Lordy, lordy we did it!!! We have finally been back on a cruise!! I cannot express the feeling of ‘normalcy’ we had as we approached Port Canaveral and saw the whale’s tale of the Carnival Magic and the other two beautiful ships in port owned by Royal Caribbean and MSC! It’s a feeling we haven’t had in a long time, and I’m sure most of you feel the same way. There’s just something about cruising…..and only those who have cruised and fallen in love with it will understand.
I won’t say it was perfect by any means. Lots has changed. Some for the good and some not so good, in my humble opinion. You see, we’re old school, and ships are starting to change some of their processes based on ‘new school’ and/or the electronic generation. I’ll admit some things bum me out, because I feel the ‘experience’ of cruising is changing, and for those of us who have cruised for eons, this matters. For those of you brand new to cruising, you won’t really know the difference, and that’s good for you.
Prior to COVID they had already started to change the way cabin stewards take care of you. Old school was two cabin visits per day, one in the morning to clean up the room and one at night to turn down your bed. When they did the turn down you got the adorable towel animal and a couple mints put on your pillows, along with the printed news of what was happening on the ship the next day. New school is the cabin steward will ask you if you would like morning or evening cabin service, so they will only come once per day. And no more mints! We were also told ahead of time that the Fun Times (printed activities) would only be available on your phones through the Hub App, but they added the printed copies back into service prior to our cruise. I was so happy about that. Towel animals are still created, and I don’t think that will ever change. 🙂 If you are adamant that you want the two times per day service, your cabin steward will oblige. You just need to ask.
I believe the main reason for this is less staff needed, if they do one visit per day to your cabins. Sadly for the cabin stewards this means they are given MORE cabins to clean daily. I don’t think I even need to get into how HARD cruise workers work, and to think they are given more now makes me sad for them. But they continue to work hard with smiles on their faces. They are clearly grateful for their work. So please, please treat them well!!! Yes, you are on vacation and they are there to serve you, BUT we can always be humble and kind and understanding. No need to be rude and demanding. Treat others as you would want to be treated!!
The other thing we noticed that has changed post-COVID is the lack of printed menus in the dining room. Now this is something that truly urks me. The dining experience on a cruise ship is pretty awesome, and I feel they have really downgraded it. I understand that when cruising started back up they may not have wanted oodles of people handling the same menus, and in turn did not want to have to sanitize them all after every use. So they implemented the QR code for dining. What does this mean? Well, if you’ve ever gone to a restaurant during COVID where you had to scan the QR code in order to get the menu to view and order from, they are doing the same thing on cruise ships. Cruise dining has always been an ‘experience’, part of the cruise that has always been special, at least for me. Having to bring my phone, which I hate to use on a cruise, and scan a QR code in the main dining room makes me feel like I’m at Chili’s. It’s a bad thing, and one thing that I really think needs to be changed back.
With that said, they DO have printed paper copies of the menu if you ask for one, but they are just pieces of paper. They are not the nice printed papers in a black faux leather folder that makes you feel like you are fine dining nightly. But it’s better than nothing…I guess. Carnival Ambassador, John Heald, recently wrote on a Facebook post that he had to do the QR code for the first time to get a ‘menu of options’ while planning his mother’s funeral….Good Lord how sad! And one thing he thought about was how ‘cold and meaningless’ this was, and it made him think about how Carnival is now doing this in the dining room. It made him think twice about whether or not this should be done, and he was going to talk to ‘the beards’ (Carnival leadership) about it. I don’t know if anything will be done, but it’s nice to know someone in the industry actually agrees that it’s a downgrade from what we are used to and should be corrected.
I think the biggest disappointment for me was the lack of high quality service in the dining room. I’m not saying the staff weren’t great at what they do. What I’m saying is there was a huge lack of staff!! We have always had three wait staff on hand….the head waiter, the associate waiter/bus person and the bar waiter. On this cruise the head waiter was doing it all! Not acceptable!! He did his best, and he continued to do it with a smile, but again, we all know how hard cruise staff work, and the wait staff is among the HARDEST workers. I was crushed that they are doing even more. My heart really went out to them. We are told this is due to an issue cruise lines and workers are having acquiring work visas. I don’t know if this is true or not, so I don’t know if this issue will change and be better. We can only hope!
That will be the extent of my ‘complaints’ on changes or issues that have happened since COVID messed everything up.
We had a plumbing issue in our bathroom. We noticed our sink was not draining well. The steward must have noticed too. I’m assuming he plunged it out. In doing so this caused a leak underneath. I was brushing my teeth and just noticed how well the sink was draining, and suddenly my feet felt cold and wet. I looked down to see water running across the floor. The pipe under the sink must have broken, so the water was draining into the cabinet and coming out underneath. We called housekeeping, and in less than an hour it was fixed and all the water cleaned up! Very quick and efficient response!
I found the quality of the food both in the dining room and on the Lido deck to be great. We had no issues there, and the buffet options continued to be varied. Guy’s Burgers have always been a hit with us, and were still delicious! We also had our first BBQ on the private island Half Moon Cay which was wonderful, too! I was honestly awed they were able to serve thousands of people on land and never run out of food!!
I don’t know why but there was a HUGE increase in the number of scooter users on board. They were everywhere I turned, literally! I’m not opposed to scooter users by any means, but I will say that the number of them on this cruise was a bit of an issue in that they were parked everywhere. You had to walk around in narrow walk ways. I’m not sure how this can be remedied other than perhaps the cruise lines noting how many cruisers would be on board with scooters and limiting the number of them, but that might be tough. It did create a problem at the elevators as well, because it limited the number of people that could get into one. Thus this caused a bit more waiting. But people were very kind and accommodating. Patience is a virtue!
All in all, our first cruise back was amazing! Honestly, it was just wonderful to be back on a ship, sitting out on the deck looking at the gorgeous water as it passed, and having a great, relaxing time at our ports of call. (I will write about these in a separate post)
Until then……cruise on!!!
Just Cruisin' 