lithlith

Cruise Critic Meet and Greet

The official meet and greet was poorly attended. There was maybe 12-15 of us there, when over 70 people had signed up to attend. The officers and captain went through introductions and then the entertainment director raffled off prizes. Almost everyone walked away with something – back packs, hats, glasses, and bottles of wine!

All Access Ship Tour

If you’ve not done this before, then go for it. It is a lot of fun to see what happens behind the scenes and below deck. It is a little pricey at $119 pp and only lasts for 2 hours. You’ll see part of one of the galleys, provision area freezers/refrigerators, engine control room (basically a room with a lot of computers), several parts of the laundry area, and the bridge. (The tour did NOT go to the main theater, aqua theater or anything entertainment related.) (Carnival does a similar tour, for $95 that lasts 3-4 hours and you get to see all of the above and more! On other cruise lines we’ve had free tours just to the galley, just behind the scenes at the stage, or just to the bridge, which is nice, but it is also nice to see everything collectively on one ship.)

Food

Food is always subjective, so this post may not be of much interest.

Overall the food was ok. Nothing special. Pretty much standard fare for a large cruise ship. We did not eat at any of the specialty restaurants for lunch or dinner. With the exception of Johnny Rockets once, which was a disappointment.

The main dining room service was good. We had a table for two with the same waiters each night, likely because we had made reservations ahead of time. The food was ok, nothing outstanding. I’m a picky eater, and was a little disappointed with the lack of choices on the menu, but I could always find something. Trying to go for something simple, I ordered a sirloin twice, both times were stringy, chewy, and pretty much inedible. I also once ordered a kids mac and cheese as an appetizer…but it came with pasta sauce and parmesan cheese on top of the mac and cheese, very strange and not tasty.

Also, a side note about the main dining room, there are no windows (at least there were no windows on deck 5 Silk where we were assigned to dine), which was a little odd.

The Windjammer food was pretty much the same or very similar for breakfast, lunch, and dinner each day. (We found that other cruise lines have way more variety to choose from at the buffet for lunch and dinner.)

The burgers at the buffet at lunchtime looked terrible and I couldn’t bring myself to even try one. (Note, they have better looking burgers out at dinner at the Windjammer, but I didn’t try those either since we had just eaten in the main dining room. Yes, we’re the people that eat in the main dining room and then follow it up with a trip up to the Windjammer just to see if there is anything else interesting to eat.) Back to the burgers, the Johnny Rockets burger wasn’t much better looking than what was on the buffet and I was annoyed to have to pay for a simply burger that wasn’t very good and the fries were better at the buffet than at Johnny Rockets. (Side Note – The Guys Burgers on Carnival are the best cruise ship burgers we’ve found. They are awesome and free!)

The hand washing stations at the windjammer buffet entrance are a nice add on this new ship.

Mini Bites is a nice outside eating area with the basic staples of burgers, hot dogs, fries, and nachos every day for lunch. We also found it was a nice break from the buffet for breakfast serving the main food items (bacon, eggs, pancakes, waffles, toast, etc.) without the crowds.

For lunch we really enjoyed the Park Café with the make your own salad (pretty much you could do the same thing at the Windjammer with the same ingredients, but the atmosphere of the Park Café was nicer). Side note – they have small bags of Lays potato chips at the Park Café for free! Yes, that’s right, something without an up charge on Royal Caribbean, get them now before they start charging.

Pizza at Sorrentos was similar to a high quality frozen pizza, so if your into that sort of thing then you’ll enjoy it. I’m not sure why they don’t make the dough fresh like other cruise lines, it all comes as frozen slabs of dough on Royal.

Popcorn - $2.50 before the shows near the aqua theater. It is the little things like that, that make the nickel and diming on Royal stand out.

Drink prices – most alcoholic drinks are $13.50, which is odd since the drink package cut off is $13, and seem a tad pricey compared to other cruise lines. We didn’t have the drink package, but we did see quite a few people partaking in the drink packages. In fact, we had never seen so many drunk people on a cruise ship as we did on the Harmony of the Seas.

Everywhere you turned someone was drunk. It was a bit embarrassing. (It seems like Carnival often gets slammed as the drunken party ships, but I’m thinking those haters have either never been on a Carnival ship or sailed 20 years ago with them when that might have been the case. We don’t have a lot of experience on Carnival, but in our 35 nights on Carnival, I’ve never seen collectively even as many people drunk as I saw on the Harmony of the Seas this past week.)

Room

At 12:50pm, we started making our way toward our room, expecting to have to wait to get down the hallway, but the hallways were open and our room was ready. We had a bit of trouble finding our room initially as it was not off of the main hallways, but off an elevator block.

We had a virtual balcony room on deck 10. The room was the same size and had the same layout as a balcony room.

We liked the layout of having the bed first and then the sitting/dressing area next to the balcony (instead of the sitting area first and then the bed.) The décor was neutral and modern. The bed was great with a very firm mattress, no sink holes yet.

The virtual balcony was a neat novelty to have. The camera was facing what was the front of the ship, which was also correct to the direction our room was facing. It was nice to see the weather outside and to see the sun set and rise, as well as see other ships sail by.

There was one closet with several shelves, three drawers, a safe, and a tiny area for hanging clothes (maybe 6 hangers worth of space). On the other side of the bed was a larger closet that was just for hanging clothes with maybe 20 hangers. We had plenty of place and even extra hangers! There was also a dresser with four drawers for clothes and also where the mini fridge was located. Overall, I think there was less hanging clothes space than we've had on other ships, but since we are carry on bag only people it wasn't an issue.

The bathroom seemed smaller, but the shower was larger, so I’ll take it! No more shower curtains, so that was a plus!

A note about the sound proofing in our room – it sucked. We could hear every word our neighbors said to each other, whether they were just talking in normal voices or fighting each evening. The first morning we had intended to sleep in until the phone rang…but it wasn’t our phone, it was their phone, but was so loud you would have thought it was in our room. Then it was their alarm clock, and next they were up and getting ready for the day, what should they wear? AHHH! I don’t know, just shut up and pick an outfit and leave the room already! I think our favorite conversation was the one they had about whether or not they wanted to go to the nude beach in St. Maarten. We tried to keep our in room conversations to a whisper knowing that we didn't want to be overheard. Luckily, their wake up times each day weren’t too far off from what we were planning, so we just ended up getting up every morning when they did with their alarm. And tried to make the best of being able to hear literally everything going on in the room next door and I mean LITERALLY EVERYTHING...

Overall, the ship still has the “new” feel to it in the rooms and throughout the common areas. I'm interested to see how long the "newest" feel lasts on a ship like this.

Embarkation - Fastest that we’ve ever gotten on a ship once we were at the port.

We stayed one night pre-cruise at the Renaissance Ft. Lauderdale Cruise Port Hotel. The location was great and there was a Walgreens right across the street, which was great to stock up on our two bottles of wine, coke, and bottle of hand soap for our bathroom. (We’re carryon suitcase only people, so it was nice to have the Walgreens to pick up a few items over 3 oz.)

It was about a $6 Uber ride from the airport to the hotel and a $6 Uber ride from the hotel to the port. We had a 10:30-11am check in time and left our hotel around 10:20am, once inside the port, there were all sorts of traffic issues due do how the police were directing traffic. It appeared that each police officer had their own idea of how best to direct traffic and none of it was coordinated, but we’re on vacation, what’s the rush?! We were out of the car walking into the port around 10:50am. There was maybe a one minute wait in the security line and then no wait at the cruise check in counter. We walked upstairs to the waiting area and just as we arrived they had called the platinum and suite guests. We were neither of those, but they directed us right to that line and told us not to sit down, so we went with it. Just as we went through our last check point to leave the port building to get on the ship we heard gold members called, so we wouldn’t have been too far off anyway. I would guess that boarding began at 11am.

It was just a few minutes after 11am when we arrived at the Windjammer buffet to grab lunch and we were some of the first people in there. After lunch we moved out of the Windjammer to a shady area to people watch and wait until 1pm when the rooms would be ready.

We just sailed on the Harmony of the Seas April 1-8 with stops in Bahamas, St. Thomas, and St. Maarten.

We're in our mid-30s and not really loyal to any cruise ship brand. We typically choose our vacations based on destination/itinerary, but this spring break we chose the Harmony of the Seas just to check out "the worlds largest cruise ship."

I'll also post our thoughts/mini review here, but if there is anything in particular you're interested in knowing I'm happy to answer questions.

Is Oceania strict on boarding times listed in the information that they send out? What's the earliest that you've been able to board the ship?

I suppose this varies city to city. We'll be boarding in Stockholm in a few days.

Does anyone have photos of or can speak to the quality of a "virtual balcony"? Is it live time?

What about milkshakes and smoothies - are they free too?

We're new to Oceania, sailing on the Marina for the first time this summer.

Without purchasing a drink package, what exactly is included and what do you have to pay for?

Specifically:

Bottled Water

Sodas

Lemonade

Ice Tea

Hot Chocolate

Coffee

Beer

Cocktails

Wine

For whatever is free, is that free all of the time or only from the mini fridge in your stateroom or free at any restaurant or bar?

If there are additional charges for the items listed above, does anyone have a recent (like within the last 6 months) menu with prices listed to post?

How were the SS parkas? It will be summer passing through BA then maybe chilly in Ushuaia but I should be able to get by without a parka until embarkation? I'm thinking just a fleece that can serve under the parka too if necessary .

The Siversea parkas are warm, block the wind and water and have zip pockets. We found them to be too warm for about half of our landings and just right for the other half. We each had a waterproof shell jacket that we sometimes wore with a fleece underneath for the "warmer" days. If an excursion is labeled as a "hike" then you can count on the Silversea parka being too warm and you'll end up taking it off and carrying it part way through the hike.

Honestly if your boots have penguin guano or anything else on them after any or each landing them you are not doing your scrubbing in the Vircon correctly.

Very true! The expedition staff went through at least once on our trip and scrubbed down all of the boots after the passengers had supposedly scrubbed their own boots, but wasn't up to the expedition staff's standards. Maybe I'm just squeamish, but after knowing where and what I had walked through during the trip, it didn't matter to me how clean those boots looked, there was no way I would have packed them to bring home had they been my own. I was thankful for the rentals.

I'm very excited to see your post because we are booked on the Silver Explorer for December. We also will be booking flights independently but it is a little too early for that.

Could you comment about the clothing for the landings? I hope that my ski pants which are comfortable and warm will do with an extra layer below. I plan to give them an extra spray of water repellent after ski season this year.

DH bought me a pair of Bogs boots for Christmas but I am worried about bringing them home in my case after trudging in penguin droppings. They may be a donation to the ship.

Thanks very much!

There were people who had ski pants. I think those are complete overkill. Just a simple pair of waterproof pants. Ours were $50 Columbia waterproof pants that we wore over our jeans or sweatpants. Your pants will get wet, not so much from spray and splash on the zodiac, but you get wet from when you get in and out of the zodiac. For some landings the water was half way up our calves when we stepped out of the zodiac, other landings were just over our ankles. You tuck your base layer pants into your boots and then your waterproof pants over the boots, so your waterproof pants will get wet on the bottom over and over again on the trip, but our dried quick in our room within a couple of hours.

We had the option to rent boots through a company that works with Silversea for $70. Yes, that's a bit pricey, but after you walk through all of that penguin poop, you're not going to want to take those home or haul them there in the first place. I wasn't even sure I wanted to bring my new waterproof pants home after all of the excursions. But I scrubbed those down after our last landing and it wasn't a stinky problem, but I think boots might be a different story. They had some boots on board that some people borrowed for free, but no guarantee of size. The rental boots were Bogs. There is also a special boot storage room on board where you scrub your boots after every landing as well as store them for the trip.

Agree with you there digitl, however Aerolineas Argentinas does have a couple of flights into EZE, which would save a transfer from AEP. I'm still weighing up the pros and cons of possibly flying with them over LAN who I prefer.

LAN was who our charter flight was through.

I am booked for next year and have just been advised by Silversea that they are no longer offering charter flights from Ushuaia.

Can I ask if you had to arrange your own flights and for any information that might assist my planning, i.e./ what time you were able to disembark, how long it took to get to the airport and checkin etc. There is a flight at 9.50am, but I imagine that this will be too early and I will have to take one of the later departures.

We were on charter flights through Silversea from Buenos Aires to Ushuaia and then back from Ushuaia to Buenos Aires. And then a Silversea transfer from the domestic airport to the international airport in Buenos Aries.

Our charter flight to Ushuaia pre-cruise was 1.5 hours late departing Buenos Aries. There was a Silversea rep who met us at the domestic airport, got us checked in and on our way, which was great because the airport was crazy busy and we were there around 6am. The regular check in line was super long and we actually stood in it with our luggage to check for about 45 minutes until we finally noticed a Silversea rep, who saved us from the terrible line. Then there was another really long line once we got to security. Once in Ushuaia, we collected our luggage and handed it off to a Silversea rep who took it to the ship, while we were loaded onto buses and taken on a tour and to lunch at a restaurant near the national park.

On the way home - we disembarked the ship right around 8:30am. That was about the time they finally got the card machine hooked up near the exit as well as the staff lined up to say goodbye. However, I do know that one couple left after dinner the previous night for an evening flight leaving Ushuaia, so I don't think that you would have to wait until the official time they ask you to leave the ship at 8:30am. But of course you would want to clear that with Silversea first. Silversea took us on busses from the ship for a tour of the town (which was just driving us down a couple of street and then parking in a parking lot for 3 hours) and then dropped us off at the airport. (However, the Ushuaia airport is about 20 minutes from the port at most.) Airport check in was quick, but it was just our cruise group checking in for a charter at a special counter. Our charter flight from Ushuaia to Buenos Aries was an hour late. This caused major problems with us trying to get from the domestic airport to the international airport. We had the transfer through Silversea and had to push that rep at the airport to move everyone along quickly and get the bus loaded as well as agreed to drop us off first at the international airport. Luckily it was a Sunday and traffic was light, but it still took nearly an hour from the domestic airport to the international airport in Buenos Aires. We made it too our flight with about 30 minutes to spare before boarding.

Yes, we literally saw millions of penguins and chicks. Mid to late December is perfect chick viewing as well as better weather than if you go earlier on or later in the season. There were some places that we visited that had half a million penguins at that one location. Most locations we visited had over 100,000 penguins, so there will be no shortage for you to see. The only way you wouldn't see them is if you have terrible weather and are unable to land anywhere, but you would still likely be able to see them swimming and with binoculars or your camera on shore. We saw everything from penguins sitting on eggs to chicks that were just a day or two old all the way up to about four week old chicks.

My husband and I returned from a Silversea Falkland Island and Antarctica trip last week (on Jan. 4, 2016). I'm happy to answer any questions you might have.

We had a wonderful trip with usually nice weather, a relatively smooth Drake crossing, and saw millions of penguins (Rockhopper, Chinstrap, Gentoo, Adelie, and Magellanic) as well as lots of seals, whales, and other birds.

Does anyone have photo of a recent drink menu and the drink prices?

any requirements for dinner and clothing?

This was by far the most casual cruise we had ever been on. I'm not sure if it was the location of Hawaii that made it casual or if it was just a Norwegian thing.

Skyline & Liberty were the two main dining rooms. One was supposed to have more of a dress code than the other, but we thought people dressed the same in both.

The only place we saw people dressed up was at the Jefferson Bistro and by dressed but I mean women in dresses and guys with a jacket or a tie.

I wished I would have left all of my dress clothes at home. They took up room in my suitcase and I never wore them.

I plan to cruise on the Oceania Marina in July 2016. I would like to know if the ship docks in the city (or a short walking distance of the city) or at a container port for the following cities:

Tallinn, Estonia

Helsinki, Finland

Riga, Latvia

Klaipeda, Lithuania

Warnemunde, Germany

Which of these cities are good for a "do it yourself" tour or which of these cities would be best seen paying for an excursion?

If you have any suggestions for excursions or guides in any of these cities that would also be appreciated.

How about bringing on other beverages such as a few bottles of coke or bottled water? Does Oceania have an issue with that?

I would like to know if the Oceania Marina docks in the city (or a short walking distance of the city) or at a container port for the following cities:

St. Petersburg

Tallinn, Estonia

Helsinki, Finland

Riga, Latvia

Klaipeda, Lithuania

Warnemunde, Germany

Does Oceania provide any free transportation into any of these cities or is are they accessible only by booking excursions? (with the exception of St. Petersburg where we will just take Oceania excursions)

Also, on a cruise that goes to these ports, which side of the ship would be a better balcony room?

If you have any suggestions for Oceania excursions or non-Oceania excursions for any of these cities that would also be appreciated.

What was in the box lunches?

For the Akaka Falls & Volcano National Park Excursion from NCL - We were given a box lunch of a turkey sandwich, apple, chips, cookie, and a bottle of water that we ate on the bus. There was no set lunch stop.

We have a balcony room. Would we be able to hear the narration from our room on the loudspeakers or do we need to be on deck?

Debbie

Florida

You wouldn't hear the narration in your room, but if you were on your balcony, then you would hear it.

What box lunches?

 

Debbie

Florida

Box lunches from excursions.

we are booked for sept this year. first timers. was there a choice on box lunch? I have allergies and such.

I'm a picky eater so I too was disappointed that there was no choices for box lunches. You get what you get.

out of curiousity, for the TVs in the rooms do you get the same 5-6 channels that are offered on Caribbean cruises or do they have additional channels since this cruise is all in the USA and not international?

 

For the overnights at islands were there evening activities off the ship to participate in?

TV channels were limited just like any other cruise.

Other Dining: We did not go to any of the restaurants that were an extra fee. However, we really enjoyed the 24 hour snacks at the bars including the popcorn. And, we really enjoyed the 24 hour Cadillac Diner. That was a great place to get an appetizer between meals and also when we came back from excursions and the buffet was closed between lunch and dinner.

 

 

Which bars had the snacks & popcorn, all of them, how was the popcorn served?

 

Leaving tomorrow I'm so excited.

The Pink Champagne bar had nuts in bowls that you could ask for.

The Goldrush Saloon has a popcorn machine and it is serve yourself.

Ship Layout: This is was the worst layout we had ever seen for a cruise ship. There were several floors where you could only walk the length of the ship on one side and not the other. This lead to the theater filling up fast on one side and few people sitting on the other. Entering the buffet in one area the passengers have to walk through a galley pass through. I can’t tell you how many times a staff member almost ran over me running through the pass through. It was just odd.

 

We will be on POA this coming Saturday. Thanks so much for posting this review I'm taking some notes. From your comments above which floors & what side were you only able to walk on?

 

We are on several NCL excursions did you think they did a good job the only one that is the same as the one you were on is the Waimea Canyon tour.

Did you have or attend a Cruise Critic meet & greet?

The promenade deck is available to walk around the entire ship and is outside. But within the ship, most of the common area hallways are on the starboard side of the ship.

Overall, the NCL excursions were good, a little over priced and a little less flexibility than booking something independently, but they are consistent and always get you back on time. You also get exactly what is advertised on the NCL excursions for this cruise. Often times the driver was also the tour guide.

There was supposed to be a Cruise Critic Meet and Greet, but we did not attend. I think because we were unpacking due to the rooms being open later than expected.