Connie

Age: 37
Occupation: Systems Developer
Number of Cruises: 2
Cruise Line: Royal Caribbean
Ship: Majesty Of The Seas
Sailing Date: January 28th, 2005
Itinerary: Bahamas

This was my second cruise with Royal Caribbean and overall it was good. Unfortunately we had some bad weather for the first half of the cruise so I felt some what cheated….of course the weather cannot be controlled.

Day 1: Embarkation

We arrived at the cruise ship at approximate 1pm. We boarded promptly and were at the windjammer café having lunch before you know it. The day was cloudy/rainy and so we basically stayed inside. At dinner many of the guests including myself became sick from the rough seas…. The evening show was cancelled and I believe many people stayed in their cabins. My suggestion is that if you are prone to sea sickness take Dramamine an hour or two before the ship sails on the first evening. An RCCL employee says the first night is usually the roughest.

I had preordered a birthday cake for my husband to be delivered to the dining room on this evening. The cake did not show up and needless to say, I was feeling too sick to talk to anyone about it. The next day I discussed this with an RCCL employee in the restaurant and they assured me that it would be at the table next night… and it was. I was disappointed that he didn’t get the cake on the night of this birthday, but in some respects it worked out good because I was not feeling so well that night.

I headed back to my cabin during dinner to get some Dramamine and my key card would not work on the door. I then went to the pursers desk to see if they could fix my key card… but the line was way too long… so I headed to the dining room for my husbands key card and his key card would not work on the door either. Fortunately for me one of the cabin workers was in the hall and let me in. We had to get our key card reset several times on our cruise and each time there was a long line at the pursers desk…. I hope they try to do something about the constant long line at that desk and fix the key card system.

Day 2: Coco Cay (??)

We had to skip Coco Cay because of the bad weather…. And we were told by a RCCL employee that it happens often this time of year. We headed straight to Nassau, but the ship could not dock because there were no docks open until another ship left. We were stuck doing the inside activities for most of day including BINGO. For those avid BINGO lovers they could run the games a bit more efficient and give more players a chance to win. The ship eventually docked at approximately 7pm. For those of us who were sick the night before we were happy to be docked.

This evening was a lot of fun. The show that was skipped the night before was shown this night – “The Beat Goes On” was entertaining. My husband and I bravely volunteered for the Love and Marriage game… we had a blast and a video tape of the game was left in our cabin the next day. There was a party on the pool deck with some dance instruction along with a conga line. The midnight buffet was on the pool deck along with ice sculptures. It really was a fun night.

Day 3: Nassau

We departed the ship in the AM to do some shopping in Nassau. If you are going there to enjoy the shopping and are a first timer I would highly recommend the on ship information session that we went to on the first day. It takes about 60 minutes but the information on where to shop, what to expect, and the places to get the best prices is well worth the time. We walked around and basically were enjoying the beautiful sunny weather. We signed up for the Sail and Snorkeling excursion in the PM. The sailing was enjoyable and the snorkeling was pretty good…. you only get to snorkel for about ½ an hour - which was fine with me, because the water was a bit chilly.

This evening was quieter than the night before. The midnight buffet consisted of wait staff walking around with trays of finger food in the lounge. There was a farewell show that I was a little disappointed about…. I guess I expected it to be similar to the show on the second night, but it was just a comedian.

Day 4: Miami

We were docked and they were calling people off the ship by 7:30am. I expected to not be called off the ship by 9am at the earliest. You are required to leave your cabin by 8am and wait until your color is called (each cabin was assigned a color the night before). This was somewhat annoying to me, because when I made my reservations I had a flight that was going out at 12:30 and was told by RC that I should not book a flight any earlier than 4 hours after docking time(advertised as 9am)…. Which would be 1pm. So I went through the hassels and the expense of changing my flight to 4pm. I also heard an announcement the night before that if you had an early flight to catch to let them know so you could be one of the first off the ship…. If I knew that I would have kept my 12:30 flight reservation. Needless to say… we decided to remain on the ship until 9am. It took us about an hour to go through customs and get to the airport. We then spent the remaining 6 hours at the airport.

Conclusion

Overall, we had a good time, especially after the night of seasickness and cloudy weather. We had many glitches on our cruise but all were rectified immediately by the friendly RCCL staff.

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