As we were looking forward to celebrating my husband’s 60th birthday and our 37th wedding anniversary, we decided to book a cruise on the Royal Caribbean Jewel of the Seas.
Unfortunately, unlike other Royal Caribbean cruises that we have taken, this one was very disappointing.
The Royal Caribbean online process of printing forms before arrival made check-in quick. On previous cruises, we have always had someone show us to our room but perhaps that nicety is dated as no one showed us to our rooms.
A couple of weeks before our cruise, we had noted on their website that we had two events that we were celebrating. Those events were never acknowledged by RC except when we told the waiter later in the week and he was nice enough to gather people together and sing to my husband.
Well ~ here’s everything that went wrong …
- We had no cold water coming out of our faucet. For three days the plumber worked in our room until we were told that it was not fixable and they gave us a $100 shipboard credit. This was quite odd as the restrooms throughout the ship all had cold water.
- The shower water was lukewarm at best. The plumber was able to change the hardware to fix it.
- The bed linen was ripped in quite a few places. After I told our cabin steward, she made sure they were changed immediately. But really, don’t first impressions matter?
- The curtain liners were filthy. We didn’t mention this as we didn’t expect it would be fixed.
- We had asked for My Time Dining which meant that we could call and reserve a time for dinner. The first day we went to do so we were told they couldn’t take any more reservations as they had too many people. The next day I went back early in the day to reserve a time for dinner and I was told that they didn’t have any place to put us and that we would have to stand in the “no reservations” line and hope that someone didn’t show.  This was very odd as on Day 5 we were seated at a table and the waiter told us that the table had been empty the whole time of our cruise.
- A friend had sent us a cake for my husband’s birthday/our anniversary that was to be delivered our first day at dinner. When it hadn’t arrived after the second day our son went and spoke to the front desk and was assured that it would arrive that evening. It didn’t happen. The following day a group of staffers came to our table singing happy birthday at dinner ~ unfortunately they sang to me with the name of my friend instead of to my husband. The cake that was delivered was ~ well, quite unprofessional, wouldn’t you say? It looked nothing like the picture that our friend was shown online.
- We only went on three excursions and the beach excursion was pitiful. We were alloted a certain area to sit and since we hadn’t rushed out of the bus to get a seat, we were in the back row and all we could see were umbrellas in front of us. But we could not move from that area. However, the Barbados Harrison Caves Tour was pretty good and it went quite far under ground.
- Most of the food was good although there were few options from day to day and sometimes you didn’t get a very satisfying portion such as this ravioli entree with 5 small pieces.
The scenery on this cruise though was amazing.
I especially like trees so had to take a picture of this one.
Antigua was also pretty. We had nice weather while we were there.
One day while we were sitting in our room, there was a knock at the door. When we opened the door we were handed a plate with a cover on it. After removing the cover we were surprised to have had chocolate covered strawberries delivered. But … like, why? No reason was given. Perhaps this was their way of saying “sorry that we can’t find seating for you when you want it?”
We did enjoy the weather on this cruise and of course, being with my husband and “boys” always makes me happy.
