For us, that was a Royal Caribbean adventure that we never want to do again. Sorry Carnival, Princess, and everyone else, but Royal made sure we never set sail again.
It doesn’t matter what went wrong on that RC cruise we took last January. It was bad, but cruises can be bad. Sometimes there is bad weather, sometimes changes in ports of call will leave you seething, maybe you get sick. Then there are those that just seriously make you question why you even bother.
We decided it was time to take to the ocean again. It was our first time since COVID and we expected a few changes from what we remembered. When the decision was made, I jumped on the internet, made a couple of calls to Carnival (we had been on several previously) and we booked our trip.
Now to be fair, we have been on Carnival before, came away unimpressed, and swore we wouldn’t do it again. Yet here we were. Two cabins, ready to go. Counting down the time we could book all the extras. Then they called us and told us that the rooms we booked would need to be separated.
Now my 22 year old son and his 16 year old sister and 14 year old brother were going to be on an opposite end. Hogwash we said. We booked a room across the hall from each other. They didn’t care.
Then came the second call. The 14 year old couldn’t be in a cabin without an adult over 24. Hogwash again we proclaimed. Cancel it all I said, and cancel I did, but now the wife was ready, she was close and she demanded an alternative.
Enter RC. The dates were right, the price was good and most importantly, we had adjoining rooms. Victory! Hey, any time you can move up to a better class of cruise company the better, right? Wrong.
Maybe it was just our ship. Maybe the lazy crew or the utterly rude Maitre’D that exacted an unexpected (and nearly unwarranted) F-Bomb out of my mouth. Maybe it was the condition of the room, or the woman cleaning the stateroom. Maybe it was the fact that we skipped every dinner in the dining room because the food at the buffet was head and shoulders better. Maybe, maybe, maybe, it was a lot of things.
Could this all have been the result of COVID?
We don’t know for sure, but I do know that my final bill for Carnival was maxing out around $7,000 for a family of six and included the drink packages for two of us. I know that by the time my wife added on those extra perks from Carnival that the price soared to more than $10,000.
That’s o.k. I thought. Better class of cruise line. Royal Caribbean turned out to be the worst. So bad that we won’t look again. Our family trips to sea that had taken all of us at several times was now suddenly gone from our future planning.
Maybe we head back, someday. Someday when it’s just my wife and I and our current 7-year old. Maybe. But probably not. Thanks to RC, I don’t think we will ever go on a cruise again and that’s an honest assessment. It simply wasn’t fun. Not one single time.
In my life, I’m 57, I have never counted the days down to when my vacation was over. RC made me do that from the first full day at sea, and no amount of alcohol was going to change that.
Leave a Reply