Roland4

Service can be hit or miss. Main problem we had is all they had left was Economy, and we were "warned off" that by someone we met last cruise, which also started in Reykjavik.

And you can "thank" the wildfires in Northern Quebec for the lovely orange glow! We will be getting much the same effect in Toronto later in the week!

After much aggravation trying to find reasoable flights from Toronto to Reykjavik and Quebec City to Toronto, we are now booked Sep 8/23 on Serenity. We are also booked Sep 2024 Quebec City to New York. A word of warning to anyone on the Sep 8 cruise coming out of a Canadian gateway, flights options are getting difficult.

Oh my!! Will you be on starting in Reykjavik?? We are on that cruise! Or at least we will be when I pay for it tomorrow!!!

Okay. I have been biting my tongue for the last two days, but 21 posts in, I have to ask. "How many angels are dancing on the head of this pin????" 😁😁😁

Okay, after 14 posts, do we have any guesses as to how many angels are actually dancing on the head of the pin that is this thread????😁😁😁

The link worked for me, but took me to Behind The Scenes on Sereniyt, which was not terribly informative.

FWIW, we were in a standard suite the cruise before yours and always had the larger bath towels, without asking. Actually did not know there was a difference until I read your posts. Quite enjoying your posts and your pictures.

We are not "casino people", so this does not bother us either way. I do have to admit on the 2020 World Cruise we spent more time in the casino than any prior cruise. It was our lifeboat station!!😁 Interestingly, in the last nine months we have been on Regent, Silversea and Seabourn twice, and the one thing they all have in common are very small casinos that never seemed to be busy, and often times were empty! Given the success of Viking Ocean, and the PG removing their casino, have the higher end lines decided the revenue gained is not worth the cost of running them? Just a thought.

Around here, the only "surprise" is when a thread actually stays on-topic beyond the second or third page!!! 😁

I just checked your itinerary and other than Reykjavik, we did Isafjordur, where we did the Western Fjords tour, and Seydisfjordur, where we did the City of Elves tour. Both tours involved a lot of time on the bus, but the scenery is spectacular, and as part of the City of Elves tour, you can get "up close and personal" with "in the wild" Puffins in a natural rookery. Assuming you are going into Reykjavik at least a day early, the "downtown" is very compact and walkable with a number of good restaurants. I would recommend Brut in the Radisson Blue for dinner, and The Laundromat Cafe around the corner from the Radisson is famous for breakfast, and did not disappoint! We also had great fish and chips in a restaurant just down from the Laundromat. The name escapes me, but the building is at the end of the block and is painted bright red!!! Ovation is a larger version of Quest, which we did last September, and we very much enjoyed the ship. All of the public areas are proportionately bigger, except Thomas Keller, which is enormously bigger than the one on Quest, and also has the TK Bar, which is a great paino bar in the evening. The food and service were both excellent, and a far cry from our experience on Quest. In fairness, though, that was last September when every line was having staffing/training issues, so that might not be a fair comparison. Hope this helps.

I personally will be happy when the Serenity sails its first few itineraries and we get some feedback either way. This childish back-and-forth bickering has gotten way beyond tiresome. Give it a rest everyone, please!

It also depends, in North America, on where you first make "landfall". On a Crystal B2B from Quebec to Miami, our first US port was Boston, so on disembarkation day in NYC, we did not have to get off the ship. That was a few years ago, so things may have changed since then.

It was being installed on Moon for the cruise just after we disembarked in March. Have not seen anything on it, but also have no reason to look. I would think It should be fully operational by now.

Since they are likely docking in Trieste, the "gap" may be to allow for some work to be done in the shipyard.

The ship restritions for Venice have been pretty well known for the last year. This from Mr. Google; The ban applies to ships that are are larger than 25,000 GRT, are greater than 180 meters in length, are taller than 35 meters, or have "a production exceeding 0.1% of sulfur." If your ship exceeds those limits, it will need to moor on the mainland. Viking Ocean and a number of others are using Trieste.

Admittely we will not sail on NC until they have many cruises "under their belt", but I will offer some thoughts on this. Since September we have sailed on Seaborne Quest, Regent Splendor and Silver Moon, all in PH rooms. Our last three cruises on OC, including the 2020 World Cruise, were in a PS Suite. Yes, the others were "on a beautiful ship", but we found the rooms to be cookie-cutter, poorly laid out and a little uncomfortable when compared to the PS on OC. We are also not a fan of the "rooms to the front/everything else to the back" ship design. We much prefer the "traditional" layout of the Crystal ships, but each to their own!!

Our story was a little different. First cruise was Harmony BA to FLL in 2000 with the In-Laws. They had done the first two segments of the first WC and loved it. One of the Lido guys, Dio Bal, took great care of us and we had a great cruise. Fifteen months later, we are crossing the pool deck on Harmony in SFO at the beginning of an Alaska cruise. Dio sees us, comes across the deck to greet us, by name, and asks for my In-Laws, by name, who were not even on the cruise with us. We knew right then we had found something special!

"He likes it!! Mikey likes it!! Hey, Mikey!!"😁😁😁 How could we possibly forget Mikey!!!!

They were last fall on Quest. Only time I wore a jacket was at TK.

Thank you both. We booked this one with the FCC they gave us due to Fiona last September. Decided we would try the larger ship for this one. Interesting itinerary as well. The only other time we have been in Iceland was on the Symphony "Trans-Atlantic From Hell" in 2012! I suspect this time it will be a bit calmer! 😉

Hi Nancy. We board Ovation on May 30 in Reykjavik. How do you like it realtive to Quest, which you also sailed ahead of us in September?? Larry

I realize you are pretty booked up, as are we, but even for one cruise, 20% of what we lost is significant, and is 100% more than what we expect to get back from Moecker. Will we book five cruises by Dec 31/25, most certainly not, but we may fit in a couple, and 20% off the fare is 20% in my pocket.

I noticed that one too! I was attracted by the photo, as we have never been to Seattle, but then I read the itinerary......🙂

We fired ours up for the first time last Saturday even though it was only 6C/42F at the time. We are in the midst of a very unusual April "heatwave" with temps in mid-20s C/mid-70s F through Saturday. Of course, it's back to normal next week, 10C/50F.😉