En route home from the Azamara Journey's 8/30 Western European Voyage

[JennAngel9]

I am writing from the JFK AAdmiral's lounge on our way home from the Journey. Please bear with me as I am both exhausted and typing on my PDA. As I was desperate for any and all recent information before our cruise, I want to give back to the board by briefly summarizing the highlights and lowlights of our Journey experience.

 

Allow me to preface my review by saying we had a fantastic cruise and will almost certainly return to Azamara in the future, but as I am critical by nature, I may end up listing more nitpicks than highlighting the overall delightful cruise experience.

 

The minor quibbles:

 

so I can't seem to scroll up any further on my iPhone but I think I was going to insert cons here:

-dh thought the MDR was as good as or better than celebrity, I felt it was a small step down PRIMARILY because the executive chef and I had different tastes and there were few options for an oddball like me who generally does not eat pork, shellfish, parsley, or anything in the cilantro family (cilantro, parsley & coriander showed up a LOT)

- MDR service, which I felt suffered from the same inconsistency that celebrity does when they do open seating (lunch, breakfast)... Some nights this resulted in 45 min dinners and others nearly 2hrs with a 15 min wait to be able to sign the wine charge at the end of the meal

Note: both of these problems were more than adequately compensated for by the delightful food, ambiance and service at the specialty dining restaurants and breeza (and dh and I have never been buffet people).

 

- t-pool: there were evidently some mechanical problems with the pool during our cruise and though the lovely spa staff went out of their way to try to resolve them and appease me, the worst five minutes of my cruise were when I plunged myself into the pool to cap off the relaxation of my 90 minute massage (in the evening with chilly temperatures and moderate winds) only to realize it was below room temperature!! Before I forget I want to mention both DH and I had delightful and generally superior service at the spa for a variety of massages, haircut (dh) and manicure. I think my masseuse was saanti, but I will double check.

 

On to the pros (also, I need to run to catch my plane in a bit):

- cozy stateroom, I liked the mahogany and navy accents and felt the hanging storage was good but the drawer space was sparce. We lived the real sized table on the balcony, but since I had to work on the vacAtion, I would have loved to have a chair or backed stool to sit at the desk with. Oh, thanks a million to whomever wrote earlier that our butler would take our suitcase too large to fit under our bed. With that tip, we didn't really miss the extra space from the mini we'd had before-- except in the shower. The shower!!! Aside from limited pressure (nightmare for rising long hair), the size of it was mind blowing... To behonest it was big enough for everything except shaving my legs. This isn't unique to az, but can we reflect that if a 5'4 woman barely over 100lbs who is capable of doing the splits can't find a non-dangerous position to shave her legs, maybe they should be a smidge better? Needless to say, the shower curtain and I became quite well acquainted and much water ended up on the floor-- but I survived! ;)

- sushi buffet delicious and consistent

- dh was permitted to bring a bottled of Bordeaux on when we returned from port (we consumed it in prime c and paid corkage)

 

- we liked the looking glass in the evenings after dinner. Very quiet and tranquil with lots of board games. Dh and I played scrabble about 5 times, each time with a slightly different (and never complete) set of letters. I thought it was charming, but if we travel again, we may have to bring our own official scrabble dictionary :p

- I loooooooved Aqualina and our usual servers: Alex and Roman. Especially recommended: lamb, seabass, cheese plate and soufflé. I also had good feelings about Prime C, where we occasionally came in last minute and dined at their open seating bar tables. Husband liked both equally, raved about Prime C's veal and their donut dessert.

- no lines or wait anywhere

- spa

- Amazing captain's club recognition program. In addition to a lovely party in prime c from where we saw the white cliffs of Dover as we passed through the channel, we were treated to a galley and engine room tour (couldn't take the offered bridge tour while in bordeaux) and dinner with the staff captain. We also used our 20 minutes of Internet coupon and attended a wine tasting seminar.

 

 

The most important And best thing about our experience was the level of service!!! I had just posted around here not so long ago that sooner or later one becomes extremely frustrated with the pursers desk of every cruise line... Azamara was head and shoulders above even our best pursers desk experiences. We mentioned we had trouble reaching the Internet manager on passing. Within 24 hours I had received 2 calls from the manager and a handwritten letter explaining why I had trouble logging out and refunding me a generous credit. Everybody on board was friendly, helpful, and eager to resolve issues when they could not anticipate our needs. Second best to service was fellow passengers- we met many wonderful and interesting people everywhere we went. Unfortunately, due to the chair hog situation, we were afraid to leave our loungers for the 2nd meet 'n greet, but we did run into several lovely fellow cruise critics and hopefully encouraged some other new friends to drop by.

[cruiseyguy]

As Azamara is learning, great service overcomes almost any deficiency. I hope "service" becomes their niche. It has certainly worked for Seabourn.

[JennAngel9]

I totally agree. We are more than willing to eat a non-mind blowing meal in e change for knowing that the top staff on board CARE that our issues are resolved. We definitely didn't have any major problems, but I relaxed easier knowing that azamara would want to take care of us should anything necessitate it. Also, it just made me happy to feel surrounded by people who took pride in the satisfaction of the guests.