After some twenty cruises aboard
Azamara and Celebrity ships, we had an urge to try the world’s largest cruise
ship, Harmony of the Seas. We are avid readers of Cruise Critic, and we really
had no prior expectations regarding this ship. There are three companies under
one umbrella – Azamara at the top of the list (in both price and quality),
followed by Celebrity and then Royal Caribbean (RCCL), which is the company
most suitable for families. We were pleasantly surprised. The ship was new and
had naturally benefited from the technological developments that have taken
place in the ship-building industry during the past couple decades. Harmony of
the Seas is an architectural success: easy to find one’s way around, and the
dining rooms were partitioned off into separate rooms so that one never had the
feeling of being smothered in a crowd. The colors chosen are discrete and
remind one of Azamara’s ships after their recent refurbishment. The shower was
spacious and enclosed with an arched door – the most effective design I have
experienced on any ship; designers have obviously taken into account that
Americans (who are the primary target clients) have also become increasingly
‘spacious’. The arrangement leaves room for only a very tiny sink, and washing
one’s hands, not to mention the usual morning face wash, results in a lot of
water spilt on the floor. Fortunately the floor mat and towels are changed
twice a day, so never mind.
Restaurants
Good, varied food in both the free
restaurants and the special restaurants, which, by the way, are quickly fully
booked. Our cruise was for only two weeks – if we had chosen a back-to-back
arrangement and stayed on board four to five weeks, we would absolutely have
longed for a break and a change of dining fare. Quick and efficient service in
the self-service restaurant on the fifteenth level. The main dining room that
rises three levels tall had random, slow and frequently unenthusiastic service;
there was an apparent lack of effective management, because the staff did their
best but was unfortunately somewhat inexperienced. The same might be said of
the cabin attendants. A couple times we had to remind them that; “Yes, we would
like to have our towels changed today, too”.
Internet
Although the company strongly
profiles its VOOM package as the fastest Wi-Fi at sea, it was nevertheless as
deplorable as that found on any other cruise ship. During peak
Facebook-checking hours, one can simply give up. Five minutes to connect to a
website is not what I would call voom!
Otherwise, it was the usual routine: continual error messages, flashes of lost
connectivity or no contact at all. Harmony brags about its lightning Internet
access, but when you distribute it among five thousand passengers, it amounts
to woefully little per person.
As Elite class members on board both
Azamara and Celebrity, we get free Internet time, but on RCCL we got only one
day each. We thought maybe access would be better early in the morning or late
in the evening, but no – people seem to lie in bed and surf the Internet. The
best time to connect was actually during mealtimes.
This brings us to Royal Carribean’s
own app, which is supposed to display the program for the day, the meal menus
and shows, plus give you an opportunity to book what your heart desires. Royal
iQ has gotten more than its share of awful ratings in Google Play and iTunes,
and rightly so. It is slow, poor and lacks a lot of information; it is
difficult to book events, lacking confirmation of bookings and double-bookings
happened. The app is free and can be downloaded only to phones; it does not
work on tablets.
Booking of activities
The information on TV was somewhat
better and not as slow as what we have frequently experienced on Azamara and
Celebrity. Unfortunately, one could not book via TV here because RCCL assumed
that passengers use the telephone app or one of the deployed app boxes on
board. The TV system was spoilt by junk mail; it is irritating that a system
that is not particularly fast to start with has to be burdened with a large
number of unnecessary messages that continually have to be deleted. Naturally,
the TV system crashed from time to time, so it became extra difficult to check
restaurant bookings; but strangely enough, it seemed that the advertisements
always came through unscathed. All in all, the two or three important messages
we got during the trip drowned in the spam soup.
The idea is that all bookings of
restaurants, shows and other activities are to be done on the app-tablets that
are deployed throughout the ship. This would naturally have been done if only
they were in working order, but they are unfortunately just as poor as the
telephone app. The resulting scenario was that people were eager to try out the
new tool for the first couple days, but as they gradually became frustrated
with how poorly they worked, interest waned – and after a few days, the tablets
simply stood there, abandoned and unloved.
So, to book activities or a
restaurant table, the easiest solution was to visit the attraction during
opening hours and order from a living, breathing person; this worked fairly
well, but there were times when one had to wait in a queue. We tried calling to
place reservations; the main restaurant answered the telephone, the others did
not.
By good fortune, the invoicing
system worked perfectly; there was never an error in charging our sea pass for
drinks, etc. At the same time, one might question why they make the Diamond
benefits system so complicated; the rules must have been written by lawyers who
got paid by the hour. In some venues, we had to sign for free cappuccinos; in
other places, we did not; we do not know why. Some of the staff did not know
what was included, and this naturally led to unnecessary questions and (more or
less helpful) answers.
Facilities
As might be expected, there were a
lot of enjoyable activities, stage shows, zip-line (do it two or three times in
a row), a nice pipe (slide) spanning 10 decks (well worth doing several times –
not only a child thing), water slides, pools and jacuzzies; no crowding, no
cramped spaces. Good programs, professionally carried out, and a good
distribution of restaurants and activities across the different deck levels.
Flushing of the toilet led a life of
its own; it had a vacuum system with the usual warnings not to throw anything
at all into the toilet that had not first been eaten. Frequently the flushing
began when one pressed the button, but just as often, the mechanism seemed to
wait – it paused a few seconds after the button was pressed, even up to a
minute or two before the flushing was triggered. This prolonged one’s stay in
the toilet while waiting to see that one’s dirty deed would be flushed away –
it is not something one wants to expose other users to. Fortunately the vacuum
flushing worked throughout the entire trip, so people undoubtedly deposited
only authorized material in the toilets. But the strange pauses that the system
took remained a mystery – could it be that the flushing system was manufactured
by the same company that designed the Internet system on board?
One of the pleasures of crossing the
Atlantic is that you have to turn your clock back an hour; six times. People at
sea are of course accustomed to this phenomenon and have an almost religious
reverence for the correct time. On all other ships, we have always been
informed when we needed to adjust the time on our watches; Harmony failed to do
this. We were not informed, and our watches, the TV clock and the clocks around
the ship showed three different times – there is no excuse for this.
On Cruise Critic, there were many
complaints about the personnel not being pleasant, kind or helpful. We are
happy to say that this was not our experience. Everyone we encountered on board
did everything they could to make our trip as pleasant as possible. In
particular, the service provided by the staff of the self-service restaurant,
the Windjammer, was superior. So I really do not know the reason for the
criticism of the personnel; it is possible, of course, that the management of
Harmony read earlier criticism and took measures to improve the staff’s
attitude. It may also be that we were met by a new and refreshed staff; we
noticed that after two weeks at sea there were certain crew members who perhaps
began to get bored and were not as service-minded as one might wish.
In general, this was a very
successful cruise. However, those of us who prefer tours where there are less
families with children will probably return to Celebrity’s newer ships.
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