Visiting Shanghai for the F1 Grand Prix and this was my first ever cruise on any ship. I have to say that this ship and cruise is most definitely aimed at Chinese. If you are a European like me, it’s a real eye opener. There are over 1 billion Chinese that have money to spend and Royal Caribbean wants to exploit that market, it’s good business sense.

Be prepared for rudeness, queue jumping and little consideration from the Chinese passengers on the cruise with you. An example was that there was a long queue at Sorentoes, I got my meal, the server tried to hand it to me and a Chinese man tried to steal the meal. He saw absolutely nothing wrong with this until the server rebuked him in angry Mandarin. Try to avoid Windjammer at peak times, complete madness. Little choice apart from Chinese food, even the western food is aimed at the Chinese passenger. You can get other food but you will have to pay for it. Shipboard currency is dollars, they can change currency but be prepared to pay a surcharge. I was advised to go ashore and change currency there.

Embarkation was ok, the cruise line have worked very hard to make it a smooth as possible. The cabin I had was internal and was finished to a good standard and the house keeper introduced herself and was extremely helpful when I needed to ask her questions. I cannot fault the rest of the crew I have had dealings with, but it’s VERY obvious which passengers are in the driving seat on this ship and the crew don’t enforce the rules unless they have to. They do not want to upset those passengers at all. I have A LOT of time for the crew on this ship because of the hard work they have to do. Read more