Having been cruised with Norwegian, Celebrity, Carnival, our preference has repeatedly taken us back to Celebrity. We decided its time to try either Holland America or Royal Caribbean. Upon hearing much hyped Allures of the Seas, we decided to go Royal Caribbean, big mistake!!! Prior to this trip, I've always though Carnival is perhaps the worst cruise line for its mediocre food, mediocre ship and spring breaker crowd, yet our experience with Royal Caribbean was far worse than experience with Carnival!!! Through out the cruise, we refer Allures of the Seas simply as Nightmares of the Seas.

Embarkation: It took two hours!!! Check in alone took an hour, with multiple people doing check in having issues with their system. And they somehow miraculously check in my spouse TWICE, hence unable to check me in even though the booking is under my name. Everything was duplicated under my spouse name. They had to go to supervisor, who couldn't resolve the technical issue. Then went to another supervisor level up, change the booking. While other check in people next to us had issue registering their credit cards. The longest check in. Finally after an hour and 4 technical supervisor they checked both of us in and issue us sea pass card. Go with boarding, or so I though. The line for boarding was 15 mins long, which is ok. My spouse boarded in front of me, when its time for me to board, my sea pass just issued 15 mins didn't work. So the person scanned the card took my card and say he will go and re-issue the sea pass. I waited outside while my spouse waited inside looking at me on the outside for 50 minutes. No sign of the person who took my sea pass. Finally, I got so frustrated and return downstair at the check in counter and saw one of the supervisor who assisted our 'hour-long-duplicated-check-in' in regard to my failed sea pass, and she instructed to me go the counter on far side where another check in person told me they need to re check me in because I'm NOT in the system, even after check in and issued a sea pass card. Their check in process was a BIG FAILURE!!! That wasted another 10 minutes of my life. Finally, got a working sea pass card and boarded the ship.

Departure: The Ship was set to sail at 4:30pm, everyone participated in the emergency drill and went to pool deck waiting to sail away. We saw cranial, celebrity, HAL, princess ships all sailed away. We kept waited. An hour pass by, 2 hours passed by. We tired of waiting and went to dinner. By the time we finished dinner at 8:30pm that's when ship started to move. Four hours behind schedule. No explanation ever given... Read more