Had2cruz

Thanks for the great review! For those of you sailing on 6/25, check out our roll call for our sailing! My family and I are really getting excited!!

Just back from our 6/11 cruise on the Empress and everything was great. Very pleasantly surprised.

I'm so glad you had a good cruise! Welcome home!

Now I wish I had been on your cruise! Great review, can't wait to hear more! I loved all your snapchats. I was following last week and my family and I looked forward to each one!!

Just off the boat, and my expectations after reading the reviews were exceeded. Never heard complaints of no A/C, plumbing issues, etc. Never waited in any long lines, had tons to eat, and while the entertainment was limited, it was very good. Yes, the staterooms are small, but we spent little time there. Have really nothing negative to say about our experience. All the kinks that needed to be worked out, have been. Next cruise will be back on a bigger boat, but not because of a bad experience on the Empress.

Woohoo and welcome back! So glad you had a good cruise!:):)

Great pictures, thanks!

I will say going into this cruise, I did not have high expectations (with this being an old, small ship and only being it's third cruise) but even with the issues we experienced, I did not put a damper on the cruise and it was actually, shall I say "fun" being on th small ship. I have experienced all different sizes of ships (except for the Quantum Class), with the Freedom Class being my favorite and this ship was kind of "fun" for being different and having that 'old school' feel.

 

Let me know if I can answer anything else, I'll check back every now and then.

 

Eric

Your review is giving me hope for our cruise in a few weeks! I'm going to adopt your thought of "it being fun on a smaller ship"! Thanks!

You're going to love the cabins and, seeing where you're going. I know we did! :cool:

We can't wait! We had forward facing rooms on Disney's Fantasy and we really enjoyed them. Thanks so much!

We are at the IND airport headed to FLL!

Woohoo!!! Have fun!!

To the OP: I appreciate what you are trying to do. Good job standing up for yourself. Here's hoping that we both have great cruises!

Best wishes for a great cruise!!

Looking forward to your review as we have 2 OV forward facing cabins.

Enjoy!

I think they will be quite different cruises between the Empress & Harmony. *grin* For what it's worth, Oasis/Allure and the Disney Dream are probably our favorite cruise ships. So we've sailed sisters of the Harmony and Disney Fantasy.

Yes, they will be very different cruises! Of course, the Harmony will have lots of their kinks worked out long before we sail....I'm hoping the same will be true with the Empress.

We love the Disney ships. The only one we haven't sailed on is the Dream. I suppose if we're kicked off Empress, we can rebook on the Dream! *grin*

Thank you for posting. I'm sailing Empress on June 16th. Although I do like the play-by-play it would be nice if you commented on the big concerns that people have about the ship. Food service? Air conditioning? Bar service?

 

Thanks again.

I hope you'll post a review as well! Best wishes for a great cruise.

Thanks for your review! Looking forward to hearing more.

How do you know they are still bumping passengers off Empress on the next sailing?

 

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I read it in the roll call for the June 11-16 cruise.

We too were on the second sailing and your review is pretty much our experience. Actually I think you were quite friendly in your overall review. We were a group of about 15. Overall we had a good time, because we chose to make it a good time in spite of the actually cruise ship experience. This ship is not ready for passengers...simply not. Our issues:

 

1. Chops on First night, party of 12 - After 1 hour and 10 minutes 6 six salads were served. 10 minutes later, still not a single appetizer or soup had been served to any of the other 6. 5 minutes later we made the decision to get up and leave.

 

2. A/C not working adequately. We found the casino to be warm during the day and outright hot at night. Nearly everyone in our group complained their cabin was warm.

 

3. On the last day our bathroom smelled horribly of sewerage (we were on deck 8)

 

4. T.V. in cabin wasn't working and couldn't get anyone to come from maintenance (Guest Services repeatedly didn't answer phone calls. Twice we called and the phone rang 37 times twice in a row before disconnecting. Someone finally answered the third time.)

 

5. Selections in Windjammer were limited and mediocre in quality. Also, food option times in the evening are extremely limited. There is absolutely nothing available other than room service between 9 and 11:30 PM. (Room service took 45 minutes for badly PRE-prepared sandwiches)

 

6. Bar Service was extremely slow. Getting a drink was a 15 - 25 minute undertaking. Thus when you just wanted a water or soda, as OP stated, it wasn't worth it.

 

7. Bought Internet but it would connect our device. Some others in our group also experienced this problem while others had not problem. Those that had service said it was very slow. Those that didn't ultimately received a refund as there is not IT manager on board.

 

Lot and lots a little things over and over all cruise long just added up for a bad overall cruise experience. But as I said we made the most of it and had fun. I'm a roll with it type of person, but I also recognize Royal Caribbean did not deliver what we paid for. Definitely will keep this in mind next time we research a trip. We've been wanting to give Norwegian a try for something different and this probably just pushed us in that direction.

Where on Deck 8 were you located? Our cabins for our upcoming cruise are on Deck 8 and there were issues in one of them for the 5/28 sailing.

Just waiting for the phone to ring....

We're on your sailing (sorry we missed you at our cabin crawl this morning!) and signed up for S&S Voom. Signal not strong enough to connect live Periscoping so we've had to abort plans to broadcast. Disappointed. Snapchatting instead.

My family and I have been enjoying the Snapchats! Thank you!

Trying to come up with a back up plan if we are asked to cancel. RC is currently making calls to those scheduled to sail 6/11. We are sailing 6/25.

I hope your cruise has been fabulous thus far!

Thanks for your review. Not too sure about our upcoming cruise....

I'm not sure why anyone would pick this ship as their first cruise with Royal or even worse, first cruise ever?

 

It's just asking to be disappointed IMO.

 

It is very well known now, and has always been, that Empress is not really true representation of Royal. There are SO many great options out there on vastly better ships with better amenities. Proven amenities.

 

That's just my opinion, and I'm aware others have different views, but I definitely would not pull that trigger, even if I was a noob.

Sailing on the Empress will be our first cruise with RC. I was looking at length of cruise, a stop at Key West and a decent price. I booked in March and didn't learn of the Empress' history until April when cruises started getting canceled. Live and learn. We'll be sailing the Harmony in April 2017 so I'm giving RC a second chance....regardless of how our first RC trip turns out.

We are booked for the Saturday cruise I hope someone will update as the week goes by

Good luck and keep us posted! I'm not sailing for a few more weeks!

We just got off today (June 2 sailing). My husband and I had a great time!!

 

As you can see from my signature, we gravitate toward the newer, bigger ships, but I wanted to try something different - old and small. LOL. And we adjusted our expectations accordingly.

 

The ship itself is wonderful. I love the size, it's so quick and easy to get anywhere. On Allure, good luck if you forgot something in your cabin and had to go back. All the windows and natural light were refreshing. The Deck 6 outside promenade was my absolute favorite spot on the ship. Except when people lit up cigarettes on the non-smoking side. :mad:

 

Food: some was good, some was bad. The NY strip and beef tenderloin in the MDR were some of the best steaks I've ever eaten in my life! Ice cream was plentiful. In the Windjammer they were serving ice cream out of Blue Bunny cartons. It was tasty.

 

The service in MDR was fine. It was 1.5 to 2 hours each night. For me, that's average for every cruise I've been on. My complaint with the MDR was how they handled the lines waiting to get in. Once for dinner there was a wait at 8:15pm. The check-in guy said to either come back in 10 minutes or he could put our name on a wait list. That was dumb to tell us to come back. The line could be twice as long. We got on the wait list and waited about 20 minutes. Then for breakfast, we wanted a table for 2 and were willing to wait. We saw lots of people being led in, assuming they were sharing tables. After about 20 minutes, our waiter from the night before saw us sitting there and asked if we were okay. We said we were waiting for a table for two. He said to follow him and led us to an empty table for two. And after looking around, we saw people that had walked past us earlier, already sitting at tables for two. I didn't think there were reservations for breakfast?

 

Cabin: we were in 8663. yes, it was warmer than we liked, but not hot. It was maybe 75 degrees and we'd like 72. No big deal. Our toilet leaked water every time it was flushed. We could hear the water dripping and after awhile, a puddle worked its way around to the floor drain. We told the steward and she gave some cryptic answer, "I see everything." Huh? Okay, but can you get someone to fix it? No one ever came that we were aware of.

 

Key West and Coco Cay were fantastic!! We did lots of walking in KW, and lots of swimming in CC. Weather was perfect!

 

Disembarkation: we did self-assist. Got in line around 7:00am and were in our car by 8am. The line was very long, but very orderly. No line cutting or angry passengers.

 

Besides the couple problems I mentioned, my husband and I had a blast! We'd sail on Empress again. And really, we've had some kind of problem on every cruise we've been on. It comes with the territory. As long as the positives out weigh the negatives, it's all good!

Thank you for some good news!!! Would like to hear more!

I second that request :)

Sounds like we might be on the same cruise and may possibly be neighbors on the Empress!

This is making me nervous for our June sailing....:(

Half a brain? Nice. How about for some of us this is our first cruise ever. I booked this ship based off of RCI's website. There were no REVIEWS to base my decision. I had a price I needed to stay at and Ports I wanted and the Empress fit. The issues here are things that should have been fixed in a 50 million $ overhaul. This is 100% on RCI not the passengers.[/quot

 

Well said! We did the same exact thing and this is our first RCI cruise. We've sailed Disney and Carnival in the past. We are on the 6/25 sailing. We have the best drink package and are hoping for the best. :)

We are sailing on the Empress on June 25th, if it's not cancelled. Fingers crossed for those booked on the May 28th sailing!!

Hi Faith,

I am so glad I found your trip report! We are sailing on the Glory on 5/27 and this is our first Carnival cruise. (We have sailed with Disney a few times and loved it.) We are from VB, so it is only 20 minutes to the terminal in Norfolk! How convenient! I am taking nine graduating senior girls (including my 18 year old daughter) on the cruise, as a celebration for being in girl scouts for 12 years! I have two other moms going with us. We are very excited and I have referred the girls to your TR so they can see pictures of the ship. I have made notes about your dining choices and definitely want to try a "Kiss On The Lips"! My mom will also be sailing on this cruise, but she will be with a large group from her neighborhood.

I loved your photos of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel. We rarely go across it, but we do have a boat and we are out there on the water all summer. The very coolest ride is to ride between the bridges AT NIGHT!!! What a gorgeous sight with the lights from the bridges! I am hoping that my family will be out there when we sail away! That would be so cool if they could see the cruise ship on the water as we leave Norfolk. I assume they sail over tunnels to get out to the Atlantic, but what tunnel do they cross over....the one closest to VB or the Eastern Shore? I need to let my husband know so they can see us off!!

Thanks so much for your TR! It was so helpful and the pictures were great! All three of you are very pretty girls!!! Enjoy your next cruise!