Gina Vermuth

Age: 21
Occupation: Counselor
Number of Cruises: 1
Cruise Line: Royal Caribbean
Ship: Monarch of the Seas
Sailing Date: May 16th, 2005
Itinerary: Baja, Mexico

This was my first cruise, and I have to say that I was very excitedly anticipating it for months, as I had been coming off of a very stressful last semester at college. I had read some mixed reviews about the ship and ports, and I found most of the comments, both bad and good, to be true.

I guess I'll start from the beginning. We boarded the ship on Monday the 16th at around 1:30 pm. It really was an easy process for the most part. As soon as everyone boarded, there was lunch at the Windjammer, which was a buffet, which I can only describe (this is putting it mildly), a feeding frenzy. Luckily, that was the only meal that was that crowded, but I did discover a secret to avoiding crowds at the buffet. The windjammer is connected to Jade, the sushi bar, and the exact same buffet is served in the Jade room with about 5 people or so roaming around, compared to about 60 at a time in the other room. It was much less nerve racking for me.

The only part of the first day that really went badly was the process of claiming our baggage. My boyfriend found his suitcase right away but mine was somehow absent. We waited for hours until it was about half an hour from dinner. Finally, my boyfriend went to the Guest Relations desk where he was rudely rebuffed. I ended up finding the bag later right behind the Guest Relations desk.

Anyway, we chose the main seating and the dining room was beautiful. However, we, a young couple, were placed at a large table of all women. I was thinking they would match us up with some other couples so we could make friends, but that was not the case. We did enjoy a mother and daughter that sat across from us who were extremely nice. However, halfway through the cruise we realized that the early seating was much too early and requested to be switched to the later seating, which was a lot better time wise. I felt bad for not telling our tablemates and I couldn't find them anywhere on the ship. I think next time, though I will definitely stick with the later seating, because if you leave the ship and come back around 2pm and eat lunch, you're usually not hungry by the time 530 rolls around. By 8pm we worked up an appetite.

The ports were all really nice, and you don't have to book excursions or use a taxi to see the cities, because most things are within walking distance. I think I liked Ensenada the best. Since the drinks were so pricey on the ship, we decided to spend some time at a local bar where there were (!) Dollar Beers! I thought I had died and gone to heaven. I think it was called Los Amigos or something like that, but everyone there spoke English and I speak some Spanish so we communicated just fine. Then, a caricature artist wandered in and did a caricature of my boyfriend and I for only 8 dollars (but we gave him 10). It was one of the best caricatures I have ever seen. I did find it sort of weird, though, that people could just walk into the establishment and hawk their wares. You would never see that in the U.S.

Catalina was beautiful but there wasn't a whole lot of shopping. It was kind of all the same stuff in every shop, but it was gorgeous. We decided to come back early and get a seat at the pool, and we had some great weather. My only qualm is that we didn't meet more couples our own age. There seemed to be mostly senior citizens and families with kids.

As far as the rooms go, I was not shocked by how small they were, since I had already heard about them. My big problem was the shower. I'm only 5'2 and I felt like my elbow was always hitting the wall. Try shaving your legs in there girls! Other than that, the room was clean and our stateroom attendant was great and kept everything clean. I think Royal Caribbean should invest in some new showerheads though.

All in all, most of the employees were pretty nice. Our servers in the dining room were always great, but there was one guy who was a total jerk. We were in the latin bar, Boleros, one night, and I ordered a Margarita on the rocks, and he looked at me like I had 3 heads and shook his head. I couldn't figure out why he was so upset or who ruined his day. I say if you can't work in customer service, you shouldn't be there. People don't want to get treated like crap on their vacation. I waited tables all through high school and college, so I have no patience for that kind of thing. I felt like complaining about him for being so rude and condescending but I didn't want to waste my energy.

The clientele on this cruise was really mixed. I would say the majority of the people were lower-middle class, but everyone was well-behaved except for the "buffet warriors" as my boyfriend and I called them, that elbow everyone out of the way.

Another thing was the food...I liked the appetizers a lot, but most of the time, I was disappointed with my main dish. I thought I was going to LOVE everything, but it was so-so. You have to go into it with a good attitude and you'll have fun. A lot of people were upset about the lack of lobster tail on the menu. I really liked some of the soup at dinner time, and there were a lot of vegetarian options which was awesome. I also didn't have problems at the buffet and could eat a lot of the food. I thought it was kind of tacky that RCL was charging for soda and for the Sushi Bar, and even espresso and cappucino. It made it feel like they were trying to squeeze every penny out of you. I thought cruises were supposed to be fun where everything was included. That took some of the fun out of the vacation for me. "Oh, this costs money and this doesn't." They're obviously trying to capitalize on this lower-end cruise.

I don't think I would take this cruise again if I had the choice. I would probably do something more like a Celebrity or a Princess to get better food, accommodations, and service.
 

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