First off, we have cruised over 20 times, many with RC. We are platinum members and this cruise put us in the Emerald class. We traveled on 6/30/18 from Southhampton on their Mediterranean Cities Cruise. Below are a few observations.

1. Food...It was cruise line food. Not bad, not great. There are two points. In the Windjammer there was a good variety but space was limited. My impression is that if you build a ship to carry 4500 people, you should be able to feed them in a relaxed manner. I resent trying to eat while there were constant announcements that we should finish up and let others have our space. The design of a ship should accommodate us while we are eating. Either that, or build smaller ships. Please try to remember that your customers come first, not your profits. As for the dining room, is it really necessary for the waiters to interrupt us two or three times at each meal to ask about food and service? And what about the charade of parading the kitchen workers and wait staff around the dining room? As the saying goes, "That's a whole lot of who cares". Also on this note, I have mentioned here in the past that vacationers like the quantity of food served. They pay for those meals when they pay their fare. The idea of pay restaurants is ludicrous to me. We intend to continue cruising and not paying for any meals. When that changes, our druising days will be over.

2. Shore excursions...My wife only cruises for shore excursions. When they contacted us and told us that one that we had booked was cancelled, she was upset. She was even more upset when the guy that called her seemed to think it was a joke. We went down to the shore excursions desk where the person on duty was pleasant and kind and booked us for another excursion, with a 20% discount but my take on this is that it they offered it in the first place, it shouldn't have been canceled. Again, the cruisers come first, profits second. I am also of the opinion that the quality of the trips have diminished. We seemed to be rushed around by tour guides that did not seem to have our interests in mind. We did want to buy some souvenirs while we were out on shore and the little time promised seemed to be cut short on each trip. Not only that, my wife had decided on a number of trips from the shore excursion PDF which we dl'd and seemed to have little in the way of reality. Then after booking we found that the ones offered on line were not totally accurate. For instance, there were only two offered in Barcelona but after booking one prior to boarding, we found that there were many more offered. We did this in advance so that we would not have to spend our vacation doing it on board. RC should look at the excursions offered by other cruise lines and take them as an example. I have already compared them from cruise line to cruise line. Read more