Like everything else we’ve written about in our blog here – for more than 20 years and counting now – our 5D4N cruise trip onboard the Spectrum of the Seas was paid for entirely out of our pocket. So, we’re pretty much at liberty to say exactly what we think. There will be two parts to my post here: the bits that worked well, versus the bits that didn’t. I’ll also throughout note tips for readers who’re also considering similar cruises with Royal Caribbean International.
Firstly, the good bits:
The ship is relatively new at just three years old. Granted that there hasn’t been that many sailings until recently when travel restrictions eased up here in Singapore, but the ship still looks like it’s kept up very well. Guest staterooms are clean, and likewise for the dining areas and common activity areas.
Staff are, for the most part, friendly, if to varying levels. The staff working the F&B establishments and also stateroom maintenance attendants fared best in this regard, while the activity persons varied. The staff guides and instructors manning the busy stations – e.g. FlowRider, Bumper Cars, SkyPad – probably didn’t have it in them to be beaming with all smiles at every guest having their turn, or be super engaged. They were largely all business-like. The exception to this is when H was with her teen group that got exclusive access to FlowRider, where she was guided, patiently, by activity instructors.
We liked our Ocean View Balcony Stateroom. It was just large enough for the four of us, the constant bumps into sofa bed frames notwithstanding. Thing is though: we didn’t eventually spend that much time on the balcony: the ship was only slowly sailing, if at all, for a good part of the cruise. That meant that most of the time when we were in the stateroom, there was little particularly interesting to look at, aside from the calmness of the sea waters. I guess this would be very different if you’re sailing port to port. But do remember too then there are numerous other places other than your stateroom, e.g. on deck 15, where you can get fabulous views as the ship approaches land masses.
Pro Tip #1: readers would need to make the very difficult decision of whether the additional expense of reserving a stateroom with a balcony is worth it. If you have gobs of money to spend, go for it. But if not, don’t sweat it – you won’t be missing that much, and there are workarounds if you’d like to look at the wide blue yonder.
The ship’s WIFI that permitted access to the Internet worked well enough for the most part. There was an advisory letter in the stateroom that provided clear instructions on how to connect your devices. Basically, on your device, connect to the ship’s Guest WIFI SSID, then open up a browser (or type login.com in the browser address bar), create your unique account if this is your first login, re-login, and you’re good to go. To logout, go to logout.com in your address bar.
You can bring onboard as many devices as you like, but you can only simultaneously connect up to the number of devices you signed up for (1, 2 or 4 devices). If you’re already at your limit, one of your currently logged-on devices will get disconnected. One challenge here though is that you won’t know what device is getting disconnected, nor do you have an option to choose. My educated guess is first-in-first-(logged) out, but I didn’t have the inclination to test my theory.
The quality of Internet access itself also seemed differentiated depending on what you’re doing and the kind of data traffic that’s being exchanged. For instance, YouTube worked very well for the most part, as did social media video streaming. So we continued to get our daily fixes of Trevor Noah and Stephen Colbert. However, app update downloads were atrociously slow – like the good old 33.6K modem days – as was also upload speeds to Cloud storage accounts, e.g. OneDrive.
Pro Tip #2: either sign-up for as many devices as you’d comfortably need logged on and then some, or be prepared to exercise some really good device management – i.e. knowing which device to log out before you login using a different device). I reckon you’ll want to make sure that your plan caters for at least every adult in your party: so, at the very least, support for two devices for two parents. The RC app also offers account to account text messaging for a nominal fee of USD1.99 per account per day. We didn’t try this feature, and instead relied on good old WhatsApp between the missus and myself to be in contact when we were at different activities.
Dining at @ Main Dining Room was by far a seriously more pleasant experience than the rustle and bustle of Windjammer Marketplace. Mains change everyday, while appetisers and desserts occasionally repeat. There are also premium menu items offered at Main Dining, but we were contend with the standard and complimentary fare. The typical amount of time we spent at dinners was usually an hour or so, with a good part of that time waiting for the food items to be served.
Pro Tip #3: the staff didn’t mind (or care) that we occasionally arrived as late as 30 minutes from our requested dining time of 5:15PM, and our assigned table was also available for us. Do call ahead of the cruise sailing to state your preference. If you’re in a rush to dine – e.g. because you have an upcoming performance to attend – you can make this known to the wait staff, and they will do what they can to expedite. Your party needs to also all arrived already before you are allocated a table, though I suspect this would be more the case for guests without already assigned tables.
Also on dining, the Seaplex Dog House and Sorrento’s Pizza were Godsends. I mean, sometimes you really don’t want fancy food: you just want some comfort food to binge over. That the latter is still open till 2AM means at no point should you go hungry. There are also snack bars pool side that will serve out complimentary small eats.
Pro Tip #4: there’s really no need for you to pack snacks in your luggage. You will be well-fed while onboard. That is, unless you are too lazy to literally just walk a few steps to the lift lobby, take an elevator to deck 15, and help yourself to heaps of pizzas there.
The activities for us were a mixed bag. There’s a somewhat good enough range: and the highlights for us were Pengfei Su‘s performance at the Royal Theater, the FlowRider, and the Guess the Drawing and Movie trivia gameshows. Seating was without fail comfortable, events always started on time, and you’re free to leave early if you wish. Other activities felt a bit flat, e.g. the adult paper cutting/art n’ craft activity. Or were over too quickly, e.g. Bumper cars.
Pro Tip #5: be really prepared to join queues for the popular activities, and don’t fear coming back for activity queues that are too long, especially FlowRider. Don’t miss Pengfei Su’s performance. If you miss The Silk Road or John Taylor‘s shows, don’t sweat it either. The Silk Road is visually interesting, but the exuberance and energy shown in the dances aside, you’d be left wondering what the cultural insights offered are. John Taylor’s was an OK diversion, but finally – in my opinion – not offering a lot that I haven’t already seen previously.
Pro Tip #6: Make use of the supervised adventure play zones for your kids if you’d like some exclusive couple time with your spouse. Sure, Peter didn’t especially enjoy Adventure Ocean where we left him there for a single morning, but Hannah loved the teen lounge, and found every possible opportunity to head there on her own.
And finally, that our specific sailing was free of accidents and emergencies is something that we’re grateful for. I mean, stuff like this or this is pretty scary and can spoil your holiday real quick!
Continued in the next post: the things that didn’t work so well!