Hello everyone,
I just got off a 8 night alaskan cruise on ovation of the seas (May 5th -13th) and the staffing shortages are REAL. While passenger capacity was at 87.5%, staff was only at 60%. We saw the same crew members from the time we woke up to when we went to bed, there are no shift changes. We spoke to many past RC cruisers on board that they all agreed that this sailing was the worst they had ever been on. Although RC's website features the following activities/shows on Ovation : Pixels, A Beautiful Dream, Sushi Making Class, Archery, Wine tasting, Learning a language, etc...NONE of those were actually offered on our cruise. I felt as though, they had lost all of their crew members who specialized in niches and so they stripped all activities that required that talent. Instead it was replaced with a lot of trivia, I swear there were 12 trivia's a day, and bingo. Basically anything that any crew member could run. They've also lost their head chef's because the food (outside of the specialty restaurants) were bland. We had only purchased the 3 specialty dining package and wished that we had splurged and purchased the unlimited dining plan. Do yourself a favor, if you do intend to move forward with your cruise, purchase the unlimited dining package. At least that way, you'll enjoy the food, rather than eating just because you are starving and bored.
I realize the cruising industry is in a tough corner, I really do. So I haven't written off RC forever, I'll just wait a couple years for them to work things out and I'll give them another shot. The ship itself is beautiful and has so much potential. After speaking with other cruisers who frequent RC pre-covid, they had such a great experience with them in the past that it is hard to write them off based on this one cruise.
