Reflection Feb 15-22 2014 Reviewed

[Miss JAD]

Everyone on this board has been so helpful so I thought I should write a brief review of our holiday on the Reflection from Feb 15 - 22. I will start by saying that we were on MSC Divina the week before and stayed in the Yacht Club. That cruise was quite a bit more money then Reflection Concierge Class. While MSC had many good features and we enjoyed our holiday on it, we preferred our stay on the Reflection. We are married with no kids and our ages are 38-42. The ports for this cruise were San Juan, St.Thomas and St.Maarten.

It was nice to get off Divina as late as possible (10AM) and do the short walk to Reflection. Divina was parked in front of the Reflection. We were Concierge class room 1403 and were checked in and on the ship by 11:30 AM.

After checking in we went straight to the pool. We had our only lunch at the Mast Grill, which was very good and started using our Premium Drink package. After hanging out at the pool until about 2:30 we decided that we could probably get into our room. I didn't hear any announcements that we could do this. After arriving at our room our luggage started to appear so we unpacked. The room was lovely, at the back of ship and was very quiet with no hallway noise.

The Reflection is a pretty ship with a lot of areas for everyone to hang out and enjoy. We are pool people so we spent most of our sail days there. We got drinks a few times from the Martini bar and the Molecular bar but we didn't really spend much time sitting at these places – maybe next time. It did take quite a while to get drinks at the Molecular bar.

We only ate at the buffet a few times for lunch and once on the last day for breakfast. There always seemed to be lots of choices and good food. The pizza is very good. We ordered room service most days for breakfast. The food always came as ordered, warm and on time. They phone first then knock on the door a few minutes later. Close to the end of our trip we did order the truffle omelet and crab cake eggs benedict. This was a $9 surcharge for each. There wasn't really any flavor to the truffles on the eggs and the crab cakes were very rich. I probably wouldn't order these again.

We had select dining and went to eat most nights between 7:30 and 8pm. The only nights we had to wait for a few minutes were on the formal nights. The food was very good. Escargots were available every night and I think I ordered them all but twice. The French onion soup was very good. One evening the waiter said the Chef made chocolate soufflé as a special. It was very good as was the crème brule. I only had desert a few nights. The steaks were always cooked perfectly as was the lobster on the 2nd formal night. My DH said he had the best pork chop that he has ever had. The last night I had the gnocchi and really didn't care for it. The alfredo sauce was very bland and the gnocchi was very starchy. The waiters were all very good and fast. We always managed to make it to the late show.

We ate at the Lawn Club the night we were in San Juan. The food here was very good but I think our waiter was rushed as we weren't offered any choices of rub or sauces to put on our steak. I didn't care for the lobster mac and cheese and had already filled up on the pizza, salad and steak. Everyone had said to be sure to try the warm chocolate cookie. I don't care for really sweet desserts and this was very sweet.

The shows that we saw were all good but I think we only went to 3 of them. There was a magician from Canada (Ryan Joyce) that was just OK. The late night Sin City show was very funny. We were not able to get in the first night despite being about 30 minutes early. They gave out VIP passes for the next show and we were able to get into that one. There have been lots of comments on here about the volume of music throughout the ship. I personally thought that some of the pool music was a little loud some days but enjoyed that music that was being played.

While in San Juan we went to the El Moro fort ($12 taxi). This was really neat to see and if you haven’t been here before you should take a couple of hours to see it. We walked back through town towards the ship and did some shopping and stopped at Senior Frogs for a drink.

In St. Thomas we took a cab to Emerald Beach. There is a Best Western hotel there that you can pay $10 each for a chair under a palapa. The Best Western has a beach bar where you can get good food and drinks. My warning here would be that the traffic was really bad going back to the ship so give yourself extra time.

In St. Maarten we went to Orient beach. We shared a cab with 6 other people for $7 each. The cab driver came back to pick us all up at an agreed upon time.

I thought that all the staff were very friendly and professional. This was a fun ship to be on. The week went fast and there were so many things that we did not do and so many areas on the ship that we did not visit. It is because of this that I am looking forward to our next holiday on Reflection next March.

[cynbar]

Thanks for your review, I was glad to see how positive it was. We'll be on Reflection in May and have been a little concerned about the many negative comments. Hope we have as good an experience as you did!