Pamela White

Age: 45
Occupation: Household Engineer
Number of Cruises: 1
Cruise Line: Royal Caribbean
Ship: Rhapsody of the Seas
Sailing Date: March 7th, 2004
Itinerary: Western Caribbean

My husband, myself and our 5 kids(11 to 19) just completed our first on the Rhapsody of the Seas, through the Royal Caribbean Cruise

Line.
IT WAS GREAT! The kids all loved the activities,we never saw

them unless we went looking for them. Each one did things they talked about excitedly about all the way through dinner each night, on the ship. They really had all the kids stuff well planned and the activity directors for all the kids were really skilled and experienced with doing things will all age groups. With my 5, it is rare to find someplace they all love at the same time.
 
Our usual family vacation venue is camping, so we didn't have any comments from the kids about the size of the state rooms. I was really expecting smaller, to tell you the truth. There was always lots of hot water whenever we wanted to take a shower. The rooms were neat, clean and the furnishings looked almost new. Our kids' steward was certainly challanged by the 4 boys being in one room, but he rose admirally to it. He would see my husband and myself go to breakfast, check the boys room and 2 hours later and they would all still be snoring away. When the boys lost stuff, he always able to find it.

The food and the service in the main dinning room was spectacular. It was alot more "gourmet" than I am used to. The review I read that said this was not a "foodie" cruise was right. There is not everything you could ever imagine to eat ,all the time. You could eat all day if you wanted to, but it would require walking around to the different areas of the ship. I thought the portions were smaller that what you get on land, but it gave us the chance to order several different things(most of which we never have had) and not feel too stuffed. The kids really loved the chocolate buffet. I liked eating in the Windjammer and watching the view of the ship moving through the water. We spent some time talking to our waiters. They are without doubt, bright, very observant and fun. There were people from every corner of the world, as the ships crew and that added to the "worldliness" of the cruise very much. I liked the Captains daily noon speech over the pa system. I found the english spoken, by lots of people for which it was not a first language, quite good.

The whole ship is very elegant. There is beautiful marble, wood, brass and art, every where you look. As a kid when I read twenty thousand leagues under the sea and I imagined Capt Nemos' ship to be just like this. I can close my eyes and imaging sitting in a lounge chair watching the blue ocean race by my window.....ahhhh.

The kids did all the ships board activities they could do.

My husband and I went for the shore trips.

Key West: Very colorful. Not my favorite place because we got there too late to do much but watch the sunset. We did go to the shipwreck museum and ripleys believe it or not. It was ok. If I had to do it again, I would just walk around. There is a "interesting" collection of street performers on the pier at sunset worth having a look at. At night it is more of an adult sort of place.

Grand Cayman: WOW the beautiful water. If I didn't see if for myself I would never believe it. We used Stingray City tours for our snokeling trip. Good thing too, because the ship canceled their trip. We had to walk aways to get to the bus pick up point, but it gave us a chance to get out of the crowds and see something other than shopping. I loved it. We took the two hour, three stop trip. Let's be real here, this is not a paddle in the pool and it was choppy. I saw dozens of beautiful fish and lots of coral. At the second stop pretty soon I was the only one from the boat still in the water, wimps didn't know what they were missing. I could watch fish all day. Sting ray City sand bar was the last stop. Really cool, these sting rays are huge. I was the first in the water with the captain of the boat. He had a bag of squid to feed the rays with and the bag broke, boy there were rays all over us. Sort of like really big,eager,sloppy,funny looking puppies looking for a handout. Ray skin is very smooth feeling and they are used to people. My youngest son stayed on the boat and watched. Even my daughter gave it a go. This was a British colony so it gave me a start when we got a ride to the boat in the bus, they drive on the other side of the road. They do zoom around and I probably missed a site or two covering my eyes when we passed on the right, but that was just reflex from driving differently in the US. They didn't really go that fast and the roads are sort of narrow. The kids were ok with this trip. My husband and I loved it. At lunch we sent the kids back to the ship and snokeled the wreck right out in the bay where the ships anchor. Nice.

Cozumel: If you only do one thing ,DO THIS! The water, the people, the scenery is beautiful. Everything you may want to do is a quick taxi ride away.(and I do mean QUICK, the taxi's seem to have some sort of unspoken competition among themselves to see who can get there first) We should have dragged the kids with us, but they chose to remain on the ship because they had stayed up all night. We when to Chankanaab park. If you only go one place in cozumel, go here. There are a dozen things to do, or just sit under a palm umbrella and look at the water. My husband and I went snokeling..of course. The fish are beautiful. There were hundreds of them. There is more coral and sponges here than in grand cayman. The fish have been fed and they come up and inspect you to see if they are going to get anything. They don't seem to care if you are there otherwise. They will look right into your mask. The fish were bigger than in grand cayman. It is just like an aquarium. I spent an hour watching a cleaning station in a coral formation, where lots of other fish stop to get their parasites and such cleaned off by the small wrasse fish. After this we went horse back riding with palmitas ranch. We took the 2 1/2 trip to the caves and temple ruins. It was just my husband, myself and our oldest son (and guide of course). We had the jungle to ourselves. It was beautiful( I say that alot....) we saw iguanas, birds and butterflys. The little village that surrounds the temple ruins was very quaint and quiet. There was a catholic church built next to the temple ruins. You can go in the maya caves, no railing, no glass, no official stuff in the way of looking at it. Oh yeah! We returned to the ship, salty, sandy, sunburned and smelling horsey, but we had one heck of a day.

Summary: This was a great family trip. The kids had a blast and the hubby and I had lots of time to ourselves. The food was fresh and well prepared. The crew , words cannot describe their professionalism. After having done most of the cooking and cleaning around home for 20 odd years it was a pleasure to have it done for me for a while. The explorations were the highlite of my cruise time.

Observations: I don't think I would take a kiddo under 7 or so because you are not going to get enough time to yourself, although the daycare looked really good, how is that different for them from what they (kid) do everyday anyway. It took several hours to get on board, we were so excited , the time passed quickly. It also took lots of time(5hours from get up to drive away in the car) to diembark and go thru US Customs. Big deal, the kids had all tried to pull all-nighters with their friends and just slept in the lounge chairs.

Port Trips: If you are really, really adventurous, do the short near by trips yourself(less than a half hour away in case you have to walk back). I don't speak spanish but I had no trouble, the local folks were friendly and try really hard to figure out what you are saying. If you want to go someplace over an hour away, like going to Cancun from

Cozumel, book thru the ship. Our adopted dinner time family went to Cancun and was late. The ship had to wait for them because they had booked thru the ship  .(the excursion was an hour late)

Downer: All that shop, shop, shop, shop, shop crap. I don't live to shop. All the announcements and handouts were about shopping, diamonds and duty free booze. Fine,great if that is what you like, but why go half way round the world just to shop for stuff you can get at home.

There was always some "seminar" about shopping for something. The piers were covered with expensive goodie shops, yech. You'd think by the advertisements that was the only reason we were there. My souveniers are a ton of pictures, sea glass from grand cayman ,some grand cayman currency ,all the day to day activity cards from the ship, two hand made glasses,from the ship with the royal caribbean logo pressed into them ( I felt they were indicative of the quality and personal service of the whole cruise, unique and handmade) and the fact that my kids are going to talk about this for the rest of their lives. Carpe Cruise

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