee, ice cream and sodas cost extra outside of dinner. It’s gives one the impression that RCL wants to nickel and dime their guests. Disney Cruise Line offered a much wider variety of snack foods on board their ships with no additional costs.

Debarkation
The final segment of our trip was the entire debarkation process. I hate to keep drawing parallels to Disney, but in this case there is no other choice. I would recommend that RCL send some of their staff on a Disney cruise (secretly of course). From the minute you enter the DCL terminal to the time you board your tour bus/rental car after the cruise, the entire process flows rather organized. On DCL, during debarkation; you wake up, head to a nice sit down breakfast. After breakfast, you have a leisurely walk to the gang way and exit the ship. No crowds, no pushing and shoving, a feeling of calm. In contrast, RCL has you head to a buffet breakfast. There was sit down available, but they could not seat our immediate family together. After breakfast, you need to find someplace to sit and wait for your deck number to be called. And when I say “sit” I mean on the carpet somewhere among the other guests trapped on the ship. We were not allowed to return to the cabin. I invite RCL employees to travel on the RCL as a customer, travel as a passenger. It’s really something you need to experience first hand. Mere words could not describe this and do it justice. I would think that you would want your guest’s final hours on your ship to be one of calm and happiness. Instead it gave a person a sense of what it would be like to be part of a herd of cattle waiting in long lines that snaked through the ship.

Final Thoughts
Believe it or not, we still have not totally ruled out RCL for future cruises, but our expectations on the level of service are considerably lower. We have a hard time believing that our experience is typical for guests of RCL. We wrote RCL to tell of our experience. It took several months for a reply to arrive. Their answer seemed like a computer generated email or form letter. They seemed to not care if we remained a customer or not. This helped us decide where we will be cruising in 2006. We recently put money down on a Carnival Cruise.

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