Dave's Live from Ryndam, Feb. 6-20, 2011

Hello CC'ers,

Dave here, with another "live from" blog, this time from Ryndam, on a 14-day Collectors' Cruise of the Western Caribbean, February 6-20, 2011. It is about 6 a.m., Sunday, February 6, 2011 as I post.

We sail today, Sunday, Feb 6, from Tampa and are scheduled to visit Key West, Ocho Rios, Grand Cayman and Cozumel before returning to Tampa on Feb. 13. We initallly were to have gone to Falmouth in Jamaica, but the new port there is not ready yet and HAL shifted us to Ocho Rios. The second half of the cruise takes us to Key West again, then to Belize, Mahogany Bay and Costa Maya.

I will try to make at least one entry for each day, but I may not be able to post every day; it will depend on both my actitivites and the cooperation of the internet connections on board. Some days we have lengthy excursions planned, and I may find that some days I just cannot post because of poor internet connections. I will in any case keep a running log and post when I can.

I will also try to post photos now and then. On previous blogs I would post them as attachments, but have learned how to upload to the photo section of CC and post links. I may not post thumbnails, just the links. If I encounter slowdowns at ship satellite connection speeds, I may end up going back to posting them as attachments and uploading larger files later when I get higher speeds, perhaps at a wifi cafe in port somewhere.

As a test of the concept, here is a link to a photo I uploaded, showing the hotel lobby:

http://pictures.cruisecritic.com/showphoto.php?photo=18833

Pre-cruise

We were spared by the huge early February storm that pounded millions of people from Texas to New Brunswick, as the storm went just north of us in the Washington, D.C. area. We drove to Tampa, stopping to see friends on the way, and arrived on Saturday, Feb. 5, the day before embarkation. We always try to arrive at least one day prior to the cruise, as the wear on the nerves planning to arrive the day of sailing far outweighs the increased wear on the credit card for a hotel room to arrive the day before.

We stayed at the Marriott on the waterfront, near the cruise port. It is a large and comfortable hotel, and is as nice as we remember from 2003. It was raining when we arrived and rained all evening, so we ate dinner in the hotel instead of venturing to Channelside. Our hotel room overlooks Channelside and the cruise port. We saw a Royal Caribbean ship in Saturday, and Sunday morning watched as a Carnival ship docked. Ryndam is docking as I post.

More later,

Dave

Hi Dave---let me be the first to say I will be following your adventures. I am trying to decide on something in the Caribbean to book while onboard our upcoming cruise. Funny--just last night I was doing an internet search for hotels near the Tampa cruiseport and the picture you posted looks very nice. I will make note of the hotel.

Have a great cruise an I look forward to enjoying it with you and Mrs Dave.

Bon Voyage!!

Looking forward to your "Live" report.

Hi Dave,

I will be looking forward to your reports. Glad you got there and missed the storm. Thanks for sharing :):):)

Looking forward to your report. We were on the same Collector's Cruise in January--we celebrated our 45th wedding anniversary while on board and the Ryndam and her crew were great!

Bon Voyage, Dave!

Thank you for posting from the ship. We will be on the Feb 20 sailing, so I'm eager to hear about your cruise.

Ricki

Thanks so much for doing a live from review...love those:) We've never sailed out of Tampa...loved the photo of the hotel...beautiful lobby.

While passing time, waiting until it is time to board, I took a photo out of our hotel window of the port. Ryndam is in the back of the photo, to the right is Carnival Legend, alongside Channelside. It is a hazy, overcast morning (very Seattle-ish), but warmer.

I've also discovered how to link directly to the photo and not to the CC photo gallery page. You can enlarge the photo if you want by clicking on it when it comes up.

http://pictures.cruisecritic.com/data/510/Ryndam_and_Carnival_Legend_from_hotel_room.JPG

More later,

Dave

Thanks Dave. We will look forward to your posts. We plan to take the same trip next year. Last evening, we were having dinner just across the channel from where you were staying. We waved figuring that some cruise passengers must be staying at the Marriott. We were at ground level so could not see the Ryndam docking. We look forward to next year's cruise. It is just that pesky long drive from our home SE of Tampa. The long drive takes us about 20 minutes so we might have to stay at the Marriot the night before.:)

We will be boarding Ryndam (with Ricki :)) on Feb 20 and will do the first half of your 2-week voyage, so will eagerly await your posts. Bon Voyage!

Really enjoying your review. Looking forward to the rest of your adventure.

With recent memories of sailing on the MS Ryndam, we wish you Bon Voyage and hope you enjoy your Ryndam cruise as much as we did ours.

Subscribing to this already exciting Blog/Review Dave:)

Gott a say that the piano sitting there by itself on the Mezzanine looks beautiful:)

LOL love that little 3 deck ship "Parked" in front of the Cruise ship on the right:)

Joanie

With recent memories of sailing on the MS Ryndam, we wish you Bon Voyage and hope you enjoy your Ryndam cruise as much as we did ours.

With a future Ryndam sailing ahead of us, all these reports are very welcomed. Glad to hear your trip was wonderful and will look forward also to getting these daily blogs and photos too.

Dave,

Thanks for the pictures, etc. We're thinking of booking the Ryndam for

Norway, etc. July 24 for 2 weeks. How does the ship look? She's one of the older ones and I love to know how she's doing.

Thank you for your great photos.

Looking forward to your reports.

Bon Voyage.

Good to hear you made it to the ship. Thank you for doing a live from thread. I'll be looking forward to reading it.

We will be boarding Ryndam (with Ricki :)) on Feb 20 and will do the first half of your 2-week voyage, so will eagerly await your posts. Bon Voyage!

We`re also boarding Ryndam on Feb 2Oth, so looking forward to following your blog.

Dave, i will be on board with You for the last 7 nights. I would love to meet You and Yours.

Looking forward to Your review. debbie

Thank you for sharing your experience with us.

Dave, i will be on board with You for the last 7 nights. I would love to meet You and Yours.

Looking forward to Your review. debbie

This! My family and I (my husband and I, our 1 year old daughter and my parents) will be joining you next Sunday. Looking forward to hearing how this week goes and about the ship.

Looking forward to your posts! Enjoy your cruise and thank you for taking the time to do the daily posts. :) I know how much time, effort and internet $ it can take to do this....just so we can enjoy it all with you!! :D

CC'ers

Posting the evening of Feb. 6th, and will update a bit of today, but probably will already be behind when I finish, because so much is going on.

Embarkation

We finally could not stand it any more and checked out of the Marriott just after 10:30, and after getting our car out of valet parking hock and driving the short distance to the cruise port, we arrived about 10:45. I had earlier walked to the terminal, and happened to encounter a security person who told me the drill, and recommended we use valet parking at the pier.

There is a parking garage nearby, but the valet is only $10 more and they park your car in a fenced lot right there. The valets said they would be there starting at 5:30 a.m. on the day we come back, and could have our car to us about three minutes after we gave them our ticket. So, we went with the flow. The price for a week valet was $115, compared to $105 for self park. For the two-week cruise, they charged us #213. We'll let you know how it goes when we get back.

We went up, and were among the first to arrive. We had originally booked a "B" class balcony cabin, but at some point HAL hit a sale price point that triggered us to upsell to an "S" class suite. (As an aside, when HAL upgraded us without cost to a deluxe suite on Eurodam in 2009, they knew what they were doing -- DW loved it and was fully up for the upsell on Ryndam).

There was a separate check-in line for suite and 4-star Mariners, but when we arrived all the staff was pretty much free. We did a painless and efficient check-in and were told to have a seat for an expected 11:30 embark. We could see that the b2b turn-around pax were still ashore, so we knew the ship had not zero'ed out yet. An interesting point -- they did not take our photos. We aksed, and they said they still had the photos on file from Noordam last year. No doubt, there will come a point where I will prefer a photo from 2010 instead of one from, say 2019 -- but Copper 10-8 may not let me aboard then because I don't look like the guy in my photo!

We were among the first sent aboard (being suite types and all ...) and were told our cabins were already available. We checked, and it was not just the suites that were ready -- pretty much all of them were.

The stateroom

As I said, we are in an "S" class cabin, across from the Neptune Lounge. This certainly would be easy to get used to! We have only our upgrade to a suite on Eurodam for comparison, but the suites are a bit different on the "S" class:

- There seems to be about the same amount of space, but it is organized a bit differently. There are more closets and drawers on Ryndam, but the bathroom is smaller, with only a tub and not a separate shower, and only a single sink vanity instead of double.

- The balcony seems just as wide, but a bit deeper. Also, there is no plexiglass railing, only a low steel one. And, I had brought a squeegee to clean off the spray -- oh well, I'll save it for another cruise.

Attached are links to several photos I uploaded to CC photo gallery. (Joanie, feel free to copy any you want, and let me know if there is something you specifically want me to capture.)

Suite 023 _ 1 http://pictures.cruisecritic.com/data/525/Ryndam_S023_1.JPG

Suite 023 _ 2 http://pictures.cruisecritic.com/data/520/Ryndam_S023_2.JPG

Suite 023 _ 3 http://pictures.cruisecritic.com/data/520/Ryndam_S023_3.JPG

Balcony 1 http://pictures.cruisecritic.com/data/520/Ryndam_S023_balcony1_Feb11.JPG

Balcony 2 http://pictures.cruisecritic.com/data/520/Ryndam_S023_balcony2_Feb11.JPG

Bath 1 http://pictures.cruisecritic.com/data/520/Ryndam_S023_bath1.JPG

Bath 2 http://pictures.cruisecritic.com/data/520/Ryndam_S023_bath2.JPG

Dressing area http://pictures.cruisecritic.com/data/520/Ryndam_S023_dressing_area.JPG

Seems I've only gotten aboard on this blog, but will post more later.

Dave

An interesting point -- they did not take our photos. We aksed, and they said they still had the photos on file from Noordam last year.

Thanks for your reports and thanks for the pictures. Have a great cruise.