Radiance of the Seas Review
A wonderful experience for a first cruise
Rating by category
Additional details
Just a word of warning this review is quite long, but if you're interested in a detailed account I might be able to provide some good insights.
I've just returned from my first ever cruise with a party of 8 including my boyfriend, MIL, family and a family friend, and we had a wonderful time. It was a great experience for a party of first time cruisers.
We got to the ship at about 1:30 on departure day, and the line looked long but moved quickly. It would be no small task to get 2,500 passengers onto an international ship, and we were very impressed with the process. We were greeted by lots of smiling crew members, set up our folio easily and in about 40 minutes we were at our room meeting our Stateroom Attendant, Tarfiq (who was amazing! More on that in a bit). About 10 minutes after that we were enjoying our lunch and views of the harbour from the Windjammer cafe. What a life!
Cabin Review
Tarfiq, our Stateroom Attendant, was wonderful! We were delighted to learn that he would be servicing our room TWICE a day, not once as we expected, and he did this without fail. He was quick to learn our names and was always friendly if we saw him in the hall, often asking how our trip was going and making sure we were having a laugh. He was very attentive of our needs, never disturbing us if our Do Not Disturb card was in the door slot. On day 3 of 4 I left a note asking if we could please have 2 more harder pillows if they were available, but if they weren't not to worry (and I did not expect them to be) but at the next service there they were on the bed. We enjoyed the towel animals that were left every few days, always decorated with our sunglasses. Fabulous service!The Stateroom was actually bigger than we expected it to be. There's a lot of storage space, including floor space in the cupboards for suitcases if you wish to use it (we chose to keep ours out in the corner). The bed was very comfortable and pleasant to sleep in, and our port hole was massive, so it was nice to wake up and see the port we were in on shore days. There's a 2 person couch, a small stool-sized coffee table and a TV mounted to the wall near the surface of the dresser. We usually had our TV on in the background when we were getting ready to go out (usually on Parks and Recreation) but there are informative channels with information on the cruise if you wish to watch it and we also got signal of both channel 7 and 9, so we could catch up on the tennis, cricket and snippets of the news when we wanted a few minutes of downtime. The bathroom is SMALL but got the job done. It's hard not to flood the bathroom when you have a shower, but there's a drain for the excess water, and it gave us a good laugh. Use the bathmat and you'll be fine. And make sure you push the toilet flusher in hard and hold it down for 3 or so seconds or the toilet will not flush (learnt this the hard way). The bathroom was an experience in itself, but to be honest if you're going to be too fussy about these components of the room this holiday's probably not for you. Get out of the room and explore the ship!