All in all it was a great vacation. From tricking the kids, to meeting old friends, visiting new places, swimming with dolphins, eating ice cream at 10 pm, climbing a volcano and every thing in between. Most of all it was time spent with family and after all that’s the more important part.
Disembarking was painless enough, 5,000 people thought a pair of 6″ double doors…what could go wrong…but the doors belong to the port and not Royal Caribbean. Bit of a line, usual back and forth and customs, out on the street, which was not moving, cab, and off to our bed for the night.
Royal Caribbean does a great job of everything but fails a bit in the people moving business. The only other knock I’ll give them is one of our excursions was not completely up to par. Sapphire Beach on St. Thomas was a bit disappointing (see previous post for move info). It got hit hard in a hurricane last year and really the whole island has not bounced completely back. All the rest were great, less the people moving portion of course.
As this was our first cruise as a family and my first ever, no, motoring up Lough Ree with a ham sandwich and warm Coke does not count as cruising, l’d say it was a success on many levels and we will most likely come back again for more.
Coming off the ship I snapped the following. No rest for this crew, turn around time from last person off to first person on is less than 5 hours! That’s 5,000 plus off, get the ship squared away, provisions loaded, take on fuel and other essentials and 5,000 plus new cruisers come onboard. I’m tired just thinking about it.
alan j quinn 