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My 4th cruise with RCL and my 7th cruise allround - this is the first that I can criticise. I beleive most of the problems were due to too many passengers and only 5 night cruise (4 days)I travelled with my husband.
Malaga-corsica-Toulon-Malaga- october 2009
Embarkation - 3000 passengers (the ship was fully booked) try to board in a 4 hour slot resulted in chaos. A hangar(seemed like) full of so many people with no indication of where to start queueing. No water or food available. Hell!after queuing for 1 hour (20 of us - all ages) we realised that noone was standing behind us & there was no one to ask!Being oldies we sat out on a pavement until we could get a seat, for 2 hours until the queues reduced & we could see where the actual queues were.our younger friends carried on standing & they got onto the ship 15 minutes before us
Embarked half an hour before fire drill - went straight to windjammer - no replenishing of food trays - so hungry ended up with salad to be eaten with spoon! No knives & forks left - being told they were coming but they did not! The ship was so huge unable to find fire drill area for our cabin. Almost in tears at walking what seemed like too far on an empty stomach.
The windjammer cafe was ALWAYS full, busy, noisy & I had almost always have to share a table & had long queues for food. Dining in the restaurant- the food was very good but always very late with a waiters over busy so that 'extra' service was near impossible ie catching their eye difficult nigh impossible.
It was a short cruise which was quite cheap - i beleive this attracted a local element that would not normally cruise. One lady was head-butted in the lift by another -er-lady! when lift members complained she did it again!The spanish will not queue - so would push in all the time- when people objected they just shouted & the RCL staff served them without saying a word!
The last evening was the worst- the queues for 'guest relations'was at least half an hour long & they were still queueing at 1.30aam!
Fortunately we had a lovely balcony & cabin & spent much of the cruise ordering room service even though we were on the cruise with about 30 others.- there was not sufficient space for us all to meet in any bar or windjammer.I experienced seasickness for the first time ever - yet have travelled across the pacific & south china seas.It was the formal night & we missed it with our friends.
The other downside was the 2 ports which we thought were very disappointing - adjaccio(Corsica) & toulon(france). The weather was not warm (we left Malaga at 27C)and there is little of interest there, without good weather.
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