Empress of the Seas "Taste of Cuba" - 4/13/2019

[Rewind]

Hi All,

 

We got back from our "Best of Cuba" “Taste of Cuba” cruise on Empress of the Seas on April 21st.  This was supposed to be an 8 night cruise that made stops in Santiago de Cuba, Cienfuegos, and an overnight in Havana (9am - 5pm the next day).  In February (after final payment), we were informed that the port in Santiago would not be accessible and instead we would be going to Cozumel. Not our first choice of a replacement port as we have been there twice already, but we would make due.

 

First let me say that Empress is the smallest ship I have been on, but it does complete the set - I have now been on every class of RCI ship.  However, even being small, it seemed less crowded and super easy to get around. Yes the Windjammer could get a bit packed at lunch on sea days, but that is to be expected.  Also we didn't even attempt to use the pool as it did look like people soup a couple times. The crew are outstanding and I think some of the best at sea. The ship might be small, but the crew do have the largest heart.

[Rewind]

We sailed on Saturday and our first stop in Cozumel was on Monday.  As we had a decent window of time in this port, we decided to head over to the mainland and visit the ruins of Tulum.  It was a bit of a long ride to get there and back, but the site was great. We did a walking tour, saw the ruins, had some time on our own to wander around, and then back on the bus to head to the 5th ave shopping experience.  I now know why this is the cheaper of the excursion options - it's basically just dropping you off at the shopping area around where the ferries dock to go back to Cozumel. Nothing out of the ordinary here and a lot of the same souvenir shops plus an Old Navy, McDonald's, etc.  We walked both ways up and down the street to kill some time, but didn't end up buying anything.

[Rewind]

Wednesday we stopped in Cienfuegos where we took a private tour over to Trinidad.  Our tour operator took us to a bank to exchange money in Trinidad to skip the lines near the cruise ship, but the lines in Trinidad were the worst our tour guide had seen.  It did take about 10+ minutes but overall it wasn't horrible.  From there we saw the square in front of the Catholic church, the National Museum "de la Lucha Contra Bandidos", stopped at "Taberna La Canchánchara" for a drink, walked down a street with some market stalls, and saw a replica bar of El Floridita.  Then it was back to Cienfuegos where we stopped for lunch and then had a quick driving tour around the city. 
(We wish we had more time here but due to tendering, we lost a couple hours.  Most cruisers agreed that Royal was abusing their "book a Royal excursion and get priority tendering" line.)
 

[Rewind]

Then Thursday morning – just before 6:00am an Alpha Alpha Alpha call went out.  We were 12 hours out from Cienfuegos at this point but needed to get a person to a medical facility.  It was decided that we would need to divert to Grand Cayman to evacuate the ill person.  We made the turn to the South East and headed that way for 9 hours and we arrived right around 3:00pm. 

During this day was the Captain’s Corner – tensions were a bit high even though there was understanding about the medical emergency.  You know how I stated that we were informed about the change of port after final payment…  well there were two problems with that.  Some of the cruisers were never informed of the change of port; they got onboard thinking they were still going to Santiago de Cuba.  The second problem which drove tensions even higher – both the Captain and the Hotel Director stated that they knew of the change of itinerary back in September 2018 – five months before (some) cruisers were informed and about four months before final payment. 

So there was one group of cruisers who were not informed of the port change at all, another group who were informed after final payment – both of the groups now finding out that Royal knew MONTHS in advance but didn’t tell anyone, and now they are losing 10+ hours in Havana (again, not upset about the medical emergency, but it did add to tensions).  And what was the suggestion from the Captain and Hotel Director – “please go talk to Guest Services”.  Now I know that they deal with the operation of the ship and not so much on the excursion side of things, but they had to know that the crowd would be asking questions regarding the itinerary change and should have been better prepared.  They were even asked if passengers could get even limited internet time so they could re-book excursions and they did not have an answer.  So frustrations just kept getting higher and the biggest one was that Royal was almost running a Bait-N-Switch operation with not informing passengers of changes until after it was too late to rebook.

Anyway, we are mostly go-with-the-flow people, we had known about the change of itinerary at least early enough to change excursions, and medical emergencies take priority so we were understanding.  I just wish Royal would have handled any of these situations better; they dropped the ball on multiple occasions and shows that they don’t run as clean an operation as I thought they did.
 
Now we had made some friends with our tour in Cienfuegos and they were doing just about the same things in Havana, even using the same touring company.  They had internet access so they contacted Blexie for all of us and informed him that our ship would be delayed and asked if it would be possible to push back our tour by one day.  Luckily we would be the only ship in port for the morning period of Saturday and he didn’t have any tours booked so he was able to reschedule us.

[Rewind]

So on to better times.  We finally arrived in Havana at 3pm on Friday, 8 hours after we were supposed to arrive.  We all headed down to deck five where we could wait until we were cleared to get off the ship.  And we waited…  and waited…  until finally at 5pm the line started moving.  Our idea was to do a mini walking tour on our own to see what we could, but the delay in two hours just getting off the ship put a damper on that.  So after we finally got off the ship, we checked out where we would meet for our tour, walked up to the Malecon, and then walked along the water front for a while.  After a bit, we grabbed a cheap cab (I think we got lucky) to head to dinner at “El Cocinero” which was pretty tasty.  The four of us split four appetizers and then we ordered two main dishes to share as well.  Even after drinks, our total was only 60 CUC and we left an extra tip.

After dinner, we took another cab to Tropicana where we had some nice seats in the “Plus” section.  They do bar service in advance to get you to buy drinks and then right before the show starts, they bring out the included champagne, rum, and cokes.  The show was great and we had noticed that booking on our own was the way to go.  The cruise ship tours showed up just as the show was starting and they were trying to figure out seats as the performers are on stage.  Then it seemed before the last song had even ended, the tours were trying to rally all of their people to head back out.  By doing this on our own, we got there early to get good seats, were able to order a couple drinks and relax before hand, take some pictures, etc and we were able to watch as the after party dancing continued as the tours left the venue.

Finally we decided it was late enough for our group and we headed out.  Taxis were readily available at the exit and we negotiated our price down just a bit to get us back to the port.  We had a great laugh when the driver asked Spanish or English and when we replied English, he selected an English music folder on his stereo.  It was then a medley of what we believed to be ballads from 80’s and 90’s movies.  The first was Bryan Adams’ “Everything I Do” followed by Lionel Richie’s “Hello”.  We had a couple laughs at that and even sang along for a bit.  We got back to the ship a bit after midnight and headed up to the Windjammer for a snack (for those who needed to soak up the rum with something).

[Rewind]

Saturday morning, we headed out to the park to meet up with Blexie’s crew.  We were warned that some random tour operators were posing as being part of other companies, would take you on a tour, and then try to get more money from you at the completion of the tour.  To get around that we were informed not to volunteer our names as they will identify themselves and ask if you are “such and such” which they did.  Our guide for the day was Jorge and our driver was Tony.  They asked if we had any specific sites we wanted to see and we just mentioned that we heard about Fusterlandia and Revolution Square, but beyond that we were open to whatever.  They gave us a great tour of not only those two places but the National Hotel, drove up the Malecon, the forest, a stop at the cigar shop attached to the Romeo Y Julieta factory, the Jesus Christ statue, a quick stop at the fort – we got a great overall view of Havana and would highly recommend Blexie and his group.

Side note - we did hear that the Cuban government was losing money on their historic walking tours so they kicked all the private tour companies out of the square that is directly next to the cruise port.  This is why Fer Tours ended up closing shop - the government told them that they were going to make it really difficult for them to operate.  

 
Sadly our tour came to an end.  We walked a bit more around the area near the port, saw the same souvenirs in every shop, did find a nice small piece of art, and then headed back to the ship.  We had dinner with our new friends, sat around in a lounge for our own after party, and finally had to part ways as we all had to leave early the next morning.

[Rewind]

Overall Cuba is a great place to visit.  Replacing Santiago de Cuba with Cozumel was a bit of a slap in the face but we stuck with it as we still had two Cuban ports.  I do think an overnight in Havana is the way to go as the night life is great.  We did Tropicana, one of our new sets of friends went to the Buena Vista Social Club - I think there are plenty of options and is one of the unique things to do in the Caribbean.  Also if we didn’t have an overnight, we might have missed the port stop entirely.  Mostly we were just glad we had the chance to visit before things change for us in the U.S.

The Empress of the Seas, while small, was still a great ship.  And because it is smaller, you do end up seeing the same crew more often and it just seems friendlier.

As for Royal - I really do think that they are purposely not informing passengers of itinerary changes until final payment is past.  I think this is a shady practice and even though we hit diamond status after this past cruise, we are now looking to other cruise lines to see how they compare.  I won’t rule Royal out as a provider as I do think they have a good product on-board, but I am becoming more jaded to their pre-booking experience (and we already use a TA).

[theEvilQueen2]

We booked a September cruise to Cuba (our second) because it had 3 ports, no overnight, but I'm actually happy they changed it to over night in Havana. You really need the one night of night life to feel the true Havana. We're going to Coco Cay, not Cozumel. 

 

[Rewind]

Yes, the overnight in Havana is the way to go.  

 

We made the best out of Cozumel by going to Tulum, but we would have preferred any port other than Cozumel.  Part of that is we were already making plans for a family reunion cruise next year (out of Texas) and of course one of the port stops is Cozumel; that will make our 4th time there.  We would much rather have a Bahama stop as my wife has not been there.

[Crazy planning mom]

Thanks for your honest and fair review.

[venecia]

Did RC give any explanation as to why Santiago was not accessible? We have the same cruise booked for November. We specifically chose this cruise for the 3 stops in Cuba.

 

[molole]

8 hours ago, venecia said:

Did RC give any explanation as to why Santiago was not accessible? We have the same cruise booked for November. We specifically chose this cruise for the 3 stops in Cuba.

 

I read somewhere on this site that the pier was damaged by a ship, could actually be Empress.   As small as Empress is, she is the biggest ship docking in Santiago.  

 

 

[molole]

On May 3, 2019 at 8:42 AM, Rewind said:

Overall Cuba is a great place to visit.  Replacing Santiago de Cuba with Cozumel was a bit of a slap in the face but we stuck with it as we still had two Cuban ports.  I do think an overnight in Havana is the way to go as the night life is great.  We did Tropicana, one of our new sets of friends went to the Buena Vista Social Club - I think there are plenty of options and is one of the unique things to do in the Caribbean.  Also if we didn’t have an overnight, we might have missed the port stop entirely.  Mostly we were just glad we had the chance to visit before things change for us in the U.S.

The Empress of the Seas, while small, was still a great ship.  And because it is smaller, you do end up seeing the same crew more often and it just seems friendlier.

As for Royal - I really do think that they are purposely not informing passengers of itinerary changes until final payment is past.  I think this is a shady practice and even though we hit diamond status after this past cruise, we are now looking to other cruise lines to see how they compare.  I won’t rule Royal out as a provider as I do think they have a good product on-board, but I am becoming more jaded to their pre-booking experience (and we already use a TA).

I know people who were on this cruise and they share your sentiment.  Their big complaint was also Royal didn't inform them of dropping Santiago until after final payment day and another complaint was there was NO announcement to tell them they could get off the ship after docking in Havana.  They followed the rule to not to go down and block the gangway and waited 1 hour in their cabin and by the time they finally decided to go down to the lower deck to check they saw a massive line.  It cost them 2 hours of precious time and that was after they already lost the entire day time because of the medical emergency. 

 

Other than those two they didn't seem to have any major complaints.  The ship, the entertainment, the crew were all pretty good according to them. 

 

After they told me their experience I have decided to fly to Havana and take a land vacation instead.  Major airlines do Cuba visas too, from $55 to $85 a pop.  I can book a hotel or a private casa.  I don't want to plan for 4 days in Cuba and end up with 2.  

Edited May 24, 2019 by molole

[Rewind]

51 minutes ago, molole said:

I read somewhere on this site that the pier was damaged by a ship, could actually be Empress.   As small as Empress is, she is the biggest ship docking in Santiago.  

 

Once on board they did say that the pier was damaged (and while not saying it outright, it was most likely from Empress).  The Cuban government was set to do the repairs but has not been able to accomplish the task.  The pier was supposed to be repaired late 2018, but it sounds like it is not going to happen.  I believe Royal is still trying to urge the Cuban government to do the repairs but I have no insight as to where that process is.  

 

I think it is too early to tell if you will get all three stops in November, but if you are 120 days out from your sail date and the pier still isn't repaired, I would not expect to stop in Santiago.  Would I still recommend the cruise - as long as you know what to expect, then yes. 

 

Tendering in Cienfuegos was less than ideal.  I really hate using ship excursions as I know they are just charging a mark-up for the same private tour.  But in this case, you do loose a bunch of time if you don't use the ship excursion due to priority tendering.  And for the time in Cienfuegos, pick between Trinidad or Cienfuegos as I don't think there is really enough time to do both (although we did stop for lunch for an hour, if you skip that you might be able to squeeze both in).

 

As long as your cruise has a good overnight in Havana, I think it is still worth going.  We wanted to do our private tour Friday morning, Tropicana Friday night, and then a bike tour Saturday morning.  We ended up cancelling the bike tour and moving our private tour to that time slot.