Our family of four were recently on the HOTS out of FLL for the 8 Day Southern Itinerary, in the 2BR ATS. Our research here and other blogs were tremendously helpful and am hoping to return a favor to those looking to book Star Class. This entry will not include Adventure Ocean or excursions. This was our first vacation as a family, and the toddler children were with us the entire time (more on that). I'm also happy to answer specific questions.
Some general comments. First, the crew we interacted with were uniformly gracious and polite despite coming off a very very busy Thanksgiving sail. We also thought the crew did a great job cleaning, and there were plenty of ppl cleaning public spaces. Our daughter was sick on the second day and vomited as we walked to our first formal dinner at Chops through Central Park. We cleaned up as we could and alerted a nearby waitress to inform her of what had happened, asked for a janitor to come clean up, and within five minutes someone came to help clean up. We provided our room number and within ten minutes of being back in our cabin, we received a call from the nurse, and also received a subsequent follow-up call to make sure our daughter was fine (and asked us to not put her in AO until she gets the green-light from nursing). So big kudos to RCL up and down the chain.
As was noted by many others, the Genie and the SC is fantastic for those who want it, use it well, or when things go south as it certainly did with us. Case-in-point, our trip was immediately up-ended because several of us caught a stomach bug the second night, so dining decisions were made as we went despite the pre-arranged scheduled. We suspected bad milk being left out as the initial bad actor, so we asked our Genie to have room service bring milk at regular intervals instead of storing it in the cooler which, he accommodated. He brought toys from AO to the cabin for our children to play with while they recouped, etc. We wanted the kids to experience Wonderland for dessert, so we had sushi from Izumi then went to Wonderland for dessert, which he was able to schedule. We did not see shows, etc., so he didn't have to reserve seats and most of our asks were dietary in nature.
We wanted to take a nice family photo in front of the Christmas tree on the last sea night after the roaming photographers had ended their work, and he was able to arrange the studio ppl to come take our photo and threw it in with our package (which we would have paid for regardless). Finally, we had some charges from Labadee which should not have been on there, and our Genie quickly took care of that upon a text. I equate the Genie to being a highly effective personal concierge who has access to the resources we're not familiar with on the ship.
Some other musings. We thought the ATS was perfectly appointed for our family of four and I think comfortably houses a family of six. We did not utilize half of the storage space. There's also way too much food, snacks, etc. and we actively worked with our Genie to keep the snacks and serving sizes down to reduce waste. For families looking to book a cabana at Labadee's Barefoot Beach, the beach/ocean front cabana is the better value than the over-the-water cabana given its proximity to the water and ability to allow the children to pay in the sand while remaining in the cabana.
Regarding the issue of tipping, we tipped in the range recommended by here and elsewhere ($600). I understand we may be on the low-end, but we also took needs and use into consideration. I strongly disagree w/pejorative comments in other posts that Genies were tipped oriented or followed-us around for that purpose. Money never came up, ever, including my forgetting to hand him the envelop the night before our disembarkation. To the extent the tip was on the lower end of the scale, it is not a commentary on his quality but a qualitative assessment of our use of the Genie's time. We also took care of our room attendant ($600), whom I thought was very gracious and genuine, and could not do enough for us. We generally make a waiter's day during the holiday season and opted to tip our steward this year and make his day. We are fortunate to be able to do something like this, and are happy to thank those who helped us make the trip special for the kids.
All in all, our time on the HOTS would have been miserable if we did not have our Genie, and I feel the best value of the service is when something goes wrong particularly with little ones in tow (although there's also plenty of very good things about the program aside). There's probably a learning curve here too regarding the various "asks" as to what the program encompasses because like others, we don't really know, and still don't, but I chalk that up to lack of SC experience. So, who should book this? I think if you're on the fence, it's probably a good bet you'll enjoy the program. If you're stretching to book a SC cabin, I wouldn't do it, and I say that because the non-SC suites have some elements of the Genie program, albeit to a lesser extent, built in. The price differential between a non-SC and an SC cabin probably does not justify the ROI if you're having to stretch to get there.
Happy to answer questions as well.
