edrussell

Next up the itinerary, this again contained a number of firsts for us. We had never visited any of these ports of call and Georgetown was a tender port. Something new for us. The first port was Labadee. We were very excited for this. We have been to Coco Cay a few times and really had fun there but Labadee looked so much different than Coco Cay in our research. We also booked our only 'excursion' here, the apline coaster. We just love RCCL private destinations so that we can extend us of our DBP (hey why not) and having access to food when we want it is also great. Labadee did not disappoint us one single bit. We knew from our research that Nellie's beach would suit us well so we came off the ship, grabbed a ride over there and posted up near the waters edge. Wow, what an incredible spot. Amazing views, amazing beach and since we were on Grandeur no crowds! Extra bonus points right there. We swam and relaxed and had some drinks and just made the morning out of it. We then rode the alpine coaster and it was so much fun! The views were outstanding. This is something we will definitely do again. I explored other areas of the port and really enjoyed myself. We ate some of the pretty tasty lunch while getting entertained by performers. Overall a wonderful low stress day. Precisely what we needed to kick off this cruise. Next up was Ocho Rios. We aren't much for organized excursions so we decided to just walk off the ship and planned to head to Ocho Rios Bay Beach. From our research we knew it was close to the pier. What we were surprised by was that we were docking at the secondary pier of Reynold's Pier. This is on us as I am sure I could have checked the schedule myself. This pier is far from inviting and the walk from it to Ocho Rios Bay Beach is also far from pretty. Being bugged every 10 seconds by aggressive vendors/taxi drivers and being offered all sorts of 'party favors' was a bit much. We've traveled enough to deal with this but combine this with the excessive heat and it wore on us. We continued along into areas of downtown that were less that welcoming but eventually made it to the beach. Paid our admission and then enjoyed several hours on the beach. Very pleased to say the water was fantastic and we had a great time. Not much in terms of food or drink options but we did know that. We walked back past the main pier area and shopped a little. We wished we had walked through this area on the way down. Of course on the main drag back to the secondary pier we passed through another gauntlet of locals selling all sorts of party favors again. Overall neither my wife nor I have much interest in coming back here, or if we do we will just go with an excursion. The downtown area and walk to it reminded us of Nassau and we just care for Nassau at all. Last up was Georgetown Grand Cayman and we had our hopes really high for this port of call. Despite this being a tender port. Turns out it was much ado, the line to grab a ticket took all of 5 minutes. We then went to a bar and sat with our ship friends and looked out onto Grand Cayman (this is what we LOVE about this class of ship, views outside everywhere) and waited to be called. It took maybe 20 minutes, we walked onto the tender and we were ashore. We walked the downtown core, shopped a little and then grabbed a city bus ($3 each!) and met an amazing bus driver. So super friendly and informative about the island. They dropped us off along 7 mile beach and we spent a few hours on the world famous beach. We opted to just toss out some towels and float in the warm beautiful water. The sad part was that the seaweed was very plentiful and it really took away from the views at the beach and the beach experience. We have experienced this many times in Mexico and of course knew about it, but didn't expect it along 7 mile beach. We still had an amazing time and grabbed some refreshments from the locals setup where we were. Fantastic. We negotiated with a private transfer the same price to get back and got dropped off right back at the port. Did a little shopping inside the port and tendered back. We just loved this island would come back in a heartbeat! The locals were just amazing. Such a stark difference from Ocho. I guess I can include our sea days here as they are part of the itinerary, but I don't have much to say beyond continuing to gush over Grandeur. We had such fun between the pool deck and solarium. Many naps were had and drinks were drank. One negative was that the pool had to get closed and drained twice on this cruise! Once because a kid barfed, once because a kid did something else equally bad. Luckily we had the solarium and the pool in there was nice and cold and it eased our sunburns. More to come, I hope those that are reading are enjoying this. Some random pictures of each port of call.

Just off Grandeur for 7 days, with 3 sea days. ZERO issues with finding loungers any time of the day. Some obvious chair hogs, but not too bad.

I'll combine a few topics here as they will be shorter; the bars and our stateroom. This sailing was a first for us in terms of the stateroom. I did mention that all of our cruises have been casino COMP and this one was as well. All of them were inside staterooms, but we used Royal Up on all of our past sailings and in all cases won our bids. We've sailed a balcony (Enchantment), Promenade View (Adventure), Central Park View (Oasis), Oceanview (Anthem). We put in a Royal Up for an Oceanview and a Spacious Oceanview on this sailing but since the sailing was sold out we did not get our upgrade. So we were left with an inside stateroom. My wife and I were concerned having never sailed in one before and especially so by reading here on CC. Our room was 7516 and we can honestly say after having an inside stateroom we would happily take one again. We found on our only sailing with a balcony that we just didn't use it. We spend so little time in our stateroom it just isn't worth it for us. While it is great to have the extra space it just goes to waste. We are typically up and our of our room by 8 and come back only to change for dinner and then back for bed. We might come back for a quick mid-afternoon nap and that's it. We tend to gamble late so we often don't get back to our room until after 1am each night. This trip was no different. I actually loved the room being so dark at night. I slept so well. We felt no more or less movement in our room either. Our room did run the length of the ship so my wife did hear some noise from the hallway but I didn't. I thought the stateroom was just fine. I'll combine bars in this post to keep it shorter and this is something that my wife and I judge our cruises from. We spend lots of time bar hopping and enjoy meeting people at the bars and the bar staff get to know us super quick. Having well run bars with great bartenders can make or break a cruise for us. Grandeur hit it out of the park. Special mention goes to Mohan! Pool bar was slow at times and their drinks were average, but that has been par for the course for us mostly. The solarium bar was top notch. Nice and fast, well organized and great drinks. Next up was a surprise for us, the schooner bar. We don't usually spend much time in that bar but Alexandria (I think that was her name) was amazing and we spent many an hour at that bar. One of our favorite hideaways was the Viking Crown lounge before it turned into a dance bar. We usually spent some time there each night and often all but had the place to ourselves. The casino bar staff were also great. Fast and entertaining. We didn't spend any time in the South Pacific lounge or much time at the R bar. A few random pictures (forgive the mess in our stateroom). My wife would kill me if she read this.

Hello fellow cruising enthusiast's. This post will serve as a mini-review and overview of our recent sailing onboard Grandeur of the seas. I'll try and break things down into sections and provide some pictures as well. I hope everyone finds it useful. All opinion's are just that, opinion's and are not meant to be introduce any drama. A bit of background, my wife and I are in our late 40's and this was our fifth cruise. We took our first in Jan of 2022 and up until that point really didn't even consider a cruise vacation. After our first we were absolutely hooked and will likely if possible take at least 3 a year for the time being. So far we have sailed on Enchantment/Adventure/Oasis/Anthem out of Baltimore, Bayonne and this one Tampa. This cruise had a number of firsts for us which I will mention as I get to them. My wife and I do enjoy having drinks onboard and always buy the DBP. We also play the slots and all of of cruises are casino COMP and this one was no difference. The itinerary on this sailing was a 7 night sailing from Tampa, with ports of call in Labadee, Ocho Rios, Georgetown Grand Cayman. With the background laid down I am going to break up review/overview into a number of sections and likely will break them up in a few posts as it might drag on and I might not be as exciting as I think I am. Sections will be, the ship, our stateroom, the itinerary (ports of call), the food, the bars, the service, the casino, the port, the trip to and from and lastly overall thoughts. Let's dive in and begin with the ship. As I had mentioned we have sailed on newer and larger ships than Grandeur. Our first ever being Enchantment so we do have a special place in our hearts for a Vision class. Grandeur did not disappoint us one single bit. She is an older lady for sure, but she is aging well. Showing some signs of age here and there but still in fantastic ship as far as we were concerned. We just LOVE the centrum and spend so much time just gazing around it. It is always a hub of activity and this sailing was no different. The pool deck is more than adequate for our needs and the solarium is a nice haven of relaxation. We enjoyed lots of pool time and lots of time in the solarium. We quickly fell back in love with a Vision class and found it so easy to navigate, nothing being too far away. The ocean views are everywhere (something we absolutely disliked about Oasis) and there are so many places just to sit relax and watch the world float on by. Overall the ship exceeded our expectations and we would hesitate for a second to sail on her again. In fact this class of ship is far and away our favorite. A few pictures of Lady G below.

We are just off Grandeur on Saturday morning and the machines are the same as any other ship. You do have to insert your card as their cards are not RFID. Apart from that the personal banker is exactly the same. We did a room charge on the last night in fact.

I suppose this thread isn't just for those in the GTA, but it definitely would be of particular interest to those in this area. My wife and I have just returned from a 7 night sailing on Grandeur OTS out of Tampa. On this trip we had canceled back our original flights on Westjet that flew from Pearson (this was before the strike for other reasons, ironically our original flight was one of those that were canceled). We decided to try to fly out of Buffalo instead. A bit of history is that I had traveled for work for about 7 years and spent about 4 of those flying out of Pearson almost weekly so believe me when I say I have hundreds of trips in and out of Pearson and I can honestly say it is the single worst airport in all of North America for me (this is my own personal opinion) and both my wife and I always dread flying out of it. We do fly out of Hamilton when that is a viable option. This is our first time trying Buffalo though and our experience was absolutely fantastic. Our flight was on Friday at 7pm of the Victoria Day weekend and we live in Burlington so we decided to head across the border early in the day in case border traffic peaked later in the day. We enjoyed some of our local haunts in the Buffalo area until it was time to head to the airport. Parking was an absolute breeze unlike the nightmare that it is near Pearson and very cheap as well 11.00 per day in long term. A quick transfer over to the terminal by a (GASP) friendly driver and we checked in, breezed through security in all of 15 minutes right to the gate. No crazy lines, no rude people, no pushing, no shoving. Amazing. Departure was on time and we had a quick layover and on to Tampa. We returned around 9 on Saturday, luggage was quick, again another friendly driver over to our truck and we were back home in no time. This is our go to whenever possible from now on. It was such a wonderful experience to arrive back into an airport and not want to strangle someone after 5 minutes on the ground. Heck we could even walk at a leisurely pace without someone cutting us off. Imagine the surprise when boarding when people actually sat the h_ll down rather than crowding the boarding area. Of course our flights were domestic because we were only going to Tampa, so YMMV. With any luck we'll never use Pearson again. This again is my own personal opinion.

Having spent over 20 plus years working in the QSR industry and having seen a lifetime of restaurants so filthy that I wanted to change my clothes after being in them, the turn on a cruise ship doesn't phase me on single bit. I'm more leery of the food service side of the ships and those areas are not turned in a few hours. They are in constant use and need constant attention. As for my stateroom I don't blink an eye, since even if the attendant had an hour per room it still would not get 'sanitized'. I can easily wipe down any surface that I feel needs it. Or worst case as the attendant to deep clean it. Consuming food from a kitchen that you cannot see into is whole different kettle of fish.

That is quite the object lesson! I'd imagine it took quite a bit of time on your part to work it all out as well.

Try dealing with guest services at my house (aka my wife), she rarely listens to my complaints, almost never gives me any onboard credit either. Don't get me started on the drink service.

Paperwork finally arrived today, originally assigned room 7139, my wife gave them a call and changed the room to 11277 (Feb 11 wonder OTS sailing). I think she was quoted a little over 200 each to upgrade to an Oceanview. She left it as is. We will likely give Royal Up a try when the time comes. With that said an interior is fine for us as we spend little time in our room. So the online process seemed to work fine and saved us some time. When all was said and done we did technically get to pick our room, but that came after our booking on the sailing was in place. We would use this method again, especially now that we know we can ask via special requests for specific floors etc. My wife also received an offer yesterday for a comp sailing (double occupancy), so her offers appear to be back to normal.

We still haven't heard back. We put in the booking request late on Friday night (around 10:00pm). If we don't hear by tomorrow my wife will give them a call.

We booked our prime certificate last night (Wonder on Feb 11) via the online booking request form. We normally call in speak with a CSR. Has anyone ever used this method? It told us we'd get a confirmation up to 48 hours from using the form and then we had 24 hours to pay the taxes/port fees etc.

Our offers are consistent and have been since we made prime for the first time back in Jan of 2022. We cruise 3 to 4 times per year and usually make prime on our second sailing of the year. Our biggest issue is the lack of sailings that come up from Bayonne or Baltimore which are our preferred ports as we can drive there.

Teaser offer, they are just tossing offers out there to see if anyone bites. Land based casinos do this from time to time. If you aren't interested in maintaining a relationship you can snap up the offer and no play them. This will burn you in their system most likely. With that said, take the offer, play as you normally would and see how it goes. My wife and I finally sorted out our issues with Casino Royale and got our tier credits applied from our Feb 12 - 19 sailing. Casino Royale had messed up my wife's birthday and it took quite a while to sort it all out. We made prime again!

Assuming there is no bar in these new spaces? I wonder about drink service also

Anthem OTS. The solarium is our happy place.

@Daghis, gotcha. Our C & A points usually show up anywhere from a week to 10 days.

We have had all sorts of trouble getting tier credits to update. On a sailing last year in May it took us almost 2 months to get it sorted. Our sailing from Feb 12 to 19 still have not shown up either.

While we have never done a side to side between ships we have been on Enchantment and Oasis and I have to say we enjoyed Enchantment MUCH more than Oasis. We might be the odd ones but we just found Enchantment to be much more of an intimate experience. We connected with the crew much more and the ability to enjoy the ocean views much more made our sailing much more relaxing. We 100% understand the appeal of Oasis, but I did not get that 'WOW' feeling on her at all.

Anthem has starlink (I have a screenshot from our Feb 12 sailing showing starlink) and I can confirm it is more than sufficient to work from. Sadly I do have to work often while cruising and I had ZERO issues using it.

Not on topic (forgive the derail) but are you thinking of starting a trip report? We are on Grandeur in May and would love to read firsthand reports. We sailed Enchantment last Jan and fell in love with that class of ship.

Food is such a subjective topic. What appeals and amazes one will disappoint another. Throw in trying to initiate the new menus across an entire fleet of ships and we can only imagine the complexities involved. We just disembarked Anthem OTS and ate in the MDR for 5 of the 7 nights and really enjoyed each of the nights we ate there. While not having the 'standbys' took some getting used to, we managed to never leave hungry nor disappointed. Everyone's opinions who have actually tried the new menus is equally valid for sure. Nor should anyone's opinion carry any more value than any others. I do wonder what feedback they are gathering. In speaking with our waitstaff on Anthem they are getting in the groove.

We just got off Anthem and for the most part we absolutely agree with your assessment of the new menu. We did 5 of 7 night in the MDR and enjoyed each and every night. I personally think that a lot of the uproar is simply because something has changed. So many on CC appear to want nothing ever to change. If something was one way it must remain that way forever thus wrath will be unleashed. One thing we definitely noticed was that we were consistently in and out of the MDR within an hour or an hour and 10. We did My Time at 7:00pm each night and were in different sections and had different wait staff. We certainly didn't feel rushed in any way, but the pacing was better. Dishes were consistently hot and for the most part tasty and consistent. Not every single dish was a winner but we never left hungry nor did we send anything back. Not sure why so many lose their minds over a bloody lobster tail. I just don't get it (now that is my own personal opinion, nothing more). I don't get on a cruise and expect an all you can eat lobster buffet for heavens sakes.

We were on this very same sailing and our opinion differs greatly from the OP, however (I know GASP) they have every right to offer their opinion. Most of what OP mentioned did not apply to us, or we perhaps didn't notice. The one that I can comment on is chair hogs, we spent some of every single day in the solarium and not once had any trouble finding a lounger. Sure we didn't always get the exact one we wanted but never had trouble finding somewhere to relax. I think I will post our own review of the sailing as well.

Flew from Pearson to Phoenix on Feb 6, flight was at capacity. Used the new app to bypass the massive line at customs and cleared both security and customs in about 15 minutes total. Peak time as well, around 6am on Monday. Flew back through Denver on Feb 8 via United, both flights about 70% full. Considering the superbowl was in town that weekend I was surprised it wasn't busier. Customs at Pearson was quite fast.