Symphony of the Seas Review
lots of disappointments, not all Royals fault though
Rating by category
Additional details
Background- this was about our 15th cruise on Royal and we are diamond level. It was a husband, wife and 21 yr old daughter cruise. There were lots of disappointments as well as some good times. We are not snobs but we paid a lot of money for this cruise and it wasn't all what we remembered cruising to be like. Overall, any cruise is a good cruise and you have to roll with the punches which we did. We were previously booked on the same ship and itinerary in March 2020 and got canceled about 3 hours before leaving for the airport due to covid so this was our long awaited make up cruise. We were hoping for the best but it didn't happen.
First the not so great. I understand not all of this was Royal's fault but I felt they could've done better. First, we flew into Miami the day before and at about 10pm we got the email that the cruise would be delayed a day due to the tropical storm. Not Royal's fault but the stress immediately started. I called Royal and only waited about 25 minutes before someone answered. I asked about assisting us with finding another hotel since ours was sold out now as well as the option of staying on the ship the day the cruise was supposed to start but no luck on either.
We found a hotel (Holiday Inn at the port of Miami) and paid way too much but at least we had a place to stay. The next morning at the port was a bit hectic but the lines moved fairly quick. The person checking us in wanted to see our actual covid vaccination card which I told him we uploaded already and he had the picture of it on his screen as well as the negative test. Odd, but there was a language barrier like we found with so many people in Miami. The scheduled boarding time was a joke too. We had 11:30-12noon but it was a free for all, despite line queues set up for each time slot.
Cabin Review
We got the "ultra spacious balcony ocean room" which had extra space which was nice. I recommend adding a table in the room rather than just a large open space.
Port Reviews
Costa Maya
The waterpark is still closed so it was go to the Mayan ruins, shop/swim at the port, or a very few other things. Some bar prices were not posted and some were wrong so it felt like they were charging as much as they could get away with based on what the person looked like. There's not much to do here but the pool and shopping area were clean. We went back to the ship after about 2 hours and were able to finally ride the slides with minimal wait. I wished they eliminated this stop instead of Coco Cay (bad weather cut the cruise short a day).
Roatan
We did a private excursion which was a mess. Outside the gated area are abandoned shacks, dirty streets, little kids selling bracelets, terrible traffic and just a dirty and poor area. Sad that some countries are like this and sad with all the cruise passengers coming back, they can't clean it up. We only went to one nice are (West End) which was more resort like and laid back. Usually I think about what it would be like to live someone tropical, but I never had that thought for a moment in Roatan.