Day 6 - At Sea
I’ll take advantage of the “day at sea” to share a bit about the on-board experience. Let me start out with the best aspects. The ship is spectacular and our suite is superb.
Another delight is the quality of the food – particularly in the main dining room (aka The Restaurant). The river cruises had nice food – this is great food. The Italian restaurant – Manfredi’s – is equally nice but with a more limited menu. Then there’s The Chef’s Table. While the food there was lovely as well – it is a fixed menu that only changes every week and a half. Here’s the irony – I spent endless hours negotiating our 12 reservations in each of these specialty restaurants and now have no desire for repeating a cuisine three visits in a row. Sayonara to The Chef’s Table until the next menu switch.
We have a also met many interesting folks – mostly US and Canada but also a smattering of internationals. We “bonded” with three couples one evening and reserved a table a Manfredi’s for the next. To our surprise, they seated us in a gorgeous private dining room for our meal.
So what hasn’t been as smooth?
It’s a new ship and many kinks have not yet been worked out. Televisions aren’t working for many, heating and cooling are a problem for some, and even some plumbing issues exist. Okay – we’ve experience each of these. The biggest issue however is that the “customer management system” is simply inoperative.
I saw this shadow early on when the registration process for excursions and dinners looked an RPG program out of the 70’s. Okay – I exaggerate a little but the program NEVER operated correctly and now that we’re on board the data once entered seems to have disappeared into the ether. We’re hoping that it will be resurrected by the second leg out of Venice.
Update: Hoping for improvement and getting it are not always highly correlated. You'll hear more when we get to Venice.
We have a also met many interesting folks – mostly US and Canada but also a smattering of internationals. We “bonded” with three couples one evening and reserved a table a Manfredi’s for the next. To our surprise, they seated us in a gorgeous private dining room for our meal.
So what hasn’t been as smooth?
It’s a new ship and many kinks have not yet been worked out. Televisions aren’t working for many, heating and cooling are a problem for some, and even some plumbing issues exist. Okay – we’ve experience each of these. The biggest issue however is that the “customer management system” is simply inoperative.
I saw this shadow early on when the registration process for excursions and dinners looked an RPG program out of the 70’s. Okay – I exaggerate a little but the program NEVER operated correctly and now that we’re on board the data once entered seems to have disappeared into the ether. We’re hoping that it will be resurrected by the second leg out of Venice.
Update: Hoping for improvement and getting it are not always highly correlated. You'll hear more when we get to Venice.