This is our tenth cruise, all on Royal Caribbean, and this one really made me question our loyalty. First the good:
1- The ports of call, specifically Panama, the Canal and Costa Rica, were great. These were bucket list dreams finally fulfilled, and the memories will stay with us long after the problems of the ship, food and staff are forgotten.
2- Two members of the cruise director's staff, Billie and Orlando, did a wonderful job of making trivia fun and entertaining. Their enthusiasm should set the bar for the rest of the team on the Legend.
We specifically chose this cabin for its location after sailing on the Rhapsody of the Seas (same class of ship) last year. On that ship, the door which leads directly to the Centrum was closed every evening at 10 p.m. to reduce noise down the hall and allow passengers to sleep. On the first night of this cruise, the drum beat from the music was quite loud so the next day I asked guest services to see that the door was closed after 10 like on the Rhapsody. It never happened. (I'm sure the excuse will be that the door is a fire door, but this location has an alternate path for passing through the hallway around the Centrum). Then on disco night in the Centrum the noise was so bad that turning the TV up could not hide the shouting of the cruise director at the disco event. After losing my temper with guest services they finally closed the door (and it made a big difference) but for that night only. (Certainly not very customer oriented). In addition, the balcony was dirty and not maintained, with a lot of rust and heavily weathered wood railing, and the toilet failed twice.
As we had been to Cabo San Lucas several times in the past, we never actually got off the boat here. It was a tendered port and they seemed to be having trouble, so why bother?
As we entered the port I was able to observe that Ensenada had many familiar American things, like McDonalds and Starbucks! Spending a couple hours at Starbucks, sipping a frappacino and downloading email was a nice change of pace.