Live Cruise Reports

The last year has been hard, so I really needed and expected an excellent cruise.  So the Beyond had some difficult challenges to meet.  
We are on the Beyond from Monday March 11th to Friday March 22nd

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Good morning from a wet and windy Barcelona.

I'm sitting onboard the Windstar Star Legend eagerly awaiting embarkation on the Sun Princess this afternoon. I'll share an update each day about the experience onboard, along with some photos and videos. I was glad to see the majority of venues are to be open for this sailing. I am looking forward to some of the arena shows. 

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Hi, Everyone!
 
I've commandeered my wife's account here so I can give you a live account of our experience aboard the Discovery Princess.  
 
To set the stage, we hold Elite status on Celebrity and Platinum on Princess.  It's interesting that the Platinum benefits on Princess are actually better than the Elite benefits on Celebrity.  Our last cruise on Princess was a decade ago after which we abandoned Princess and moved to Celebrity.

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Our first time dipping our toes in non-Celebrity waters. After 13 years of cruising exclusively with Celebrity we’ve taken the plunge and decided to spread our wings and try other cruising options.
 
First stop is Scenic Eclipse and the second of what they describe as ultra-luxury discovery yachts. We pondered moving over to the smaller ships but were concerned we might not like the smaller number of passengers. I guess we’re all or  nothing kind of people as the Scenic Eclipse yachts have a maximum 0f 224 guests, with a maximum of 200 in the Polar regions.

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Given that the Scenic Ocean Voyages Forum is somewhat quiet, I thought I’d drop in and do a Live-ish review of our Transpacific voyage on Scenic Eclipse II which sets sail on Wednesday 13 March.
 
We will be first time Scenic Cruisers having been Celebrity loyalists for the past 13 years. We needed a change but weren’t sure we would enjoy a small ship. So here we are about to try a yacht with up to 224 guests, go figure?

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This is our 8th in a row cruise on Carnival Radiance since covid restart as we can drive from Vegas area to Long Beach.
Even when we are not flying we like to arrive a day ahead for a cruise. This trip the day before cruise, fell on 4th Sunday of the month.

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Will be moving over from the HAL Nieuw Statendam to board the Celebrity Ascent on Sunday, March 3rd. A side to side is always an adventure and this one shouldn't be too much different since they generally dock nose to tail at Port Everglades (hope I didn't just jinx myself.)
 
Haven't sailed on Celebrity in several years (Summit and Equinox) and never on an Edge class ship; lots to learn.

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Hello, my Cruise Critic  family!
 
I am here yet again to help you all deal with either your post-cruise blues or your “my cruise isn’t approaching fast enough” blues. How do I plan to help with those problems, you ask? By letting you live vicariously through MY live review of this cruise, of course! Sure, you have to mix up your own cocktails, cook your own meals, and make your own bed, but at least you will ALMOST feel like you are on a ship…right?

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Morena. I really enjoy the live posts on Cruise Critic. So I thought I would have an attempt myself on our 6 night cruise from Sydney to Tasmania. This is our second Celebrity cruise. We did a South Pacific trip on the Solstice a few years ago. I booked this trip ages ago, and we got a great deal. An Aqua Class suite with Retreat access. Heading into Sydney the day before. And right now enjoying the Koru Lounge at Auckland airport 

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Yes! She’s back!  After my grand adventure to Antarctica on Holland America, I return to Carnival, this time on the brand new Jubilee!
 
I was originally booked on the maiden TransAtlantic voyage of Jubilee that got cancelled; this is the earliest I could re-book after that happened.  Along the way, I’ve picked up 8 of my friends and family to cruise along with me. As you might know if you’ve read my prior LIVE! blogs, I don’t generally cruise with such a large group. And we have 5 first time ocean cruisers on this trip! It certainly is a bit like herding cats, but I’m here for it!

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I've been a long-time lurker and reader here at CC now and have really enjoyed much of the content, especially many of the live cruise reports that have been provided over the years.  I'm a bit of a blogger, mainly for my own enjoyment and my family, and I had tried to do one of these last cruises with my wife, but had internet issues and turned it into a basic review vs. a Live post.  This time, I'm sticking to my decision and will do a Live From Thread, which I know will drive my wife and daughter crazy.

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Greetings HAL cruisers, we are about to embark on something very new to Tom and I. I thought many of you may be very interest in following our cruising on Windstar Sailing Yacht Wind Surf. Many long time Holland America Cruisers remember when Windstar Cruises was part of Holland America. To give you a bit of history for those that may be fairly new to Holland America in 1987 Holland America purchase 50% of Windstar Sail Cruises then in 1988 purchased the remaining 50% making Windstar Cruise part of Holland America. With Officers and Crew working on both lines.

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I don't know how long it will be before I bitterly regret setting out to do this but I'll try my best to keep anyone interested appraised of our trip starting next week. From the get go let's set some expectations: this is not going to be one of those 'live from's' that show you a picture of every moment / every drink / every toilet stop. It might well just be a summary catch up of the previous day or it might be a bit more than that - we'll just have to see...... 

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Greetings Fellow Cruisers, Welcome to My Live Report of our Travels to St Maarten to Board Wind Surf. My husband Tom and I are frequent cruisers. We started cruising in March 2002 with our first ship Royal Caribbean Monarch of the Seas sailing Western Caribbean. The following year April 2003 we sailed in the Inaugural year on the Holland America Zuiderdam. At that time Windstar Cruises was fully owned by Holland America under the Carnival umbrella. We became hooked on cruising and in the early years booked nothing but Holland America, in that time we became good friends with many Crew and Officers. In 2008 I had a bit of a career change that allowed me to start cruising other cruise lines. We also enjoyed Norwegian Cruise Lines, Princess and Celebrity but always went back home to Holland America

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Well, here’s another attempt at a “Live from” thread.  Of course it will be no where near as humorous or informative as the Live posts we read from some of our favorite denizens of the Celebrity Cruise Critic board. People like hcat, cruisestitch, abbydancer, love2crews, Lena11033, Jim_Iain, and most recently, the amazing GenerationX.  And those are just the ones I saw recently on the Boards.

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A week ago I was on Carnival Jubilee. For the next 8 days I'll be "roughing it" on the Carnival Spirit. This will be the smallest ship I've sailed on since my first three cruises which were on Carnival Elation 2014-2016.
 
This is my 26th cruise, my 24th on Carnival, 1st time on a Spirit class ship, 1st time out of Mobile, 1st time to Bimini and Princess Cays, 2nd time to Freeport, and my 4th time to Nassau.

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Heading off for this much wanted and awaited 17 night adventure boarding on 18th (3 days time). We’ve had a lively roll call. Not many ports to do excursions in but lots of pooling of resources to share ideas. 
 
So this “live from” I’m hoping will also be a shared effort. 
 
Getting to Buenos Aires to embark gives multiple flights for most of us. Ours started today and a hint to any UK travellers looking to do this in future. Really good fares particularly in business can be had by first heading in the “wrong direction”. We are currently in Frankfurt waiting to board with several £k more in our pocket than all other routes offered. 

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Hello and welcome to anyone that wants to follow along with our LIVE for Discovery Princess: Feb 24th to Mar 2nd. 
 
This is a 7-night cruise with embarkation in Los Angeles at San Pedro with three ports in the Mexican Riviera: Cabo San Lucas, Mazatlan, and Puerto Vallarta. 

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OK, by popular demand (OK, it was just one affirmative vote) here we go again.... 11 nights on board the Beyond with Capt. Kate and Bug. 
 
We actually go to three ports we have never been to -- Aruba, Curacao and Cartegena. Always nice to try something new. 
 
Sorry to start this review two days before embarkation --- that created a few posts of discussion on my last review. We won't be going to the International Festival of the Arts in Epcot but will be going to the Flower and Garden Festival after the cruise before we head north.

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Ok kids, the time is here for another adventure on the Epic. This will be our 3rd time sailing on her, but the first time since the renovations that were done during Covid, so we're excited to see the differences. Our friends are staying in the 2br Haven room we had last time, so I'm going to see if I can dig up some of the photos I took from that trip years ago to retake some new ones of the same views for a side-by-side comparison. 

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Hello everyone!
 
I'm getting ready to sail out for another adventure on Sunday and I plan to do a live review of my time on board. This time I will be sailing on the Oasis Of The Seas for seven days. 

The itinerary is quite possibly the least exciting I have ever done, but then again, you don't sail Oasis for the itinerary. Stops are Nassau, Coco Cay, Labadee, and Falmouth. I was going to book the 25th with this same route but the timing did not quite work out so I booked the 18th and assumed it would be Eastern and a slightly better run, but nope same thing. I don't sail for the itinerary anyway so it will be ok.

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Alright ladies and gents let’s get another party started!  Following the awesome 3 live threads that went on last week will be a tough act to follow without a doubt.  
 
This is our first VV cruise but we are not new to cruising. I think this will be our 20th-ish cruise overall ( something like that)  and the last 13 or so have all been with Royal Caribbean so I will mostly be comparing to that

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We are now commencing our seventh cruise with Silversea and the thirteenth cruise overall.  Such cruising started in June 2006 with Athens, the Greek islands, Turkish coast and Istanbul on Seabourn. More at the bottom with links to past live/blogs and related popular postings. 
 
This February 2024 adventure features our first visits for India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore and Japan.  

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Another shortie with a Premier package, and a passenger that has a bit of steam to get rid of. Coral Princess is nothing new, but we know what to expect and that is the best part.
 
We have flown to Brisbane today. Flying out of Newcastle Airport is dead easy, but the Virgin priority line was longer than the general one. Turns out we were sharing our flight with Matchbox Twenty. It has been a Long Day. 😉

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Why this cruise?
 
We were originally booked on K405D, 22 nights on Arvia, flying out from Manchester to Antigua on 9th March, cruising part of the Caribbean, and sailing back to Southampton. That was to celebrate a big birthday for our lass. It would be rude of me to reveal her age but needless to say, it is a milestone birthday, and has a zero in it.  We booked that last year when on Arvia, and it would have been the longest cruise for us thus far and, at almost £7k for an outside cabin, the most expensive.

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