What Were They Thinking? Jewel of the Sea

[jwp1405]

:( A new ship. an exciting itinerary. Sounds like the beginning of a great adventure to Northern Europe. It was not. My husband, 71, my sister, 63, and I, 68 shared a balcony room. Since this was our 14th cruise and many with 3 persons we all had expectations. Expecting a real bed for the 3rd person. When we got to our state room I knew it was going to be a LONG 12 days. Small, cramped, and the love seat opened flat onto the floor for my sister to sleep on. First of all it was a pallet, not a bed. Secondly it was very hard, no elevation, and very uncomfortable. Worst of all it plopped so close to the vanity that there were only 10 inches of walkway from our sleeping arrangments to the bathroom around this pallet. My husband fell onto my sister's legs, hurt them-- and he could not get up. No leverage. I tried to get him up and I fell on them both. Sounds like a good sit-com but it was not funny. We were all sore the next day and went to the service desk where a man of authority from a back office accompanied us to our room. He had NEVER even seen this configuration of a room. Never been in a room. ??? hmmmm. We made him get down on this pallet and talk about the discomfort we were faced with the whole trip. Too bad. So sad. No more rooms. Lots of nights spent in this room doing the tight rope walk to the bathroom at night. Whoever designed this type of room on this brand new ship needs to be evaluated for competency. We were told the pallet was designed for a kid. Well, even a kid deserves a real bed and besides it still folded out into the path to the bathroom from the other beds. So stupid it was incomprehensible.

We like to eat in the dining room for our meals. Forget that. The first morning they herded us into the first table on the right, smack up against the wall and I spent my breakfast handing things over to people on my right because the waiter could not get there to serve or remove dishes. Never mind the dining room had a zillion tables and everyone that came in was crammed into one table after another. And so I passed and ate the cold toast, the belated arriving jelly, and the coffee. My husband ordered pancakes and they did not bring the syrup or butter until they were cold cardboard. The eggs were cold. It was very bad. No more breakfasts in the dining room. So we tried lunch. Very mediocre food. Very limited menu and not very good tasting. The corned beef hash was tough. How can corn beef hash, where the meat is all shredded-- be tough and not edible? That was the end of our lunch in the dining room. Now let's go to the massive chaotic buffet where you go from station to station gathering up your food and then spending 10 minutes looking for a bussed table or even a table-- period-- to sit. -- and the next 10 minutes looking for your family. Yes, it was a nice variety but it did not change for the whole time at sea. Blindfolded you knew what was there. Same old stuff every single day and really nothing great. No waiters to serve drinks. They were standing in a group talking.

Dinner had the least desireable menu of any cruise we have ever been on. One veggie, One potato, and all was only mediocre. We have determined that the fine food is no longer found on RCCI. It just is not very good.

OK Now I will say something good. The ship was truly lovely. When I complained about our experience they asked me what I thought of the ship, in general. I said it was very beautiful to which they replied. 'See'-- you did like something. Well, cruising is a composit of everything not just how beautiful the ship is. So I have vouchers for our discomfort and I am trying like crazy to step on board another RCCI cruise ship to use the vouchers. Maybe I don't even want to 'go there'. The Vision of the Sea was fantastic in every way 5 years go to Alaska. Maybe that was because it was 5 years ago. The Rhapsody had a french fry on our balcony the whole trip to the Baja and it was not our french fry.-- the food was mediocre too.

Does anyone else find the whole cruise experience changing for the worst as far as food and entertainment goes-- and comfort? I remember the old ships with their elegance and roominess and every morsel you put in your mouth divine.

It all seems headed south.

[threeofus]

We were on princess earlier this year and the 3rd bed was a pull out couch. The frame was bent so the foot portion never came down level to the bed. The entire time it was curled up so your bottom half was never level with your top half. Very very uncomfortable.

 

Seems this is a common problem. We have also had the hard bed on RCL - given the choice I'll take that one.

 

Nothing is perfect....we always manage to enjoy our vacation. It's something we look forward to as a family every year. I'm happy not to be cooking the food or cleaning the room or doing laundry or working.

[bobbie0253]

Wow.... I am sorry you had a bad cruise :(

 

We have found the food and service to be very good.

 

Maybe you have now outgrown RCCL? Have you tried Princess? We found the food to be a little better as far as selection goes and with having anytime dining on their ships they seem to have the "open dining" down pat.

 

I agree RCCL can't seem to get this part right. That is why we almost always hit the Windjammer for breakfast and lunch too.

 

The sleeping situation sounds like it was aweful. I am sad to hear that RCCL didn't try to do more to fix that for you. Besdies the voucher.

 

Bobbie

[rcicruiser]

Sounds like you should get a new travel agent, they did not do enough research to make sure the room was right for you.

[NH Cruiser]

We were on the Jewel Baltic July 2-14 and had a wonderful cruise. We were in a Category D1. There was plenty of room in that category but I'm not sure how the full-size couch pulled out for a bed. From your description it sounds like you might have been in the smaller E category, since they have a smaller love seat. Perhaps when you had three in your party you should have booked a suite.

 

We thought the food was very good to excellent, and we really liked the new menus. The Windjammer is a buffet line; of course, you go from station to station to pick out what you want. I'm not sure when the buffet has almost everything on it to begin with how you would expect it to change daily. There are only so many breakfast items you can put out. We rarely eat breakfast or lunch in the dining room, because you do sit at the larger tables with a group. You have to wait for the group to order and everyone at the table is served at the same time. It's OK on a sea day when you have lots of time but not on port days. Did you try room service or the Seaview Cafe, which had good luncheon selections?

[SeaBaby]

We sailed the Jewel in June, British Isles and Norwegian Fjords cruise. Had an E3 balcony cabin. No complaints whatsover about this ship, the food, the service, or the passengers. We had a wonderful time.

 

I hope your next cruise is a better experience for you.

 

SeaBaby

[49holding]

for the sleeping congigurations. I was recently on the Serenade and on the last day saw the exact same sleeping arrangement in the cabin next to us...they were a family of 3 . I thought sheesh how awful. We we on the explorer 3 years ago with our 2 teens and shared a D1 with the flip out couch....again very little walkaround room. That was the last time we shared a cabin with them. Anyway your TA should have looked at the deck/cabin plans and have known that this was the configuration and that especially for adult cruisers ( who get up at night to go the BR,etc) this was not advisable. Carnival ships have better sleeping arrangements in their balcony cabins. As far as the DR goes you were at open seating placed at the same table up against the wall every brkfst and lunch???? I am sorry that you did not enjoy your cruise

[Erie Dave]

The Jewel is a beautiful ship, as is the Radiance. The pull outs and pullman beds are really intended for kids, your TA should have clued you in on that. If you are unable to get yourself up, how is that RCI's fault?

[sandbag7]

Nice reading Eriedave; her husband fell due to the limited amount of walking space. As to the rest of the post, I can't speak to RCCL cabins in general, but maybe you should be looking at a smaller ship in connection with your dining room/food issues.

[Merion_Mom]

So I have vouchers for our discomfort and I am trying like crazy to step on board another RCCI cruise ship to use the vouchers. Maybe I don't even want to 'go there'. The Vision of the Sea was fantastic in every way 5 years go to Alaska. Maybe that was because it was 5 years ago. The Rhapsody had a french fry on our balcony the whole trip to the Baja and it was not our french fry.-- the food was mediocre too.

Does anyone else find the whole cruise experience changing for the worst as far as food and entertainment goes-- and comfort? I remember the old ships with their elegance and roominess and every morsel you put in your mouth divine.

It all seems headed south.

I am so sorry that you disliked your cruise so much. I think that HAL may be a better fit for you at this point, and that you should only book at least a mini-suite for three adults.

 

Please send me those vouchers, since I will be sure to use them and not make you suffer through another dreadful Royal Caribbean cruise.

 

:)

 

Carol

[sandbag7]

Hey Mom, do you think the French Fry was ordered by the dbb's?

[PhoenixCruiser]

I am so sorry that you disliked your cruise so much. I think that HAL may be a better fit for you at this point, and that you should only book at least a mini-suite for three adults.

 

Please send me those vouchers, since I will be sure to use them and not make you suffer through another dreadful Royal Caribbean cruise.

 

:)

 

Carol

 

Geez, I'm very, very, sorry that you didn't do enough research before your cruise! If you did book through a TA, they need to be fired.

 

However, if Carol has ticked you off please send me those said vouchers :D

;) ;)

 

###

[comfortcove]

Well, some folks are just more demanding than others. If I were you I would have simply tossed that fry in to the fishies and plastered a smile on my face. How can you sleep comfortably in one cabin with three adults? Your DH must be really nice, mine would never want to share accomodations with my sister. I am glad you received vouchers, sometimes we have to be flexible on vacation.This weekend we went to an out of town resort wedding, rooms were very pricey, so we shared with the kids. It was okay for Saturday night, but definitely not for a week. All I read is picky, grouchy reviews about the Jewel. We sail in a week, and I think it is going to be great. Nancy

[bobbie0253]

Nancy,

 

You will love the Jewel. If we weren't so biased to the Voyager class ships, It would be by far our favorite cruise. The Seaview cafe is awesome. The Solarium is really different. The food was typical RCCL (good to very good) in the dining room but Windjammer was better than any other RCCL ship. Over all if was a GREAT cruise for us.

 

Check out my pictures if you want a preview. I take a lot of "ship only".

 

Happy cruising!

Bobbie

[comfortcove]

You are kind and reassuring. Hope all of your cruises are great. How can we see your pics? Thank you, Nancy

[glgolfer]

We were on the Jewel in December. The food was good to very good. They seat you in the dining room for breakfast & lunch as you enter the dining room. We generally enjoy that as we get to talk to different people. If they don't want to talk to us, that's ok, we can be self contained and not care what others do. The service can, at times, be slow. Just something to be prepared for. The stations in the Windjammer are a big improvement over the long, single lines. The wait time is greatly reduced. I agree the table situation could be improved, but we don't let something that trivial bother us.

 

Anyway, here are some pictures of the Jewel, she is a beautiful ship.

 

http://community.webshots.com/user/rcicruisers

[barbyma]

We had very similar experiences to all of you on the Serenade. The flip-out couch doesn't leave any walking space to the bathroom, but I frankly wasn't expecting any in a cabin the size of an E1. We had our 2 boys with us & were a little cramped. I wouldn't dream of sharing a cabin that small with 2 other adults.

 

After reading many posts about hard beds, I was surprised to find them quite comfortable. I guess it's a subjective thing.

 

Nancy, we LOVED the menu at the SeaView Cafe. Great place for lunch or a late-night snack!

 

I liked the way we were seated in the dining room. They started with tables by the windows and worked inward. Sure, the service was sometimes slow, but it was sometimes perfect, too. At dinner, though, our dedicated servers were fantastic.

 

I don't think you can expect cruising to stay the same. The food may no longer be 5 star, but it's certainly more affordable to cruise than it once was. You get what you pay for and RCI is a mid-market line. Not as nice as the Ritz, but certainly no Motel 6.

 

Barb

[Merion_Mom]

Geez, I'm very, very, sorry that you didn't do enough research before your cruise! If you did book through a TA, they need to be fired.

 

However, if Carol has ticked you off please send me those said vouchers :D

;) ;)

 

###

Excuuuuuuuuuuuse me! Stop butting in line. (or as some say, budging in line. I never got that............) :D :D

[kryos]

Does anyone else find the whole cruise experience changing for the worst as far as food and entertainment goes-- and comfort? I remember the old ships with their elegance and roominess and every morsel you put in your mouth divine.

It all seems headed south.

I was on a Princess ship this past April, and I had a cabin to myself since I travel solo. Of course, for one the cabin was fine. However, mid-way through the cruise a steward brought in a couple of extra life jackets to store in the closet. He said that since the room sleeps four, he had to make sure there were four life jackets supplied. I was shocked that this small room could be used as a quad, but he showed me the place where two additional beds could be dropped down from the ceiling. My God! I cannot even begin to imagine. If one person in those upper beds had to use the bathroom during the night, guess what? It would be a general wake-up call to everyone. "Can you put the light on? I need to get down!" Then they would have to climb down a ladder with no room to maneuver once they got to the floor. The main bed would be in the way! The only way I can imagine getting around the cabin with those two upper berths lowered would be to scooch across the floor on your butt until you got past the lower bed.

 

Not any way I would want to travel ... even if those two beds were occupied by kids.

 

I guess some people would rather save the money and pile as many people as possible into the cabin, but that's not my idea of a good time.

 

Frankly, if I were you, I'd be giving my travel agent an earful for not having advised you of the configuration of this room. She should have asked questions and gotten accurate answers, and then passed the info along to you. Then you could have decided if it was worth it to put three people into that room, or opt for something bigger.

 

Blue skies ...

 

--rita

[caviargal]

I am sorry you did not enjoy the Jewel.

 

Stateroom configurations are very detailed on the RCI site, as is the square footage. I always check the configuration of my stateroom, however, I would not have chosen to have three adults sharing any kind of cabin for such an extended period, personally.

 

And I sail RCI often, most recently on Serenade 6 months ago. The menus are fleetwide and not ever was there only one vegetable offered. Many nights I would ask for and receive a veggie platter for dinner and there was great variety.

 

As for seating, I always request and am given a table for two during open seating meals. I do not enjoy sitting with strangers and have never had a problem.

 

I am not one for fast food but found some good options - green salad with crab meat - at the Seaview Cafe. I found the food overall to be good and the service very good.

[Jazzfman]

The Rhapsody had a french fry on our balcony the whole trip to the Baja and it was not our french fry.

 

You stared at and stewed over a friggen french fry for an Entire Baja cruise?!!! Call the captain! Renagade FF on Balcony 8201....!:eek:

RCI really should have given a full refund for that horrible disaster...plus half off future bookings...and foot the bill for your therapy sessions....:p

Come on now......

[Former Goalie]

I am sorry you did not enjoy the Jewel.

 

Stateroom configurations are very detailed on the RCI site, as is the square footage. I always check the configuration of my stateroom, however, I would not have chosen to have three adults sharing any kind of cabin for such an extended period, personally.

 

And I sail RCI often, most recently on Serenade 6 months ago. The menus are fleetwide and not ever was there only one vegetable offered. Many nights I would ask for and receive a veggie platter for dinner and there was great variety.

 

As for seating, I always request and am given a table for two during open seating meals. I do not enjoy sitting with strangers and have never had a problem.

 

I am not one for fast food but found some good options - green salad with crab meat - at the Seaview Cafe. I found the food overall to be good and the service very good.

We have sailed three people twice (the third being a 10 year old and 13 year old) in a D and E stateroom. IMHO that is acceptable and tolerable for a seven day Caribbean cruise.

 

NO WAY would I ever want to have three mature adults in that same configuration for a cruise of any length, particularly one more than seven days.

 

There are more expensive cabin configurations available which would probably be more than acceptable for three mature adults.

 

I do fault the TA to some degree in not informing how confining this cabin configuration would be. This is, however, not a land based vacation, and cruise ship staterooms are known by most to be notoriously small. FWIW, RCI, CCL, NCL, all of them, are driven to make a profit, the only way they can do that is to maximize the revenue producing space on the ship. By doing this, that insures that the lines continue to operate profitably, and we can continue to cruise.

[lamwnfa]

We cruise with 3 adults in our room most of the time and have never had a problem. Granted it can be very "cozy" especially at night when the sofa bed is made up but we are sleeping so that's never been an issue. I've never had a problem sleeping on the sofa bed but then I'm not in my sixties. They are close to the ground and I would never expect my 70 year old mother to get in and out of it everyday..

 

The real problem for the OP is that she should/could have been aware of the configuration of the room. If they used a TA that information should have come from him/her. If not, the configurations are easy to find on the RCCL website and I've seen a number of threads on this and other boards about sofa beds. A little research before you go and help you have realistic expectations.

 

Food is completely subjective but honestly, I've never had a problem finding something to eat at meals. Some things are OK, some things good and even a few things that are excellent. The best part...I don't have to think about it, prepare it or clean up.

 

I'm already looking forward to sleeping on a sofa bed this time next year as we cruise the Med!

[goodml]

Folks, the cruiselines brochures and websites market these cabins as sleeping 3. They don't say 2 adults and the loveseat will sleep one child. Not everyone books a suite. We have sailed in an inside quad on the Sovereign of the Seas with our kids and that sucker was really small (119 sq ft according to the site) but we didn't mind it at all because there were two uppers and two lowers and enough room to walk.

 

We sailed the Jewel in an E1 last December and that cabin was really nice but small. The area where the chair was (and it was a chair not a loveseat) fit the chair and nothing else. If it did indeed fold out into a bed there would be literally nowhere to walk. We had our kids in an inside across the hall that had 2 uppers and 2 lowers (we only have 2 kids) and it was a really good thing because our friends who sailed along with us had booked a quad E1 2 doors down. This cabin was listed as a quad on the website, in the brochure and it was confirmed with RCCL booking department via phone. Guess what, it wasn't a quad. We got to the cabin and it had one queen, one upper and a chair that did not fold into a bed. Man did they scramble to try to fix things on a nearly sold out ship. They offered to move them to a D1 but my friends didn't take it because they would have been 3 decks down and way at the opposite end of the ship from us. (If they'd offered it to me I'd have jumped on it and left them behind just like that.:D ) RCCL didn't want to do it but we just ended up moving one of their kids to our inside and it worked out fine.

 

Moral of the story is you can't always trust the brochure, the website or RCCL customer service and, even though most people on here seem to feel otherwise, many of us do not cruise in suites and still manage fine if the cabin layout is efficient. I loved the Jewel but I can certainly see the point of the OP. Travel agents and RCCL customer service reps are just not that knowledgable about these cabins.

 

That being said, we all joked that there were more cranky older folks on the Jewel than on any other cruise we've taken. Maybe they were all sleeping on those pullouts.:D

[sailor moon]

This is why I ask a lot of questions on this message board as to what other people have experienced with a particular ship and cabin size. I made a cabin mistake on the Monarch (window completely blocked by a lifeboat) and from then on researched all my future cabins.