Recent RCI cruise review

On 2/3/2011 7:54 PM, Charles wrote:
In ,

One of the problems we had was that the Cruise Director did not ever
tell us when we could get off the ship or what deck it was on - it was
almost always on Deck 1, but still it should have been announced.

That information is in the daily schedule.


I think the OP expected a personal phone call VBG

--
Janet Wilder
Way-the-heck-south Texas
Spelling doesn't count. Cooking does.

On Thu, 03 Feb 2011 20:54:05 -0500, Charles
wrote:

In article ,
wrote:


Canaveral - I did not see any excursions that I wanted to do, so we
did not get off the ship. My husband contended that we were on the
ICW and I thought that it was over on the Indian River and we were on
the Banana River so I wanted a map, but they didn't have one. I
walked off the ship and down to the entrance of the port, but there
was none there either. I understand there is a local bus which is
cheap and goes somewhere near the terminal. I would have liked to
have a map of where to get that and maybe if I had, I would have taken
it.

In front of the terminal there are signs telling where to catch the
bus. Very easy. There is also a crew shuttle that they let anyone on.

I got off the ship and went to the front of the terminal (outside) and
I did not see any signs. I asked the workers in the terminal and none
of them knew where I could catch the bus. Someone I talked to later
said I would have had to go across the street and through the tunnel,
and somewhere over there was the bus stop.

2nd Cruise
Labadee - we did get off the ship here as we have never been to Haiti.
Bob took the ship wheelchair which we saw afterward that we weren't to
do.


Maybe I did not explain this before. I did not get on the ship
expecting to use a wheelchair.

My problem is that I cannot stand in line (or anywhere like to listen
to someone explain something on a walking tour) for more than about a
minute without a lot of pain. Before the cruise I took in 2009, I
could walk a quarter of a mile or so, slowly. While I'm walking I can
ignore the pain.

But after that cruise I came down with bronchitis and it made my
asthma (which I've had since a child) more active and I had only 50%
alveolar function. (I've never smoked nor have I ever lived with
someone who did) I can't walk more than about 200 feet without having
to stop and get my breath. When I stop, my back hurts. At first I
thought it was my heart, but the tests say not and I was finally
diagnosed and I am taking medication and going to respiratory rehab
therapy twice a week at the hospital, and am making progress but it is
slow.

I have a cane with a seat that I use to help me move along, but with
my walking being slow anyway and my stopping to breathe pretty much
constantly it takes quite a lot of time.

During the first cruise we met a couple that we had previously met on
our first RCI cruise and he has a scooter. We talked to them awhile,
and they suggested that I could get an RCI wheelchair for use on the
ship. I had not even considered that before. I had only thought of
wheelchair assistance for standing in line to check in and to get on
the ship. So I asked, and they said yes that I could have one. At
that point I was only thinking of using it on the ship because walking
from one end to the other is too much for me now.

After we used it a little bit, I thought it would be terrific if I
could use it off the ship as well because the long piers are now
difficult for me especially in the heat.

They have wheelchairs there with the ballon wheels.

I knew that, but I didn't want to rent one, and didn't know if they
were free. The port information didn't say. Using a wheelchair was
pretty new to us. No one said anything about not taking it off the
ship. If I had known that it wasn't allowed, I wouldn't have done it.

San Juan - I had intended to take the wheelchair so I could get up
close to the fort at El Moro, but having been told in the Cruise
Compass that we weren't to do that, I wanted to get a taxi and go up
to the cemetery near there. The taxis were quoting us insane charges
but one of the drivers finally pointed us to the free trolley/bus. It
would have been VERY helpful if the port map had that on it but it
didn't. Bob got disgusted and went back to the ship, but I took the
trolley and lo an behold it went all the way up to the fort walls. I
don't think it did that in 2006 when we were here last. Anyway, again
I got pictures and didn't have to pay anything to do it. So
satisfactory in spite of RCI

You mean in spite of yourself. If you need a wheelchair to do
excursions or tours you need to buy your own. Why do you think RCI
should provide one for that purpose? Their wheelchairs are to assist
people getting on or off the ship.

I do NOT mean that. I mean that the free bus was not on the port map
and if it had been we wouldn't have been trying to get a taxi to the
fort. It would have been really easy without a wheelchair.

St. Maartin - I wanted to go to the French side, but Bob didn't want
to rent a car, and I didn't want to walk all the way down the pier to
the water taxi (I would have done it if I'd had the wheelchair), so we
stayed on the ship.

They have a golf cart that will take you to and from the end of the
pier.

And was that on the port map information? No it wasn't.

Also they have changed the port configuration. They've added a pier
and filled in the place where the water-taxi-ferry used to dock.
Instead of being right outside the gate and easy to walk to, the water
taxi/ferry is now some distance away. Where we were parked, the
non-free golf cart (if I could get one) would not have taken us more
than about 200 yards and I could do that. It was the rest of the
walking outside the gate that I couldn't do

One of the problems we had was that the Cruise Director did not ever
tell us when we could get off the ship or what deck it was on - it was
almost always on Deck 1, but still it should have been announced.

That information is in the daily schedule.

Before we have always had an announcement when the ship is cleared. It
doesn't always happen per the schedule. It doesn't cost them anything
to make the announcement - why have they stopped?

I also wondered why we no longer have to go through
customs/immigration when we go to a US port like San Juan or St.
Thomas after a non-US port. It was a PITA. I'm glad they stopped but
when did they decide it was a waste of everyone's time? Someone is
using uncommon sense.

On Thu, 03 Feb 2011 20:43:36 -0500, Charles
wrote:

In article ,
wrote:

We had an inside cabin on both Grandeur and Enchantment - I think they
are the same class ship and it was the same on both. I looked into
other cabins - including ocean view - all the same. I talked to other
people including the other three couples at our table who were all
platinum plus and they all said - "We know that we can't have the beds
together because there's no room to walk around them, so we always
separate them." I don't know about balconies and fancy stuff like
that or bigger ships. So I would dispute your assertion that all the
cabins are not like that. They are.


I don't know what you expect when you book the cheapest inside cabin on
the oldest class of ships.

I didn't book the cheapest inside cabin. In order to get the same
cabin for both cruises it was the bigger inside cabin.

I'm not expecting anything exotic. Just room to walk around the bed.
Oldest class of ships has nothing to do with it. Older is often
better. Our first cruise was on the NCL Crown - a really old ship
which is no longer in the fleet - and we had plenty of room to walk
around the bed. Room to walk around the bed should be a minimum
requirement. All the other cheap inside rooms on all the other old
ships on all the other lines that we have sailed on have room to walk
around the bed.

You are wrong about all the cabins being the same on those ships. There
are two sizes of inside cabin, "inside cabin" and a bigger inside
cabin, the "large inside cabin". Same with the outside cabins. There
are "large outside cabins" and "superior outside cabins". And the large
outsides are larger then the "large inside" with the superior outside
being the largest. look at the deck plans and you will see the square
feet.

I looked at some of the outside cabins (The stewards leave the doors
open, and you can see in when you walk past. That's why I put
everything away before I leave - not because I think the steward will
steal anything, but someone walking by might nip in and pick something
up.) and they all had the same bed/furniture configuration problems.
The beds were really close to the cabinets on one side with no room to
walk around the end and really close to the sofa on the other side.
And our table mates that were diamond on RCI said that their rooms
were the same. It isn't the square feet that is in question, it's how
the square feet are used. RCI doesn't have efficient floor plans.

The other thing that I think is way sneaky and which other lines do
NOT do - if you run out of minutes in your package, they shift to the
highest rate without any notice. HAL will charge at the package rate
until you sign off. They also give extra minutes for 'power users'
who get a second package or for people who sign up the first day and
there was no suggestion that RCI had anything like that. There was a
coupon in the little booklet for 10% off computer packages. That was
the only coupon that was of any use to us.

When your discount package runs out on all the cruise lines, including
HAL, they don't disconnect you, they put you regular rate until you log
off. HAL does not keep giving you the discount rate. What might be
confusing you is that HAL's regular minute rate is lower than Royal
Caribbean's.

That was probably it. They were up front about it and not sneaky. I
probably wouldn't have minded that except that they were consistently
charging me triple rates and there didn't seem to be anything I could
do about it.

Also it is annoying (and this isn't just an RCI thing) not to be able
to buy another package before all your minutes are used up to prevent
going over-time. I once had to log on twice and use minutes in order
to buy another package (this was on Celebrity) because I had four
minutes left and I didn't QUITE use all of them with the first log
on-- I still had 40 seconds left and so had to log on again.

The computer people tell you that you can use your minutes right up
until you dis-embark and I have never been able to do that. They cut
access to your minutes off sometime early in the morning of
embarkation. So I don't believe them when they tell me that, and
don't even try anymore.

After the first cruise I could not even log on with the same name and
password as I used on the first cruise. I had to make up another name
and password.

When I was on HAL I was not sure it was worth getting a
package. They tell you that they will charge you the regular rate when
you run out of package minutes when you sign up for the package. I
distinctly remember that on Oasis last fall that they said that was
what they would do. I don't see anything sneaky about it.

On Thu, 03 Feb 2011 20:22:27 -0600, Janet Wilder
wrote:

On 2/3/2011 7:54 PM, Charles wrote:
In ,

One of the problems we had was that the Cruise Director did not ever
tell us when we could get off the ship or what deck it was on - it was
almost always on Deck 1, but still it should have been announced.

That information is in the daily schedule.


I think the OP expected a personal phone call VBG

No I expected an announcement that the ship had been cleared.

The first cruise director did it once or twice when the ship did not
get cleared right away. The second cruise there wasn't ever an
announcement.

On Thu, 03 Feb 2011 15:59:05 -0600, Janet Wilder
wrote:

On 2/3/2011 3:00 PM, Kurt Ullman wrote:
In aweb.com,
Janet wrote:


I only use Firefox as a browser. I have used it on several RCI ships on
my own computers. No one ever told me to use IE.

I was told a couple of times about 4 years ago that my Mac wouldn't
work. No way, Jose. Of course it did.

I think they have people who are IT-clueless working on the ships. I can't
even get into Usenet on a ship!

Once, when I was using the ships machine, the internet was running so
slow that I could not make any progress. At the same time the minute
clock for usage was running on real time. I went to the guest relations
desk to ask them to please reset the usage back by 15 minutes and they
said they'll just give me an extra hour's credit. Nice!

They've never been that nice to me.

Although I've had them tell me that their computer will be faster than
mine, I don't find that true. My computer logs on more quickly and
downloads emails and usenet posts much more quickly than their
computers. I am even able to play Farmville by reducing the number of
responses that require pop-up windows to be clicked on.

On this cruise, I heard people using the ship's computers complaining
about how slow they were, but I was having no problem on my own
computer.

I do wish that all the plugs where I can plug my laptop in were not on
the floor under a desk. It seems to be a universal 'hide the plug'
thing going on for all ships.

The computer room people that used to be on ships are sometimes savvy,
but I have had one disable my modem in such a way that I could get the
ship internet but not my own wireless when I got home. It took a long
call to the Help desk to get it to work again. Also had one trip
where we determined by experiment that the internet was not working in
St. Thomas (we tried it several different ways) and the IT person had
no clue.

Someone complained to me that there was no place to play cards on
Enchantment. After I heard that complaint I looked and they were
right. People were playing cards in the computer room (I could hear
the snap of the cards), but there were no tables anywhere that were
configured so that people could comfortably play bridge.

On 2/4/11 9:20 AM, wrote:


The computer people tell you that you can use your minutes right up
until you dis-embark and I have never been able to do that. They cut
access to your minutes off sometime early in the morning of
embarkation. So I don't believe them when they tell me that, and
don't even try anymore.

On Sapphire Princess a few weeks ago, you could use the internet the
last morning without a problem if you still had minutes. I did in fact.
Up till around 8:00 when I got off the ship (early departure with my
own bags, since I had an 11:30 flight out of LAX).

--Tom

wrote in message
...
On Thu, 03 Feb 2011 20:22:27 -0600, Janet Wilder
wrote:

On 2/3/2011 7:54 PM, Charles wrote:
In ,

One of the problems we had was that the Cruise Director did not ever
tell us when we could get off the ship or what deck it was on - it was
almost always on Deck 1, but still it should have been announced.

That information is in the daily schedule.


I think the OP expected a personal phone call VBG

No I expected an announcement that the ship had been cleared.

The first cruise director did it once or twice when the ship did not
get cleared right away. The second cruise there wasn't ever an
announcement.

Don't pay any attention to Janet. I think she is trying to take the title
of 'Queen Bitch' from Jean O'Boyle.

Sunny-------Did someone die in here? Smells like it, Boa.

On Mon, 31 Jan 2011 17:54:27 -0500, wrote:
I never saw any shows. The ship has been stretched and they did not
expand the dining room the buffet or the theatre. Our table mates
were constantly talking about having to go a hour in advance of the
show in order to get a seat. I'm just not going to spend an hour that
way. Bob went to one of the shows, and didn't go again. Some of the
time it was because he had something else that he wanted to do.

Good things:

I do not know what effect the stretch of the ship had on the main
dining room as we had fixed dining, first seating. I did talk to
someone who said the Anytime or My Time or whatever was in the upper
deck of the dining room.

On the Bahamas cruise (9 days) the waiters did their little dance and
song once. On the Caribbean cruise (12 days) they did it THREE TIMES
(each of the last 3 days). It was a little silly to do it that many
times.

The breads and desserts were excellent - very good bread all the time
and yummy desserts..

It was hard to find anything else good to say about the food. The
service was terrific. The food - not so much.

I will start off with the fact that it was way too salty. Every woman
I talked to said her ankles were swollen. When I got home I weighed
myself and I had apparently gained 10 lbs. Two days later when my
feet were back to normal, I had only gained 4 lbs. The hot soups were
a particular problem with the salt. The hot and sour soup was too
salty for me to eat.

My other main beef was the cranberry juice. We don't drink anything
much other than water, and sometimes herbal tea. But I do like a
glass of cranberry juice every day. On Celebrity, the assistant
waiter had a glass for me every day at dinner. On this ship on the
first cruise they told me that there was no cranberry juice on the
ship even at the bar. The second cruise they said I could order it as
a drink, but it was $2.24 (after the tip was added) and it was a small
glass with a bunch of ice cubes in it. I could not buy a drink card
and get cranberry juice - I would have to pay for each one separately.
I wanted to get off and buy a bottle of cranberry juice, but Bob
didn't like that idea, so I didn't do it. But - I mean - even the
Hampton Inns have cranberry juice.

The dinner menu was very nicely laid out and easy to read. There were
four sections. A separate card had the diet options with the calories
for each item and then the standards that you can order any time. Then
the big menu had an Appetizer section, a Wine section and the middle
section was the chef's selections and the regular entrees. There were
vegetarian options for each meal. In addition to the bread, the
appetizers were very good with the exception of a crab cake which Bob
said they should be ashamed to serve anyone from Maryland. He also did
not like the cocktail sauce that they had for the shrimp cocktail. By
the second cruise he got them to bring him ketchup and horse radish,
and he made his own.

Our waiter made many recommendations and brought samples of the
entrees. [He may have done this because people ordering multiple
entrees slowed up the service quite a bit and made us behind the other
tables.] But I thought there were too many Indian and Oriental type
entrees, and I also thought there was too much food. A lot of time
none of the entree's appealed and I'd have three appetizers instead,
and three was all I could eat. Once or twice I ordered the steak
because there were no other entrees that appealed to me at all. Bob
ate the salmon about 90% of the time but that's because he really
likes salmon.

We almost always ate breakfast in the main dining room. The menu was
the same every day except for some specials which the waiter would
announce. The thing was - there were things that you could get that
were not on the menu. You had to guess that you could get Eggs
Benedict or poached eggs. (I didn't try them on Eggs Florentine)

Also apparently they are trying to turn the main dining room into a
buffet restaurant as there is a buffet section for both breakfast and
lunch. At breakfast, the first cruise they did not have skim milk for
cereal on the buffet and at one point they didn't have whole milk
either. They also did not have the regular milk boxes that you open
one side and pour the milk out. They had the kind of juice box that
you poke with a straw. When you try to pour milk out of that box, it
dribbles all over the table. By the second cruise that was fixed.

Bob does not eat much for breakfast so he served himself from the
breakfast bar each morning and then just ate one slice of my bacon.
The first time he ordered one slice of bacon they gave him a plateful.
The second time, they gave him about 6 pieces and a couple of
sausages. Then when he ate one piece, they tried to give him more. So
I would order two pieces of bacon and would get between three and five
pieces and he would eat one or two of them.

The rolls and bread in the dinning room were really good, but the
toast was always cold and hard. Too hard to cut or even bite. I
think you could get toast made while you watched in the buffet but you
couldn't get any warm toast in the dining room. I don't normally like
toast but when I get poached eggs I like to have them on toast. Some
of the time I could only eat the part of the toast that had been
soaked in the yolk.

Lunch in the main dining room was much the same. There was a pasta
and salad bar that you could go to and get pasta or salad made to
order. But if I wanted a buffet I would go to the Windjammer.

The Windjammer was a big problem for us - we more or less had to eat
lunch there on port days, and we did not like it. Grandeur had a
better buffet. I was sitting at a table waiting for Bob to come back
with something to drink for us and I heard a man at the next table
tell his wife that he couldn't find anything to eat. And I agreed.

Some items on the buffet were - Kung Pao Chicken with no peanuts.
Borscht with no beets. And Stroganoff with no noodles or rice to put
it on, and then they had rice another day with nothing to put on it. I
would get spaghetti and I would have to go over to the Caesar salad
area to get parmesan cheese. The sandwiches were made of sour dough
bread which was good but when you bit into them, the filling would
squirt out all over you. Or else they were soggy on the bottom. I
did find pb&j once but the bread was stale and hard. One day I wanted
a banana to take back to my room and presto - no bananas. They were
there when I got there, but none when we left.

We usually got lemonade to drink, but it was so strong that we had to
dilute it by 2/3rds to have it drinkable.The desserts were, as
everywhere, good even in the Windjammer. I got a pizza from the pool
bar which was good.

We tried to go when there wouldn't be a lot of people there because
even in the best of circumstances if I had to wait while someone
served themselves, my back would hurt too much and I would have to go
sit down. Sometimes the servers were offer to help me if I had a bowl
of soup, and occasionally they would offer to bring us something to
drink. Otherwise they concentrated on cleaning the tables which was
good as there was always a stiff competition for seats.

Just keep in mind - We had a good time

Also keep in mind that while I am critical of the cruise line, the
ability to cruise out of Baltimore will balance out ANY of my other
complaints. Although next winter I might try Carnival.

In article ,
wrote:

I got off the ship and went to the front of the terminal (outside) and
I did not see any signs. I asked the workers in the terminal and none
of them knew where I could catch the bus. Someone I talked to later
said I would have had to go across the street and through the tunnel,
and somewhere over there was the bus stop.

I can't understand how you could not find it but taking the local bus
is a waste. I found that out the hard way. The only thing semi
interesting was that surf store. The best things to do at Port
Canaveral are the NASA Space Center or going to Disney, Universal or
Sea world. Unless you rent a car the cruise line excursions are it.

I do NOT mean that. I mean that the free bus was not on the port map
and if it had been we wouldn't have been trying to get a taxi to the
fort. It would have been really easy without a wheelchair.

The port maps are put out to steer passengers to cruise line approved
stores. I never use the port map. When you go on a cruise you need to
research the ports ahead of time and also get your own maps. Cruise
Critic's ports of call boards have a lot of info.

And was that on the port map information? No it wasn't.

Did you ever think of asking?

Before we have always had an announcement when the ship is cleared. It
doesn't always happen per the schedule. It doesn't cost them anything
to make the announcement - why have they stopped?

Maybe your cruise director or Captain did not make the ship is cleared
announcement but they have not stopped. Why didn't you ask onboard why
they were not making it?



--
Charles

On Fri, 04 Feb 2011 20:58:19 -0500, Charles
wrote:

In article ,
wrote:

I got off the ship and went to the front of the terminal (outside) and
I did not see any signs. I asked the workers in the terminal and none
of them knew where I could catch the bus. Someone I talked to later
said I would have had to go across the street and through the tunnel,
and somewhere over there was the bus stop.

I can't understand how you could not find it but taking the local bus
is a waste. I found that out the hard way. The only thing semi
interesting was that surf store. The best things to do at Port
Canaveral are the NASA Space Center or going to Disney, Universal or
Sea world. Unless you rent a car the cruise line excursions are it.

We've been to the area to stay - not interested the space center or
Disney. I do like to ride around on a local bus just to get kind of a
flavor for it. I find it relaxing and interesting.

I do NOT mean that. I mean that the free bus was not on the port map
and if it had been we wouldn't have been trying to get a taxi to the
fort. It would have been really easy without a wheelchair.

The port maps are put out to steer passengers to cruise line approved
stores. I never use the port map. When you go on a cruise you need to
research the ports ahead of time and also get your own maps. Cruise
Critic's ports of call boards have a lot of info.

It is true that some ship's port maps don't have information on them,
but the HAL maps that we had on the Panama Canal cruise where we went
all the way down to Peru had both informative port maps and a lecturer
who gave interesting port talks (as opposed to port shopping talks). I
don't object to having the port shopping information on the map, I
just think they ought to be able to include other information also.
Why let them get away with such laziness?

For places I have not been, I do the Cruise Critics thing and also get
information on line in other places. I knew about the free
bus/trolley, but not exactly where it ran.

And was that on the port map information? No it wasn't.

Did you ever think of asking?

I knew about it because on a previous visit one of the golf carts
picked me up as I was lagging about a block behind Bob, and since I
didn't have any cash on me, the other passenger paid my fare.

As for asking - that's like a family joke of ours

Me: Why didn't you tell me that Mary had twins?
Bob: You didn't ask.

So I would have had to know that there was a possibility before I
would know to ask.

Before we have always had an announcement when the ship is cleared. It
doesn't always happen per the schedule. It doesn't cost them anything
to make the announcement - why have they stopped?

Maybe your cruise director or Captain did not make the ship is cleared
announcement but they have not stopped. Why didn't you ask onboard why
they were not making it?

I ask so many questions anyway that I didn't feel the need to ask that
one. We usually just went out on deck and looked to see if people
were getting off yet.