Grandeur of the Seas Review
3.5: Good, not great experience on a smaller, outdated ship
Rating by category
Additional details
We went on this cruise as a family of 6, four of us along with my parents.
Embarkation was as expected for the most part, the big slow downs were due to passengers who wouldn't listen to security when they were told to remove all metal including cell phones and belts from their person, so the detectors went off constantly. My mother who had polio as a child walks with a cane and requested a wheelchair. She was told to wait until the line died down a bit and they would get one for her. About 20 minutes later, when there was still no wheelchair and scores of people made their way through, we asked again and the exact same person told her to walk to a designated area, pass through security...THEN she could have a wheelchair.
Check-in was fine. A nice touch is that there were some real funny characters that told my son he wasn't smiling enough so he had to stay home and they would take his place. Royal Caribbean allows two bottles of your own wine to be brought on board with NO corkage fee which is a big plus, since nearly all other lines charge you. However, they didn't tell us HOW to bring the wine on board, so we put it in our luggage that we checked through. Apparently we were supposed to bring it in hand with us. Our bag was confiscated, inspected, ultimately passed through to our stateroom by the end of the first evening. All other checked luggage arrived to our cabin within an hour of check-in. Good form.
Cabin Review
Large Ocean View Stateroom
Deck 2, Aft. Ocean View. James was our Cabin attendant and he was fantastic. We were all very happy with his attentiveness, smile, and warm greetings each time we saw him. The room did its job. It was a place for us to sleep, change, and shower when needed.
There were two pull down beds that came down from the ceiling, creating a "bunk bed" effect. One of these two pull downs was visibly damaged, evident as soon as we walked in, but it wasn't a safety hazard. The fabric on the chair in the room was quite worn and old. The bathroom was fine, decent lighting, and there also appeared to be a light at one time in the actual ceiling of the shower, with a vent fan, but it was replaced by something that neither lit nor vented when we stayed there. Also, we confirmed this quizzical problem with some staff members---about 4 days into the cruise our in-room toilet would intermittently take an exceptionally long time to flush. As in, push the flush button, wash your hands, brush your teeth, change your clothes and start watching the news....then hear the "WHOOOOSH." Two crew members said, "Yes sorry that does happen." There was enough closet and drawer space in the cabin for four of us since we got creative with our bedside table drawers and such. In room safe, several "international, European" outlets, only two "American" outlets.