by suzyesue

Royal Caribbean’s Majesty of the Seas offers a value-priced short cruise sailing from Miami. This is a great cruise for those within driving distance or those who might combine one of these sailings with a land vacation in the Miami/Fort Lauderdale area.

This is not one of Royal Caribbean’s new ships with all the bells and whistles they’ve become famous for like Oasis of the Seas debuting at Port Everglades next month. But the ship is well-maintained and the service on a par with any other in the fleet.

Embarkation in Miami is a breeze. By completing registration information online we were able to print a SeaPass which makes things move along very nicely. I like Royal Caribbean’s terminal operations and the ease of which one can get in and out of the Port of Miami, still the busiest cruise port in the world. I was somewhat surprised to find security lax in comparison to other, recent, visits. It has been the norm for several years here to be stopped on arrival and required to show identification. Not this time. In the terminal itself, it looked like even the cruise lines security requirements had been loosened up a bit.

Surely, the cruise lines x-ray stop is not as thorough as the airlines but on this occasion they seemed much more interested in moving the line along than what was in our luggage.

On this cruise, being just a 3 day, we’d not packed much and opted to carry on everything in our individual luggage, one for me and one for my wife. Again I was surprised that I didn’t even have to take my laptop computer out of the bag. I guess it all works out though because I am writing this at the end of the cruise and the ship hasn’t been blow up yet.

CABIN

We’d opted for the least expensive, inside cabin on this cruise. The accommodations were tight at 120 square feet but had everything we needed and offered plenty of storage space. A highlight of this cabin was the shower. Unlike some other seafaring showers, this one packed a punch equal to any land based showers and offered plenty of space. Considering the age of this ship I’d expected the old-fashioned phone booth variety. This one was about double phone booth size. Still not what one might find in a hotel but, again, adequate.

One part of the cabin experience that I found odd was the television programming. I’d heard that Royal Caribbean (RCL) had a new person in charge of this area and that things had really improved. Not on this ship. We have been in the habit of watching at least one movie on each cruise. If you’ve not done this you really should. For years after when the film you saw onboard is mentioned or you see clips of it elsewhere you’ll remember it and say “Oh, we saw that on the cruise! This was the first time were we’d not been able to find a schedule of what was playing in the daily Compass ships newsletter. We did manage to figure it out though and saw our movie.

An area of cabin operations that was quite impressive was our cabin steward, Sydney. This guy did a great job of getting in and out of our cabin when we were gone. He paid attention. Some don’t. He didn’t do anything out of the ordinary. He didn’t blow us away. He just paid attention. We had a small soft-sided cooler we’d brought because we like to have extra ice in the cabin. We didn’t even mention filling it up or keeping it full; he just did it.

He paid attention.

We found service in every area of the ship to be consistently attentive. That’s saying a lot. Often there are some areas better than others. On this ship all areas were efficient and friendly.

What more could you ask for?

In the past I’ve heard others say and even on occasion said myself “they treat you like kings on a cruise” I’d found that pretty truthful and accurate in the past but had kind of shied away from it on recent sailings. The staff on this ship brought that phrase back into the spotlight with brilliant clarity.

ACTIVITIES

The cruise director and staff also did a really good job of packing all the activities you might find on a longer cruise into this short one. It did not just seem like there was something going on all the time, there was. Pool games, dance lessons, rock-wall climbing, a full blown kids program in Adventure Ocean, nightly production entertainment, all the elements were there.

This would have been a great “sample cruise” for someone who had not sailed before in the entertainment area. It was also a great cruise for locals from the Miami area. With a high percentage of Hispanic guests onboard, music contained a higher amount of Salsa and Latin-beat selections.

The Cruise Director and staff were paying attention; they gave the guests what they wanted.

TECHNOLOGY

Even computer access was great. On other ships the connection has been slow, this one was good and fast. Wi-Fi access was also a breeze to get signed up for and various packages could be purchased at reasonable prices.

Cell phone use was also available at all times on this ship. A strong signal made communicating with the outside world doable if one wanted to. Again, somebody was paying attention. I did not see many using cell phones but the service was available to those who needed it.

FOOD

Let me start by saying that we tried something different on this cruise. We never ate in the dining room. We had tried this on Royal Caribbean’s Sovereign of the Seas a few months earlier with great success and I wanted to see if that was a fluke or if there was consistent quality in the buffet operations.

What I found was that this is the one area of this ship that needs work. The taste of the food is always a very subjective element and difficult to define. One person may like the flavor of a particular item while another doesn’t care for it. The trick on a cruise is to offer a wide enough variety so that there is truly something for every one. In most cases I’ve found that there is a lot of variety and finding something you like is not an issue. Here too, the variety, for the most part, was there.

There are, however, certain aspects of foodservice that are not difficult to define at all. Food handling procedures are one of these items. I was in the restaurant business for 20 years and know a thing or two about the workings of a mass feeding operation. One of the simple, basic, and critical rules written in stone is “Cold things Cold and Hot things Hot”. This operation failed miserably in this area at every turn.

Here are a few examples

Part of every buffet is a cold section with deli meats and cheeses. These are placed on a bed of ice to maintain a safe, cold temperature. Several times I saw where the ice was allowed to completely melt and the food left to come up to room temperature. On this ship part of the Windjammer service area is in the open where the ambient temperature was 80 plus degrees, a breeding ground for food-related illness.

On the hot side, the same could be said for just about everything. I wish I had a thermometer with me because I’d bet that most hot products wouldn’t make it past 100 degrees, again in the danger zone. The only products we had on this cruise that were truly hot were cooked to order omelette’s at breakfast and cooked to order pasta for dinner.

TIP: Get to know the Pasta Chef who works in the dining room preparing pasta dishes to your order. Best food on the ship.

I’ve run into this before, this is not unique to this ship. But on other ships we’ve had alternative restaurant choices. On this one, it’s the dining room, buffet or room service, that’s it.

The thought crossed my mind that it would not be entirely inaccurate to say “If you want some good food on this cruise, bring it with you” But I think that might be a bit harsh.

As mentioned, variety and taste are very subjective areas and difficult to rate. Except when it came to desserts on this ship. Somebody must have gotten a real deal on cake mix because cake was the anchor of the dessert menu that caused the menu to sink.

Don’t get me wrong.

I like cake.

But this flavorless, unfrosted, lackluster substitute, which might have been a treat to a prison inmate, was just horrible. That wouldn’t be a problem if it was just one part of the menu but often it was the entire menu with the exception of Chips Ahoy quality cookies.

This area of the ship had “we’re really trying to cut costs” written all over it.

It was at this point that I started looking for other signs of a tight budget manifesting itself into an effect on the quality of operations.

Don’t get me wrong; I think any business needs to be run in an efficient and cost-effective manner. That’s just good business.

But when budget-controlling measures affect the quality of operations to the point where they begin to define the operation then I think somebody needs to be really sure that’s what they want to do.

It’s hard for me to imagine that Royal Caribbean wants to be known for being the cruise line with the lousy desserts. Or the cruise line that can’t afford to buy enough plates so guests wait for them at the buffet line or can’t hold them in their hands because they are too hot because they just came off the dish machine and were run to the buffet line. I doubt they want to be known as the one who let spills sit on the floor, creating a safety hazard.

But maybe they were just not paying attention.

I watched one day at lunch as a uniformed officer/manager roamed the dining room completely oblivious to what was going on around him. He wasn’t paying attention. He never spoke to any of the crew. He never spoke to any of the guests. He just walked around doing nothing about elements of the dining experience screaming at him for attention. These were easy-fix things too. A guest wandering around looking for a glass of water, a spilled drink all over the floor, dirty tables everywhere with other guests looking for one to use to name a few.

To be fair, I think everything they needed was in place, they just weren’t utilizing what they had to work with well.

There seemed to be plenty of chefs, foodservice crew and managers but yet the rolls were obviously baked too far in advance. Maybe they don’t have enough ovens to make it happen. Maybe they have to bake bread earlier in the day so the ovens are available to make more cake later in the day.

If they’re serving up this low quality of food in an attempt to save money they’re really missing the boat. If they took a look at the volume of food that was left uneaten on plates they might get a clue. This was not that guests took more than they could eat. This was that they took one bite and didn’t continue eating. I would bet that this ship makes more pizza than others in the fleet. It was not uncommon to see guests eating pizza at the same table as their buffet plate which had barely been touched.

Who’s fooling who here?

On paper they might find that the flavorless institutional cake is less expensive to produce but what are they really saving if they throw it all away?

If you’ve followed my reviews you might be tempted to say “has this guy EVER been on a bad cruise?”

No, I haven’t.

On the bright side:

• The pizza was awesome and room service had some highlights worth mentioning. What made the pizza consistently good is that they never got too far ahead on it. It was always piping hot and fresh out of the oven. The pizza guy paid attention.

• On room service the Tuna Pita sandwich, Cheesecake and even the Hamburgers were very good. Ok so skip my personal opinion that they tasted good and stick to the facts. The hamburgers, for some reason, came hotter from room service than on the buffet line. Somehow the hot food was hotter and the cold food colder.

• The midnight Caribbean buffet served on deck including ice carving demonstration was worth staying up for. Lobbing off the pigs head was a bit much for the kids who probably didn’t sleep real well that night but still a cool deal

With the exception of foodservice, this ship is great. Royal Caribbean does so many things right that it really slaps you in the face when they drop the ball. I hope there are plans in the works to fix this because it is definitely broken.

Royal Caribbean’s Majesty of the Seas offers a value-priced short cruise sailing from Miami. This is a great cruise for those within driving distance or those who might combine one of these sailings with a land vacation in the Miami/Fort Lauderdale area.

This is not one of Royal Caribbean’s new ships with all the bells and whistles they’ve become famous for like Oasis of the Seas debuting at Port Everglades next month. But the ship is well-maintained and the service on a par with any other in the fleet.

Embarkation in Miami is a breeze. By completing registration information online we were able to print a SeaPass which makes things move along very nicely. I like Royal Caribbean’s terminal operations and the ease of which one can get in and out of the Port of Miami, still the busiest cruise port in the world. I was somewhat surprised to find security lax in comparison to other, recent, visits. It has been the norm for several years here to be stopped on arrival and required to show identification. Not this time. In the terminal itself, it looked like even the cruise lines security requirements had been loosened up a bit.

Surely, the cruise lines x-ray stop is not as thorough as the airlines but on this occasion they seemed much more interested in moving the line along than what was in our luggage.

On this cruise, being just a 3 day, we’d not packed much and opted to carry on everything in our individual luggage, one for me and one for my wife. Again I was surprised that I didn’t even have to take my laptop computer out of the bag. I guess it all works out though because I am writing this at the end of the cruise and the ship hasn’t been blow up yet.

CABIN

We’d opted for the least expensive, inside cabin on this cruise. The accommodations were tight at 120 square feet but had everything we needed and offered plenty of storage space. A highlight of this cabin was the shower. Unlike some other seafaring showers, this one packed a punch equal to any land based showers and offered plenty of space. Considering the age of this ship I’d expected the old-fashioned phone booth variety. This one was about double phone booth size. Still not what one might find in a hotel but, again, adequate.

One part of the cabin experience that I found odd was the television programming. I’d heard that Royal Caribbean (RCL) had a new person in charge of this area and that things had really improved. Not on this ship. We have been in the habit of watching at least one movie on each cruise. If you’ve not done this you really should. For years after when the film you saw onboard is mentioned or you see clips of it elsewhere you’ll remember it and say “Oh, we saw that on the cruise! This was the first time were we’d not been able to find a schedule of what was playing in the daily Compass ships newsletter. We did manage to figure it out though and saw our movie.

An area of cabin operations that was quite impressive was our cabin steward, Sydney. This guy did a great job of getting in and out of our cabin when we were gone. He paid attention. Some don’t. He didn’t do anything out of the ordinary. He didn’t blow us away. He just paid attention. We had a small soft-sided cooler we’d brought because we like to have extra ice in the cabin. We didn’t even mention filling it up or keeping it full; he just did it.

He paid attention.

We found service in every area of the ship to be consistently attentive. That’s saying a lot. Often there are some areas better than others. On this ship all areas were efficient and friendly.

What more could you ask for?

In the past I’ve heard others say and even on occasion said myself “they treat you like kings on a cruise” I’d found that pretty truthful and accurate in the past but had kind of shied away from it on recent sailings. The staff on this ship brought that phrase back into the spotlight with brilliant clarity.

ACTIVITIES

The cruise director and staff also did a really good job of packing all the activities you might find on a longer cruise into this short one. It did not just seem like there was something going on all the time, there was. Pool games, dance lessons, rock-wall climbing, a full blown kids program in Adventure Ocean, nightly production entertainment, all the elements were there.

This would have been a great “sample cruise” for someone who had not sailed before in the entertainment area. It was also a great cruise for locals from the Miami area. With a high percentage of Hispanic guests onboard, music contained a higher amount of Salsa and Latin-beat selections.

The Cruise Director and staff were paying attention; they gave the guests what they wanted.

TECHNOLOGY

Even computer access was great. On other ships the connection has been slow, this one was good and fast. Wi-Fi access was also a breeze to get signed up for and various packages could be purchased at reasonable prices.

Cell phone use was also available at all times on this ship. A strong signal made communicating with the outside world doable if one wanted to. Again, somebody was paying attention. I did not see many using cell phones but the service was available to those who needed it.

FOOD

Let me start by saying that we tried something different on this cruise. We never ate in the dining room. We had tried this on Royal Caribbean’s Sovereign of the Seas a few months earlier with great success and I wanted to see if that was a fluke or if there was consistent quality in the buffet operations.

What I found was that this is the one area of this ship that needs work. The taste of the food is always a very subjective element and difficult to define. One person may like the flavor of a particular item while another doesn’t care for it. The trick on a cruise is to offer a wide enough variety so that there is truly something for every one. In most cases I’ve found that there is a lot of variety and finding something you like is not an issue. Here too, the variety, for the most part, was there.

There are, however, certain aspects of foodservice that are not difficult to define at all. Food handling procedures are one of these items. I was in the restaurant business for 20 years and know a thing or two about the workings of a mass feeding operation. One of the simple, basic, and critical rules written in stone is “Cold things Cold and Hot things Hot”. This operation failed miserably in this area at every turn.

Here are a few examples

Part of every buffet is a cold section with deli meats and cheeses. These are placed on a bed of ice to maintain a safe, cold temperature. Several times I saw where the ice was allowed to completely melt and the food left to come up to room temperature. On this ship part of the Windjammer service area is in the open where the ambient temperature was 80 plus degrees, a breeding ground for food-related illness.

On the hot side, the same could be said for just about everything. I wish I had a thermometer with me because I’d bet that most hot products wouldn’t make it past 100 degrees, again in the danger zone. The only products we had on this cruise that were truly hot were cooked to order omelette’s at breakfast and cooked to order pasta for dinner.

TIP: Get to know the Pasta Chef who works in the dining room preparing pasta dishes to your order. Best food on the ship.

I’ve run into this before, this is not unique to this ship. But on other ships we’ve had alternative restaurant choices. On this one, it’s the dining room, buffet or room service, that’s it.

The thought crossed my mind that it would not be entirely inaccurate to say “If you want some good food on this cruise, bring it with you” But I think that might be a bit harsh.

As mentioned, variety and taste are very subjective areas and difficult to rate. Except when it came to desserts on this ship. Somebody must have gotten a real deal on cake mix because cake was the anchor of the dessert menu that caused the menu to sink.

Don’t get me wrong.

I like cake.

But this flavorless, unfrosted, lackluster substitute, which might have been a treat to a prison inmate, was just horrible. That wouldn’t be a problem if it was just one part of the menu but often it was the entire menu with the exception of Chips Ahoy quality cookies.

This area of the ship had “we’re really trying to cut costs” written all over it.

It was at this point that I started looking for other signs of a tight budget manifesting itself into an effect on the quality of operations.

Don’t get me wrong; I think any business needs to be run in an efficient and cost-effective manner. That’s just good business.

But when budget-controlling measures affect the quality of operations to the point where they begin to define the operation then I think somebody needs to be really sure that’s what they want to do.

It’s hard for me to imagine that Royal Caribbean wants to be known for being the cruise line with the lousy desserts. Or the cruise line that can’t afford to buy enough plates so guests wait for them at the buffet line or can’t hold them in their hands because they are too hot because they just came off the dish machine and were run to the buffet line. I doubt they want to be known as the one who let spills sit on the floor, creating a safety hazard.

But maybe they were just not paying attention.

I watched one day at lunch as a uniformed officer/manager roamed the dining room completely oblivious to what was going on around him. He wasn’t paying attention. He never spoke to any of the crew. He never spoke to any of the guests. He just walked around doing nothing about elements of the dining experience screaming at him for attention. These were easy-fix things too. A guest wandering around looking for a glass of water, a spilled drink all over the floor, dirty tables everywhere with other guests looking for one to use to name a few.

To be fair, I think everything they needed was in place, they just weren’t utilizing what they had to work with well.

There seemed to be plenty of chefs, foodservice crew and managers but yet the rolls were obviously baked too far in advance. Maybe they don’t have enough ovens to make it happen. Maybe they have to bake bread earlier in the day so the ovens are available to make more cake later in the day.

If they’re serving up this low quality of food in an attempt to save money they’re really missing the boat. If they took a look at the volume of food that was left uneaten on plates they might get a clue. This was not that guests took more than they could eat. This was that they took one bite and didn’t continue eating. I would bet that this ship makes more pizza than others in the fleet. It was not uncommon to see guests eating pizza at the same table as their buffet plate which had barely been touched.

Who’s fooling who here?

On paper they might find that the flavorless institutional cake is less expensive to produce but what are they really saving if they throw it all away?

If you’ve followed my reviews you might be tempted to say “has this guy EVER been on a bad cruise?”

No, I haven’t.

On the bright side:

• The pizza was awesome and room service had some highlights worth mentioning. What made the pizza consistently good is that they never got too far ahead on it. It was always piping hot and fresh out of the oven. The pizza guy paid attention.

• On room service the Tuna Pita sandwich, Cheesecake and even the Hamburgers were very good. Ok so skip my personal opinion that they tasted good and stick to the facts. The hamburgers, for some reason, came hotter from room service than on the buffet line. Somehow the hot food was hotter and the cold food colder.

• The midnight Caribbean buffet served on deck including ice carving demonstration was worth staying up for. Lobbing off the pigs head was a bit much for the kids who probably didn’t sleep real well that night but still a cool deal

With the exception of foodservice, this ship is great. Royal Caribbean does so many things right that it really slaps you in the face when they drop the ball. I hope there are plans in the works to fix this because it is definitely broken.

I recently went on my third cruise to the Southern Caribbean and had a wonderful time, as good as the first and the second. When coming back home I was thinking on how this cruise compared to the previous ones, how different the places I visited were and how useful it would have been for me to have all the information I gained through these experiences prior to travelling, just to be able to decide where to go, which cruise line to choose and what to do in each port.

Then, it just came natural to me the thought that someone else could use this information, so here we are, me writing, you reading.

When you come to the Southern Caribbean to take a cruise, the first thing is where you are going to sail from. That’s an easy choice for me: San Juan, Puerto Rico. Main reasons for choosing this departure port for me (that is, apart for the fact that I live here) have to do with the fact that San Juan is a very accessible city coming from the continental US, it has a variety of attractions for tourists and has a great infrastructure for cruise takers.

Then it comes to selecting the cruise line. Everybody knows the major two are Carnival and Royal Caribbean. Princess Cruises also sail from San Juan. Between these three, which are the three lines I cruised with, my choice is to select either based on destination or on price and quality.

If you are planning on take more than one cruise through the area in your life, then destination is not that important on your first cruise, although there are some ports that are definitively better than others. I could go on an on telling you of each port I visited, how nice it was, what you can do in each city, what shore excursions you should not miss, etc. And I will, only not in this article (see below). Of course, the nicer the destinations, the more expensive the cruise tends to be.

In terms of price and quality, from my personal all three lines (Carnival, Princess and Royal) are really worth the money you pay, and are excellent options in terms of quality. I would say that I perceive Royal to be more expensive and somewhat of higher quality than Carnival and Princess, which tends to be more accessible and not that outstandingly polished. Between these last two, Carnival is more fun-oriented and Princess has some activities you can customize (such as anytime dinner). Still, you can find bargain deals for all these lines.

Finally in terms of selecting your cruise, I’ve heard people say that you should always go to a travel agent to find good cruising deals. That is not necessarily true. I booked a good offer in the Carnival website and not necessarily that good of a deal when booking through a travel agent.

Here are the three cruises I took:

Royal Caribbean: Adventure of the Seas. San Juan, Sea, Aruba, Curacao, Sea, St Maarten (sometimes replaced by Dominica), St Thomas.

Carnival: Carnival Victory. San Juan, St Thomas, Dominica, Barbados, St Lucia, Antigua, St Kitts.

Princess: Caribbean Princes. San Juan, St Thomas, Dominica, Grenada, Bonaire, Aruba.

You will notice St Thomas repeats in all three, as it is quite difficult to find a 7-day cruise departing from San Juan that does not stops in St Thomas.

Each island the cruise visits has its unique flavor. And spending a whole day at the ship, be it a day at sea or just not spending much time on ground on one of your destinations, is wonderful as well.

I mostly enjoyed Aruba, Bonaire, Curacao, Grenada, St Maarten, Barbados, Antigua, and St Kitts the most (not in order of importance). St Thomas is the shopping mall of the Caribbean, if you want to buy jewelry, watches, liquor and perfumes.

For those looking for a suggestion, if you just want to relax spend as little as possible and have a good time, you should try either Carnival or Princess. If you want better quality in terms of activities in the cruise and nicer ports of call while spending a bit more, go with Royal.

Other important thing you should consider would be the specific ship. You can get lots of information on the ships in the cruise lines web sites. I can tell you in the ones I cruise; Adventure of the Seas is definitively bigger, with more common areas you can access. Carnival’s room was nicer though (especially if you have a balcony, since their fence is made of glass!). Princess’ room was a bit smaller (and the bathroom could use an update) but we got a double-size balcony for a low fare.

The price you would pay is minimal when you consider it is all-inclusive (the food, shows, activities, etc.). You have to consider shore excursions, which came at a price and will increase your expending, but still it is fantastic to go to a floating resort and every day awaken to a new island.

In summary, a great vacation destination is a cruise through Southern Caribbean and hopefully with this tips and comments you will finally decide to hop on.

For those eager to get more detailed and information, I will be posting a series of articles covering the ports of call I visited and even will publish some pictures of each cruise so you can see to believe. Just check my profile page for other articles or just post a comment or drop me a line and I’ll be more than glad to share.

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