Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection

Luxury Cruises

St. Maarten

Caribbean - All

Caribbean - Eastern

Poor

Excellent

Evrima (Ritz-Carlton)

Izmir

We were 1st time cruisers. We choose this ship because of it's luxuriousness. This ship is absolutely beautiful.

Grand Suite - rooms were wonderful. - Spacious, king bed, separate walk-in closets, full size bath tub, 2 sinks, shower, separate WC, large balcony, dining room seats 6, living room has couch and leather chair ottoman long desk and entryway. I would always request a room on Floor 7. There are only rooms on this floor so very quiet.

S.E.A. was overpriced but delicious.

Other food and beverage offerings were excellent. More Moet brought on board than bottled water.

Tenders are of poor design. Too often could not safely dock.

Dress was classy but not overdone.

Always seats available near pool and observation deck.

Made many friends along the way.

Staff was excellent, very personable

Trivia, afternoon tea and other activities were available.

Jazz and DJ's were every night. 

Next time we will spend more time down by the marina. 

It was wonderful and we can't wait to get back again.

Evrima - Once in a lifetime experience that will have us going back again.

For disclosure, I am a former restaurateur and have worked for decades in luxury hotels around the world both at the service point and at the managerial/executive level.

We were one of the many people who had booked early and got cancelled several times because the boat was not ready to sail. No big deal. We travel a lot and in luxury; with not a lot of time constraints. 

So this was not an issue for us. Our travel agent had warned us the company had been promising lots of things but they were having many technical issues launching. When he told us that they were finally ready, we went full into it and booked one Grand Signature Suite and a Loft Suite. They are all Suites on the Evrima. We paid a little bit short of $100k for both. Maybe prices went down later or on other sails though.

I live in the Caribbean and know my way around, so getting to port was supposed to be easy peasy. Well, it wasn’t. No one had a clue on where exactly to go for check in. They were all very nice but disorganized as can be. Poor signage and time wasting. Luggage was handled with record speed, though and once in cabin, they took it away. So five stars for luggage handling!

Once inside the boat, Moet was poured generously on deck where we received instructions to go to our cabin to watch the safety video. Looking around it was palpable staff was undertrained and discombobulated. People were also complaining about things like their rooms being underwhelming or misrepresented. Things not working. 

These were definitely not Karens but decent folk who didn’t get what they thought they booked. Remember all we had seen had been drawings of the suites and some people thought they had overpaid. We had yachted before and we loved the decor and size of ours. No complains there. Yet.

We did notice there was no champagne in our room although we saw the stemless champagne flutes on the video. No biggie. But this was a sign of a bigger issue throughout our voyage.

First impression of the cabin was that it did not feel clean. 

We waited considerably to get someone to sign us up for the mandatory safety drill (which was made in the comfort of the cabin in the form of a video) and still wasteful of your time since we had to wait forever for an officer or employee to confirm our presence at the Muster.  Many things were just like this: they sounded great in theory but totally failed at execution. For example, the room has a screen where you could order things like first necessity items but the interface doesn’t work. So things we ordered were never made available or even acknowledged. And by the way, they offered things like sanitary napkins and tampons at a charge. Same thing for razors or basic toiletries. All expensive too. First time I’m on a luxury cruise that they do not provide basics like a disposable razor or a dental kit. 

 It was several hours later that we met our Concierge Tseppo. He was very nice and was surprised not to see champagne in the room. Later we had the glasses but still no champagne. Then we had champagne but not in ice.

He kept apologizing and seemed visibly mortified but things were always going wrong. They promised to personalize the cabin with our preferences or diet requirements, allergies, etc. Nothing was done. I do not eat meat but no one on the boat was aware of this anywhere. Same for sesame allergies (life threatening type). We were celebrating two birthdays but only Tseppo seemed aware and failed to follow up so we didn’t get cake on time. 

We were told that all our requests for massages were not available later to find in our door a confirmation for them. The miscommunication was constant. 

If you like to work out, bear in mind the gym was PACKED almost every day all the time in our cruise. Very little cardio equipment for so many people to work out. And it was incredibly hot and smelled of cigarettes as it’s close to the Cigar room.  I mean, who thought of putting the Spa in such proximity??

And the a/c stops working if you leave the door open which happened every single time someone opened the heavily trafficked area. It’s too small for that many people. The only good thing was the big area allocated for the instructors and for the private sessions and those were yoga classes. Not cardio.

The pool was crowded and too small. And the toys and promised fun at the Marina was not to be seen as it was closed most of the trip. I NEVER saw it open. Every time we went to check, there were construction workers and engineers who told us it was still “not available”.

The excursions were very lackluster and absolutely overpriced. We booked ours with third parties last minute and they were incredible and cheaper. We felt very sorry for fellow passengers as their excursion leaders were literally shouting at them to end the snorkeling or the sightseeing while we had our own private tours catered to our tastes and in our own time. Ritz Carlton couldn’t even get us a simple reservation at any of the restaurants in the islands we visited. I had to work all the time doing these basic tasks making the trip more work than necessary. Our other family members got their excursions canceled last minute and not given any choices on what to do. Same with transportation (private taxis). Ritz Carlton Concierge or employees had no connections in the islands to get things for you. When we were in the ports all we heard were complaints from other cruise travelers in our boat.  It was mortifying and very disheartening. People were complaining about worse things. Or things that we could overlook. Some thought entertainment was terrible and boring. I actually like classical music and jazz and the musicians were nice. Now the DJ was the worst! It made for a very lackluster deck experience. I don’t like party boats but if that’s your thing, this will not be your kind of cruise experience. 

As for the food…..where to begin. Room service was the best option although very limited. And unfortunately they would run out of things quickly. On the first night many things were missing from menus and they kept saying that once they’d go to a “better” port they’d get better and more things. Well, never happened. The same bland food everyday except for the cakes they put out at the bar: DELICIOUS! 

We ate at Talang Naam restaurant the first night and it was obvious they were overwhelmed and understaffed. We had a reservation for 8:00 pm we didn’t get our table until 9:00pm. And were not offered anything to drink until exactly 9:30pm when I physically got up to stop one of the two waiters. We didn’t leave because there was nowhere else to eat at that point other than room service.

They kept apologizing. I asked for a wine list to be told that there was not such a thing. It seemed the waiters were told to not offer wine lists because they didn’t have a lot of inventory. They literally told us they had only one label of Pinot and one Chardonnay. Sounded like a joke but when I talked to the sommelier he explained they had only two bottles of some wines and nothing really high end. He said the same thing to others and we heard over and over again, that “they would stop at other ports and hopefully get more things in the future”…. 

I ended up following the sommelier’s recommendation of buying wine myself and bringing it to them for opening. Never heard of a BYOW cruise, but that’s what they were at that point. LOL.

And I will not tell you all the many design failures of the cabin, either. The decor is nice and elegant but not practical. Small balcony and the space is not well utilized. There is a flip up vanity mirror in the room meant for sitting down and make up yourself but problem is that it’s designed for someone not taller than 4 ft. It’s built very low because they put it right beneath the tv and the clearance is just not high enough. And they offer a great option of European or US plugs in the same outlet but they can’t be used because they are too narrow and they are occupied by the appliances they have in the room. So forget about plugging your phone and computer at the same time or in the same area. Little note: when I opened this vanity mirror/desk, there were belongings of a previous guest still there: AirPods, Beats wireless headphones, a bunch of masks (yuck), hair twists, etc.  Proof that our suite HAD NOT BEEN CLEANED MUCH! For seven nights, our bathtub had the same huge palm print stain. We joked it was a decal. 

One of the drawers in the closet was hanging broken with nails out. And the cherry on top was when the doors in the bedroom slammed on my fingers and broke two of my digits. I arrived late for dinner with two bleeding fingers that almost required stitches (I still have not healed properly.). This because the doors in our cabin were very loose and they had no break or friction to stop. So they slammed on you (trapping my fingers in this case).

Our toilet had issues too. Even when not used it was clogged or wouldn’t flush. It smelled of sewage many times and it would “gargle”. They had to come a couple of times to make it work although we had not even used it. Pipe problems all over.

S.E.A. was one of the worst dining experiences I have ever had in my life. So I write this knowing that I should never expect land quality on a ship. Ships have challenges to get produce and cooking without fire. S.E.A. served us smoosh from the ocean served mostly cold and with the most arrogant and passive aggressive service from a server. The manager, a Japanese lady, was very sweet but useless. Apologies will not feed you or make you whole when service is slow, arrogant, condescending…. And we would overlook even this if food is great. It wasn’t. Only thing that was good was the bread and the soup. Risotto was horrible and the fish was good quality but not cooked well. Did I say the food was served mostly cold? And the wine pairing was lackluster. I couldn’t believe that we paid all that money to be treated so poorly. We were so hungry we had room service afterwards. And they didn’t have any vegetarian options even though I mentioned this MONTHS in advance.

We got a birthday cake sent to our room with nothing to serve it or cut it. And for the displeasures, we received a second bottle of champagne but no glasses (again). No plates, no knife to cut the cake. 

Next day we booked the other restaurant and when they asked us how was S.E.A. the concierge seemed disappointed to hear our experience and recommended we eat at the other nice restaurant Mistral (outside). She booked a table for 4 at 9:00 and when we showed up at 8:45pm were told “they closed at 8:30 pm”. 

I could go on and on. We had a great time with our family but this was in no way a luxurious experience. Real luxury means to be able to relax and not have to care for the menial things. We don’t care to pay for convenience; for service. Evrima was lackluster and they were not ready. 

A Ritz Carlton executive reached out about a month ago but my impression is that they are still on testing mode and not interested in (our) grievances. The sailings are mostly sold out and there is more demand than offer. Just be cautious with what you book and lower your expectations.

Booked Ritz Carlton; received Courtyard Inn

Filters

1-2 of 2