Recently, my boyfriend Nick and I took a 5-day cruise through the Bahamas on the Royal Caribbean ship Majesty of the Seas. I thought I would do a quick post on my experience in case you are considering cruising soon.
- Food: Let me start off by saying that I am a very picky eater and pretty much only eat American food. Part of our cruise fare included access to the buffet for every meal. The first day, I was able to find plenty of things to eat and most of them tasted pretty good. However, as the cruise went on, I found it hard to find anything good to eat at the buffet. There was also a place to get pizza pretty much 24/7, which is nice for people who like pizza (not me). There was a Johnny Rockets restaurant on board and for $6.95 a person, it was all-you-can-eat. The burgers weren’t that great but everything else we ordered was awesome. We went here two times on our cruise and both times it was a super enjoyable experience.
- Drinks: If you plan on buying more than one drink a day at the bar, it would definitely be a good idea for you to purchase the unlimited alcoholic beverage package. Drinks at the bar were ridiculously expensive. We both got soda packages, which was $8 per person per day. There were soda machines all over the boat and you could refill your Royal Caribbean cup whenever you wanted.
- Staff: 99.9% of the Royal Caribbean staff that we came in contact with were extremely polite and helpful. I was highly impressed with their level of customer service.
- Room/Housekeeping: The room was tiny and we ended up having two twin beds instead of a queen. By the second day, we ended up pushing the beds together into one big one which worked well. The man who was in charge of our housekeeping was so friendly and polite. He learned our names on the first day and greeted us by name every time he saw us. He also gave us recommendations for the island stops. Housekeeping cleaned our room twice a day.
- Affordability: One thing that was kind of annoying to me is the tipping system. Every time we made a food purchase, an automatic tip was charged onto my account. This is regardless of how much we spent. I prefer to choose how much I tip based on how good my service was. Obviously, taking a cruise vacation is not cheap. Everything was expensive everywhere we went.
- Atmosphere: I loved how the ship had relaxing “tropical” music playing most of the time. The people working were so nice and enjoyable to be around. Two downsides were the elevators and the roughness. The elevators were sooooo slow. We could walk up 11 flights of stairs faster than we could take the elevator. A lot of people told me that when you’re on a cruise, you can’t tell that you’re out at sea. There was a hurricane near us when we were cruising and I’m not sure if that had anything to do with the roughness. I found myself feeling nauseous many times and losing my balance from the waves.
- Activities: I liked that there was so much to do on board the ship. There was a casino, a pool, hot tubs, plenty of beach chairs, a rock climbing wall, a basketball court, and a ping-pong table. We always had plenty to do. The ship offered tons of activities almost every hour of the day. My personal favorite was the movies they played on the giant screen by the pool.
- Day Trips: The cruise we went on stopped at Cococay, an island the cruise line owns, and Nassau. I really enjoyed both of these stops. There were plenty of activities at each place. We snorkeled in Cococay and took a day trip to the Atlantis Resort in Nassau. I wish we would have had more time at each stop.
My overall impression of this cruise experience was that it was amazing and I would do it again in a heartbeat. This was the first cruise I have ever been on and it was so much better than I thought it would be. I have very few complaints about the trip. I definitely plan on cruising again with Royal Caribbean in the future.
