My husband and I are in our early 60's, and have cruised over 16 times before with Carnival, Norwegian, Disney, Celebrity, and Princess. We have found that Celebrity, and Princess are our favorite cruise lines when it comes to food, value, and service. We took this cruise because we were joining friends, who we had cruised with before, but had not seen for a while. We had a great time because we were with friends, and a cruise is "what you make it." We started with a very positive attitude, and we found that we did indeed have a good time. However, there were a few things that were not as good as expected, that I would like to comment on.
Embarkation: It was a very cold day in Galveston, and the lines were very long. I found it to be very disorganized, and slow! There were no staff to assist the elderly, or disabled. We found ourselves in a very long line, with alot of impatient people. Finally, we were offered assistance, as my husbamd, and our friend, needed boarding assistance, and then things moved along faster. After about 40 minutes we were on board. I found out quickly that we were on our own, when it came to finding our room. There were no "welcoming staff", to offer assistance with finding our rooms, and that caused alot of confusion among boarding passengers! Finally, we found our room. We were on the 8th floor, with a balcony. The room size and bathroom was adequate. Also, we had enough closet space for all of our clothes. The one negative regarding our room was the fact that our bathroom had a very "sluggish toilet", and we constantly smelled an unpleasant odor, which we tought was sewage. This started on Sunday, when we boarded the ship, and only got worse as the week progressed! Our bed was very uncomfortable, and hard. Other than that our room, and balcony was adequate, compared to other ships. Throughout the cruise I found the staff to be very unfriendly, and did not willingly offer assistance. When approached they would try to help, but noone went out of their way to assist, and I found that I had to constantly ask for things that were normally recognized on our previous cruises. For example, I had to ask to have ice delivered to our stateroom, and found myself trying to work around our stateroom assistant's schedule.
Dining: We had late dining in the Top Hats Dining room. Service was extremely slow! I was not at all impressed with the quality of the food. It was often served cold, and tasteless! Also, the selection of foods to choose from was not impressive! Our waiter, and assistant waiter did the best they could, but they were very overworked. Service for wine was virtually nonexsistant. I found that if I wanted a glass of wine with my dinner, I needed to carry it into the dining room with me. Meats were tough, and dry. Food tasted like cafeteria food, and even though one would never go hungry, it was not memorable, or anything special compared to our other cruising experiences! Windjammer food was also OK, and of cafeteria style and taste. We ate several of our breakfasts in the main dinig room, and I did not find them to be any better. Again, service was slow, and orders were often messed up.
Adequate size room, and balcony. Bathroom also adequate size, with nice size shower. BR had a smell of sewage the entire trip.