Tickledblue does a Trip Report - Norwegian Fjords on Serenade

Hi all, I'm borrowing (stealing?) the trip report idea from some other cruise critics (most notably Cheapo Dad). I've really liked this format but I don't think I'll be able to match Cheapo Dad's wit and humor but will probably come real close to his anality (a borrowed word) which refers to planning a trip to great detail.

In saying such, I found this especially difficult for this trip for several reasons:

• Serenade isn't the most talked about ship on these forums -- yeah there is some, but it's not Oasis, Quantum or Freedom class which seems to cover 90% of the reviews (ok, maybe I'm exaggerating a little).
  
• When Serenade is reviewed it is nearly always when it sailed the Caribbean, which are very different cruises.
  
• Norwegian fjords isn't nearly as heavily traveled nor reviewed as Caribbean, Alaska, or Mediterranean, or Baltic regions thus it was more difficult to learn from other's experiences.
  

While I'm borrowing Cheapo's Dad's trip report idea, I'll directly plagiarize some of his wording (is it really plagiarizing when I provide a direct reference?).

When I say “trip” report and not “cruise” report. Meaning you will be taken along for a ride for the entire trip process, not just the cruise portion. It’s the mailman version of the vacation report, stopping off at each and every point, no matter how minor, I will talk about it. So skip sections that don’t interest you.

Background – My wife and I live in Indiana and have done 23 cruises on 7 different cruise lines. I'm an engineer which means I have a tendency to pay attention to some details that others (i.e. MDW) may completely miss. If you stick around for this reportyou may start wondering to yourself - who is this guy? Why would he take note of that?

In Cheapo Dad's style, I'm throwing in some teaser photos here. Everyone loves eye candy. Provided I have the patience to upload them, I have tons of photos that I'll share.

I'm in, especially if you're borrowing styles from Cheapo Dad. Great start!

So you may wonder, why this cruise?

When, I asked MDW where would she like to go for the next cruise – her answer was Norwegian fjords (much cooler and scenic than the Caribbean).

My job (as it always is) was to find the next great cruise. Once I found the Serenade of the Seas, I told MDW about it and she said that a 7N is hardly worth the airplane flights…ok, fine…there is a 7N Baltic available right afterwards…we had agreement and planning for our first bouncing baby B2B was born.

I'm not going to cover the Baltic cruise in this trip report but may do another report or a simple review later. Rubyfisch is in the process of providing her own trip report on that here.

My criteria for choosing cruises are as follows:

1. For a Norwegian cruise, it had to be a mainstream American cruise line. Why? Mainstream European cruise lines have too much of a foreign feel to them – I like coming ‘home’ to what I’m comfortable with – American culture. Now we have very much enjoyed MSC 3 times in the Caribbean – Caribbean ports are very Americanized and familiar so having a ‘foreign home’ was actually a welcome change.
   
2. The cruise price needed to have a reasonable cost, like $100/day (before taxes/fees) – this is difficult to find for this region, even for an inside cabin. Serenade and some European cruises fit the bill, but see criterion 1.
   
3. Cruise during the shoulder season – this helps with criterion 2 plus there are smaller crowds and the weather is cooler (a big plus in our book since we don’t plan on hitting any beaches).
   

I'm in, especially if you're borrowing styles from Cheapo Dad. Great start!

Hmm...it seems now that I've set expectations that will be really hard to live up to. Be prepared to be disappointed :D

Digressing a little, I was trying to determine how do I title this thread. How to pull them in from the sea of other threads on MDR dress codes, tipping, and post-cruise mini-bar charges?

As you might surmise from my cruise selection criteria, I'm similar in cheapness as Harry (aka Cheapo Dad) but I couldn't reuse a famous moniker such as that. I've thought about something like 'Indiana Joe and the Fjords of Doom' but that's pretty cheesy. Could have went with skulduggery like 'Serenade Sucks on the Norwegian Fjords' so all of the Royal defenders would swoop in to blast me until they realized that the cruise was actually fantastic - but that would have been 10 seconds of fame and then there goes the audience.

Flights -- Indianapolis is our preferred airport followed by Cincinnati; however, flights to Copenhagen were too pricey from there. Instead, I looked to Chicago and found a terrific deal of $417 pp round trip on Swiss Air (to CPH) and Air Canada (from CPH). Chicago is a 4+ hour drive but it was worth it since we saved $500 pp compared to flights from Indy.

Never flew on these airlines before but both were great. Swiss had the edge though -- they handed out Swiss chocolate bars at the end of the flight. And don't tell MDW, but the Swiss stewardesses were more attractive too ;)

Since I purchased these flights 6 months ahead of the cruise, we were committed to actually taking the trip quite a bit earlier than I prefer.

I am SO in on this!!!! Am thinking about a Norwegian cruise in 2020 for our 40th Anniversary! Looking forward to this.. Great start!

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Already loving the photos.:)

I am SO in on this!!!! Am thinking about a Norwegian cruise in 2020 for our 40th Anniversary! Looking forward to this.. Great start!

 

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G920A using Tapatalk

Thanks. Norway was so beautiful and the people very friendly, you'll have a great time.

Already loving the photos.:)

Thanks. I had 2 new cameras to play with - a Canon Powershot SX60 (for outdoor photos) and a Samsung Galaxy S8 smart phone. I was pleased with the results from both of them.

Hmm...it seems now that I've set expectations that will be really hard to live up to. Be prepared to be disappointed :D

[preparing for disappointment]

Done.

I love digressions. Cheapo Dad did countless.

I'm in, photos are wonderful.

Fjords are on the bucket list.

mac_tlc

This was the first (and possibly our only time) to all the ports of call including Copenhagen so I wanted to get the most out of all of them. How do you do that? Plan, plan, plan...and plan some more. OK, I’m not really that bad but I did have itineraries available for each port.

We flew in the day before the cruise which meant the flight was an evening departure May 11. We arrived at CPH around 2 pm local time. Knowing that I could never sleep on a plane meant that I would be dead tired once we arrived so I booked the Hilton right at the airport.

The Hilton - Copenhagen Airport had great reviews on Tripadvisor and was very reasonably priced especially considering it was in Northern Europe (where everything is very expensive). So since the flights were already booked in September, I also pre-paid for the hotel (in for a penny, in for a pound). This ended up being a source of concern when I learned (through our roll call) that the Hilton was sold to Nordic Choice hotels and that it was going to become a Clarion. When they did this, they increased the price considerably as well. It was challenging to verify that the Clarion was going to honor the pre-paid reservation, long story short, they did with no issues at all.

As advertised, the Clarion was just a walk away from the airport terminals and it was very nice. While you could see the airport across the street, you couldn't hear the planes. My only beef with the hotel was the same one I've had with other Europe hotels - there was no top sheet on the bed (a cultural thing?). With the comforter on, it's super-hot With it off, too cold.

Bathroom was very nice but no bidet...isn't this Europe? I wouldn't have used it anyway.

View outside our window (walkway to/from airport):

Following along with interest. Just back off my very first cruise, which was in the Med. Might have the cruise bug now so going to compose a bucket list in case I am ever fortunate enough to go on another one at some stage. Ideally I would love to do a northern lights itinerary but RCI dont seem to do this from what I can see, so that may be part of a different trip. I know I want to do an eastern med itinerary and a caribbean one but would also love to do northern europe and baltic areas. Great to read this review as so few are done in this area. Can you include what weather is like there this time of year. Great photos so far. what class ship is Serenade? Looks quite big.

Following along with interest. Just back off my very first cruise, which was in the Med. Might have the cruise bug now so going to compose a bucket list in case I am ever fortunate enough to go on another one at some stage. Ideally I would love to do a northern lights itinerary but RCI dont seem to do this from what I can see, so that may be part of a different trip. I know I want to do an eastern med itinerary and a caribbean one but would also love to do northern europe and baltic areas. Great to read this review as so few are done in this area. Can you include what weather is like there this time of year. Great photos so far. what class ship is Serenade? Looks quite big.

When I was looking, I didn't see any RCI doing northern light itineraries either. But I was limiting my selections to the shoulder season (aka cheaper) cruises. I did see that HAL had a longer cruise from Rotterdam that went farther north though. I was semi-interested in that cruise but don't remember all of the reasons for not selecting it. I do know that there are many northern cruises that a line like Hurtigruten does but those are a lot more pricey and would be a completely different experience. We saw the ship below in Ålesund - a passerby said that they did coastline cruises.

Edit: Just googled MS Kong Harald and saw that it is a Hurtigruten ship

I'll get to information about the weather later in the trip report. You'll also be able to infer a lot about it when you see the pictures at the different ports.

Following along...on Serenade in September. Yours is the first picture ive seen of her that shows a good view of our window lol

Another thank you for your review. I was seriously considering this cruise as the Fjords are on my bucket list, but timing didn't work out. Hopefully next year if it's offered. Looking forward to more!

On this cruise in August - thanks for doing a review!

Following along...on Serenade in September. Yours is the first picture ive seen of her that shows a good view of our window lol

Your window on the ship? Which one is that?

Another thank you for your review. I was seriously considering this cruise as the Fjords are on my bucket list, but timing didn't work out. Hopefully next year if it's offered. Looking forward to more!

Your welcome, glad that someone is following along. We've also done fjords in New Zealand (they are called sounds there) and in Alaska which are similar -- they don't get old. If you can't make it to Norway, maybe you can do one of those.

Thx for the review...we were just talking about our next booking and I don't feel we can any longer do the Balkans what with all the trouble there, so were discussing possibility of doing the Fjords.

Can't wait to see more!

Your window on the ship? Which one is that?

we will be in 4586 - one of the larger round windows on the starboard side. most of the other pictures ive seen she is either too far away or facing the opposite side.

On this cruise in August - thanks for doing a review!

I heard that our cruise was the first time that Serenade was there. It showed a little when we were in port because some of the gathering points for ship tours seemed a bit disorganized. We didn't do any ship tours though.

I'm reading along as I want to go to Norway Soon.

A big surprise on the flight over was that we both actually got some sleep albeit it wasn't the best sleep but enough that we had energy to do some sightseeing. So after we checked into the Clarion, we went to the train station in the airport to catch the S-tog (what the Danish call the train) into Copenhagen.

Some notes about the train:

• There were machines in the airport baggage claim area that accepted US chip/signature credit cards for payment. The machines would let you select English.
  
• The signage had just enough English that you could figure things out (like what ticket to buy, platform for your train, etc.) but it never felt like you knew for certain that you were correct. This is where my anality paid out -- knowing the major train stop names. There's 2 great CC threads in the Northern Europe forum called 'Wonderful Copenhagen 2016' and 'Wonderful Copenhagen 2017' that helped a lot.
  
• You have to know what 'zones' you need tickets for (I never completely figured this out) -- I just bought 24 hr 4 zone tickets that I knew would cover the distance thanks to the aforementioned threads.
  
• On the last day of our cruise to go back to the airport, the machines at Østerport wouldn't accept my US chip/signature credit cards -- it kept complaining "Invalid currency". I used a debit Visa there with a PIN and it was happy to sell me tickets.
  
• Tourist train tickets are date/time stamped and good for the amount of time you purchased. Usually there's no one to check them; however, if you get caught without a valid ticket, they'll fine you 750 DKK (over $110).
  
• From the airport to the central train station (where we got off), it took 15 minutes with just a few stops in between.