Ken W.

Age: 44
Occupation: Professional
Number of Cruises: 3
Cruise Line: NCL
Ship: Majesty
Sailing Date: December 11th, 2004
Itinerary: Western Caribbean

I would NOT recommend going on this cruise. We did have fun and made a few friends but the bad out weighed the good on this trip.

The Ship is small and shows her age. Rooms are wickedly small! If you do decide to go on this cruise spend a bit more for the bigger room not the better view. You really don’t want to see the mattress under the sheets either. But otherwise the ship is Very Clean.

The Crew is GREAT. They are very polite and make you feel very comfortable and welcome at all times. No need to fear with the mandatory tip they really earn it.

Ports of call are of course great but the order in which you stop, the times you get to spend, and amount of stops only (3) make this one of the worst things about the cruise. You just don’t get enough time on shore. Example we had to have a document check and tender at Key West so by the time we got to Mallory Sq it was well past sun set. Leaving about 3 hrs before you had to be back on board. In Grand Cayman the swim with the string rays was nice but after we did that with a quick run to Hell and the rum factory left no time for anything else not even shopping. Four days at sea on this ship is way too much time! It gets boring fast. I wonder since they only stop 3 times why they couldn’t spend a full day (at least 12 hrs) at each place… its not like they have to be in a hurry. At one of the shows the cruise director made a joke about it and I feel he just doesn’t realize how much a premium shore time is for people who don’t get to visit these places every week.

Speaking of entertainment. The shows were fun maybe not Vegas quality but hey.

Food was both Fantastic (at the dinning rooms) and horrid!! Flat out bad (at the buffets and room service)

Freestyle dinning was no problem! We were always seated quickly when we said we wouldn’t mind sharing a table. This was great because we met so many really nice people every night. It was definitely the thing we liked best about the cruise.

The 24 Burger and Pizza is unappealing not just the food but also this area was very dingy and unsanitary looking. There were no covered place to sit here and no beverage services near the grill.

The Buffet: Truly SAD. Very poor quality bland tasteless food. In addition they do not have enough comfortable seating for this area. Inside and forward maybe 40 to 60 people can sit, but when that area fills they expect you to use the tables around the pools, which are exposed to the elements and can be very windy, rainy and cold. Most of the special events are on the 10th deck and everyone is crammed up there. Getting a salad and a place to eat it was more hassle than it was worth. Even a cup of coffee or tea isn’t easy to be found after 10am.

Drink prices are really high. If you drink you will find yourself drinking more since you don’t have to drive and there is not that much else to do most of the time.

The Casino; The table dealers were the unfriendliest bunch of folks working for tips I ever saw. I love casinos and I spend lots of time and money in them. This one is mostly bad karma. But there were some really fun passengers playing and livening up the place. I will never forget the “Winner Winner Chicken Dinner Man”. They do have most of the tables you usually see and a good assortment of slots. Don’t bother with their slot tournaments or bingo games odds for the return are definitely not in your favor.

Boarding: Kind of confusing not knowing where to go or park. But it didn’t take to long.

Call for exact instructions if driving.

Disembarkation: They ran about 5 hours late to start with and that meant a horror story for some of our friends who didn’t get off the boat till 2pm or later. I can only sympathize with the people getting off and those getting on. Getting on and off this boat seems like headache no matter if its CHS or Key West.

In conclusion. This cruise was pretty cheap for us, we managed to grab a low last minute fare and we didn’t have to fly since it left out of Charleston which is close to where we live. It did have it moments. But we agreed that despite the low cost it wasn’t worth doing again. We have enjoyed other cruise lines far more and with limited vacation time there are much better cruises to the magical Caribbean.


Note The Weather for this trip was horrible cold at the start and windy the whole time which meant some rough seas but since they couldn’t control that I tried to leave that out.

It did make for some great sleeping but I don’t think that this ship has stabilizers and if they did they were not using them.

 

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