Grandeur of the Seas Review with Pictures- May 12, 2016

[amrgirl95]

Hey everybody! I was on Grandeur of the Seas from May 12th to 21st. We went to Bermuda, Nassau, and CocoCay, and the cruise left from Baltimore, Maryland. I wanted to do a review of the whole cruise, with pictures that I took along the way. In my review, I’ll focus on what I did and what I found important. If anybody wants me to answer any specific questions or post pictures of something, please let me know. I’ll start with giving a bit of background information about myself and the people I went on the trip with, and then I’ll go over what cruise day by day, and I’ll include whatever else I think of whenever it comes up. I’m going to be writing this around work and whatever else I may end up doing, so I’m not sure when I’ll finish it, but I’ll see how it starts going.

 

So I’m Anna. I finished my second to last semester of college, which was super busy, a few days before this trip began. I’m turning 21 in a few months. I went on this trip with my mom and her best friend’s daughter, who is also 20 years old. Normally, my dad and my younger brother would be cruising with us, but we did something different for our family vacation this year. My family and I have cruised multiple times before, and our favorite lines are Royal Caribbean and Celebrity. Our family friend had never cruised before, so I can include some of her reactions as a first time cruiser. We live in Northern Virginia, slightly more than an hour away from Baltimore. My dad drove us up to the port and picked us up. Our family friend spent the night before the trip began at our house, so we could all get an early (for me) start together. About a month before our trip, my mom broke her foot, so she had a hot pink cast on her leg during the whole cruise. I photograph concerts, so taking pictures on a brightly lit cruise was different than what I had been doing recently, but that’ll explain any pictures taken at odd angles, which is something that I tend to do. I also write concert reviews and I’ve never written anything like this, so I’m not sure how it’ll turn out. I’m very sarcastic and humorous, and that’ll probably end up in this review, so if something seems like it’s funny, then I probably meant for it to be taken that way. As I’m beginning to write this review, I’m remembering that I can be a bit wordy when I’m writing certain things, so this may end up being really long, so I apologize in advance if that happens. I guess that about covers us, but I’ll probably mention something random as I come across it.

 

Also I’m trying to figure out how to use Photobucket to upload these pictures, and that’s going really slowly, so I apologize if there’s any issue with that. I also posted these pictures on my Facebook page, so that’s why they have my watermark on it. If there’s any issue with that, let me know and I’ll upload the original files.

 

 

Day One

 

A couple of days before the trip, we all got emails and text from Royal Caribbean, telling us that they expected delays with embarkation and debarkation, and told us not to arrive at the port until a certain time. I’ve forgotten the exact time since then, but I believe it was around 11:30. The delay was due to the Carnival Pride hitting and damaging the gangway normally used, I believe. Here’s a picture of how that looked on the first day of our trip.

 

 

Our plan was to get to the port at about 10:30 or 11:00. Since we lived slightly more than an hour away, depending on traffic, the weather, and how fast you’re going, we planned to leave between 9:00 and 9:30. I think I set my alarm for 7:30 or 8:00, which is super early for me, a college student who refuses to take classes that start before noon. Getting up too early for me was something that happened every day of this trip, but it ended up working out fine. I also drank way too much caffeine this trip, but that’s another story. Anyway, my dad decided he had to go grab something from the pharmacy down the street before we left, so we probably left our house closer to 9:45 or 10:00. Even though there were only four of us in the vehicle, my dad’s SUV was packed full of our three huge suitcases (I work in a shoe store, so I had to bring multiple pairs of wedges, while my mom only brought one foot of each shoe, none of which were heels), a duffle bag-like bag, our carry-on bags, my mom’s knee scooter, and her crutches. We put a luggage tag on the knee scooter, left it with the porters, and it got delivered to our room. I also put a luggage tag on the duffle bag, which held about ten water bottles, six small bottles of PowerAde, my leather jacket, and the detachable basket from the knee scooter. We arrived at the pier around 11:15. We were easily directed to where my dad was supposed to drop us off. One person working there told us to go into the middle lane, and then we sort of sat there, with nobody approaching us. It didn’t seem like we were supposed to be there, and my dad opened a window to ask one of the porters where to go. The one closest to us didn’t help direct us and was rude about it. My dad pulled into another lane, and the porter who helped us there was nice and he reassured me that it would be fine to check the knee scooter.

 

Our plan was for my mom to use her crutches, then to use Royal’s wheelchair assistance to get her on board. We had booked the cruise and made plans for each of the islands months before my mom broke her foot, so everything had to be changed, something that I, somebody who plans out everything way in advance, hated. Some of our plans had to be altered even on the trip, particularly due to the bad weather we had. We had cruised out of Baltimore in the summer of 2012, and I had only heard good things about embarkation and debarkation at the port since then. We were on the ship by 12:15, an hour from when we pulled into the drop off area. All of the employees we encountered in the port area were super nice. The only waiting we did was because my mom was handicapped. Our family friend and I went through security, but we had to wait for my mom because of her metal crutches. She was told to walk through the metal detectors with the crutches, and then she had to wait off to the side for a female guard to be free to run a metal detector wand over her. When they finally found an available female guard, they couldn’t find a wand, so the guard frisked my mom, which she was fine with. Whenever we went through security getting on the ship, the guard put her crutches through the metal detector used for bags and had her walk through without them, so I don’t know why it took so long for them to get this sorted out. We were then directed to a specific check in line for handicapped guests, instead of the one we normally would have used since my mom and I are platinum members in the Crown and Anchor Society. The line to check in didn’t take that long, and we were directed to an area to wait for a wheelchair to become available to take my mom on the ship. Since our family friend and I are both under the age of 21 by a few months, we are technically not adults in the eyes of the cruise line, so we needed my mom to cruise. We waited with my mom for her to get the wheelchair. My mom was the second person waiting to be called, and the first person waiting received their wheelchair while my mom was still talking to the guy who was in charge of the list. I sat my mom and our stuff down in seats, and ran to the bathroom. When I got back, my mom was still talking to the same man, who was really nice. Our family friend went to the bathroom and before she got back, my mom’s wheelchair had arrived. Along with the restrooms, there was also water and lemonade available to people waiting. The cruise ship employee who wheeled her did have his crew version of the SeaPass card scanned to get on and off the ship. But we got on the ship. And promptly into a long line to wait for the elevators. The crew member pushing my mom’s chair asked where we wanted to go, and he said he could take us to the Windjammer, so we went there. The Windjammer wasn’t super crowded, even though it was around 12:30 on embarkation day, but the crew member helped us find an empty table, which was really nice. Here are the pictures I got of the Windjammer and its food that day. I also took a picture of all of the different types of tea offered. I drank a lot of tea this trip. My favorites were the orange black, lemon black, and pure black.

 

 

 

 

I heard that our cruise was sold out, but I’m not sure if that’s true, but no place on the ship during the whole trip ever seemed to be really crowded. Even on sea days, you could always find an open seat in the Solarium, even if it was just a table, or on the pool deck or in the Windjammer. I don’t know where everybody was on the ship, but I didn’t mind it. I went off to get my mom food, then got myself food. Every time we went to the Windjammer, I had to get my mom her food and drink and then mine. Once she went with only our family friend, who had the fun duty of helping her get food. By the end of the trip, I knew exactly what my mom liked. I knew specifically what she wanted for breakfast, down to the exact number of Kadova figs she wanted. The Windjammer always seemed to be serving Chocolate Sensation, at least during lunch, which is one of the desserts that was always served for dinner. My mom always requested that for her dessert in the Windjammer, so she seemed to really like it.

 

While we were still eating, I believe I first noted something that was a constant throughout the whole trip. I realized that the majority of the passengers around us were, to put it nicely, older. I kept remarking that my mom was one of the youngest on board. I don’t think she’d want me to post her age, but she’s older enough to have a daughter who’s almost 21, though she looks younger than her age. Anyway, there were probably less than 50 children on board. I had a thread that I posted in during my trip, and I believe that somebody there asked about the Adventure Ocean program. While nobody in my group used it, I found a woman with a four-year-old daughter, who said that her daughter spent a lot of her time in the program and that she loved it.

 

While we were still finishing up lunch, an announcement was made a few minutes after 1:00, saying that the staterooms were open to passengers. We didn’t immediately proceed to the room, but instead to the Main Dining Room, in order to make MTD reservations for dinner that night. I believe that they didn’t have anything open until 7:00, and the welcome aboard show started at 7:15. We made dinner reservations for 8:00, and planned to leave the show early. I believe after that we went to our room. We had room 3532, an oceanview room with two upper berths. I’m tall, and before my mom broke her foot, I requested to not sleep on the upper berth, not underneath it, since I would be the most likely to hit my head on something. Once we got on the ship, I ended up getting my desired location, but I’m pretty sure all three of us bumped our heads on various parts of the room during our trip. I had selected the room since it was not immediately under or over any public location that could be loud, and it was close to the forward elevators, so we wouldn’t have to walk far. That ended up being great, since my mom couldn’t truly walk, though half the time we walked down the long hallway on our floor to the midship elevators, to avoid the same walk on a deck that was uneven. I was a bit afraid that our room would have a bit of noise due to being close to the elevators, but there was none. The whole trip, I did not hear any noise, except the waves outside our window, a thunderstorm when we were docked overnight in Bermuda, and some docking noises when we returned to Baltimore. It was like we did not even have neighbors, since we never heard them. Our room was an average oceanview cruise ship stateroom. Our family friend, who had never been on a cruise before, pretty much summed it up with her first reaction to the room. She walked in and said only “oh,” in a surprised and somewhat disappointed tone of voice. Our bags had not arrived to our room yet, so we went up to deck five to get ready for the muster drill. Here's a shot of the promenade deck.

 

 

I want to make a note about the elevators on the ship. Right before we left, I had recently moved out of my dorm, which I had been living in since late August, excluding during the school breaks. My suite was on the fifth and top floor, and my suitemates and I constantly complained about the slow and only elevator in the building, especially when it would stop working. Our dorm was relatively new, so it wasn’t like that due to old age. Since I had spent many months complaining about the elevators in my dorm, it was natural for me to compare the elevators on the ship to those. While you were waiting for the elevators, they were slow and took a while to get to the floor you were on. I did see a few even skip the floors that had the buttons pressed. Once you were in the elevators, if no other floors called them, they were pretty fast. Sometimes the doors refused to open the last inch or so, or they did so very slowly. The doors stayed open various amounts of time. Some began to close before everybody in the elevator even had enough time to get out. The motion sensors in the door also weren’t very sensitive. It seemed to take the doors a while to recognize that somebody’s body part was trying to hold them open. Once, my mom stuck one of her crutches between the doors to stop the elevator for somebody, and the doors closed around the crutch. I believe the doors touched both sides of the crutch before opening back up. I thought the elevator was going to start moving with her crutch still trapped between the doors. There are six elevators in the midship area, and I believe the two ones, possibly called the panoramic elevators, that went all the way to the 11th deck, have a separate set of buttons to press than the other four. I’m not sure of that, but that’s my take on the elevators on the ship. I'll post the next part of my review in another post.

[amrgirl95]

So anyway, we went to the muster drill. It was held outside, and it was your standard muster drill. Nobody came super later and nobody complained obnoxiously about it, which I saw on one cruise. The only difference was that my mom got to sit inside the casino, with the rest of the handicapped passengers.

 

 

After muster drill, I think I went down to the cabin to drag all of the suitcases inside, and then we went to watch the ship sail away. My mom and our family friend went to the pool bar to get a drink, while I went to the drink station outside of the Windjammer to get a mug of hot tea, since it was cold out. I’m always cold, and I was cold for the majority of this trip. I had the hood on my jacket up during the muster drill. During sail away, I was wearing jeans, a hoodie, a leather jacket, and drinking hot tea. By the time I got up to deck ten forward, the ship had already inched itself away from land. My mom and our family friend caught up with me later, since they had to take the elevators up. I refused to take the stairs for one or two flights, so my mom and our family friend would take the elevator and I would walk up. I always beat them. Once I surprised a group of guys in the elevator with my mom since I made it up so fast. Here are my sail away pictures.

 

 

 

I thought this picture was funny because it showed what I was drinking versus what our family friend and my mom were drinking during sail away.

 

 

 

 

Anyway, it was pretty grey out during sail away, so not much was going on. After the ship went under the first bridge, we went back to our room to unpack. That was fun, since we had to try to get three women in one room, all walking around each other, and one wasn’t supposed to stand on her foot. We made it work though. We didn’t have much problem fitting all of us in the room at the same time. My mom’s knee scooter got parked sort of in front of the couch, so the only problem we had was when somebody was sitting in the chair in front of the vanity and another person tried to walk behind them. It was a tight fit, but nothing too bad. There was exactly enough storage in the room. I brought an over-the-door shoe organizer, since I always love using them on trips and they’re super helpful in my dorm. I had divided the organizer so that we could split it evenly, but the only thing that wasn’t mine that ended up in it was my mom’s sunglasses that she never used, so I put a bunch of my stuff in the shoe organizer. On the desk area, there was a bottom shelf thing where the mini bar contents were held. I believe that the television used to be stored there, but there is now a flat screen television mounted on the wall next to the couch. In that shelf area, there were a few outlets in the back corner. A couple may have been specifically for televisions, but one was a regular outlet. I don’t know the voltage off the top of my head, but it’s equivalent to American outlets. There were also two of those on the vanity area as well. If you reach in the back of that shelf, which I did, there are actually three outlets in the room.

I noticed that in the starboard side hallway on deck three, midship, there was a mild sewage smell. It was not noticeable in our end of the hallway, and it went away after the first day. I also noticed a crew member working on something in that hallway, but I’m not sure what they were doing.

After we unpacked, we got ready for the show and dinner. Our cruise director was John Blair, and the activities manager was his wife, Katrina. We had had them for a couple of cruisers previously. The welcome aboard show was your average welcome aboard show. The cruise director did sing “All Star” by Smash Mouth, which I love. We left around 7:45 to give us enough time to get to the other side of the ship. When we arrived, there was a bit of a line at the MTD desk, but we were seating pretty promptly. For dinner that night, I had the kiwi pineapple medley, the mojo marinated pork chop, and the carrot cake. The pork chop was somewhat dry, but still pretty flavorful. We ate at a table for six, but were not seated with anybody that night. We sat with a few different couples throughout the course of the cruise, but never the same group. We had the same table and wait staff each night. Both the waiter and his assistant were great. That night, we finished eating in slightly more than an hour.

[amrgirl95]

After dinner, we went up to the Solarium and found Park Café. We grabbed a couple of cookies and walked around a bit more before heading back to the room to go to bed. I need a lot of sleep, so we tended to head to bed relatively early each night, in order to get up in time for breakfast.

 

 

 

 

I'll make another post with a few pictures of various places around the ship, and then I'll be done for the day.

[amrgirl95]

This is a shot of the pool deck soon after boarding the ship.

 

 

This is a picture of the various crew members on the ship, such as the captain. I'm not sure what it's technically called.

 

 

Here's a pretty empty casino on the first day, while still docked in Baltimore.

 

 

Here are a few shots of the Centrum.

 

 

 

 

So that’s my review of the first day on our trip. I’ve typed this up in Word before posting it, and I realized that it’s pretty long, as least on my computer. For the future days, I will try to cut down on the length. I'll try to work on writing more tomorrow, depending on what I end up doing.

[Firefighterhoop]

Thanks for the review! I really enjoy cruising out of Baltimore and the Longer cruises you can get from there. I was supposed to go out of Baltimore this January, but had to reschedule things due to the blizzard.

[Kayla103]

Great review! Love all the photos

 

 

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[riclop]

Thanks for the review.

[Rosiesmom1234]

Very excited about your review. I will be on the same ship in July. Traveling with my 21 year old daughter.

[MyPortofBaltimore]

I think I remember seeing you an your mom at crafts one day (I was on the same cruise).

 

I was in the party with two teenage girls and attended craft class every day.

[Norway2]

Great review keep it coming! Following along!

[cruise47]

Thanks for your review with your photos.

[Yorkvillain]

Such detail! Looking forward to the rest.

[N8andK8]

Great review! Following along with anticipation of our August 18th cruise with the same itinerary. Any chance you saved the cruise compasses? Thanks for all the info!

[Clarea]

Exceptional photos!

[joand452]

Hi from western Fairfax!

 

I'd love to cruise out of Baltimore (so close!), but DH likes only ships from Voyager class and up. Have you cruised on any bigger ships? I'd like to know your opinion of sailing on Grandeur.

 

Looking forward to more of your photos,

[Another-Adventure]

Enjoying the review and photos! We are sailing on Grandeur for the first time in July!

 

 

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[coneyraven]

Greetings from FAR Western Maryland. I'm enjoying your review and am finding it extremely helpful for our cruise in September. Can't wait for the next installment. Thank You

 

 

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[Goofyisme]

AMRGRL95,

Hope all is well. Loving your review and especially the pictures.

Hope to see more soon.

[atnolan94]

Great pics, I think the vision class tie together the older ships of the late 80s/early 90s with the Voyager-and-newer ships. The solarium is so intriguing as well. Great pics.

[lenquixote66]

Exceptional photos!

 

 

How do you get 81,000 posts ?

[Hookie2]

Looking forward to reading the rest of the review. We are doing the same itinery on 7th July and reading yours is making me so excited. We are flying in from the Uk.

 

Julie

[Biker19]

How do you get 81,000 posts ?

 

You post, a lot. Actually, about 30 posts a day for 8 years would do it.:p

[rcrdale]

Can't wait to see more pictures as we will be on the Grandeur in December.

[lenquixote66]

You post, a lot. Actually, about 30 posts a day for 8 years would do it.:p

 

 

I told my wife that somebody here has 81,000 posts ,she does not believe me,lol.

[amrgirl95]

Thank you all for the comments! Sorry I haven't posted anything over the past few days. It was slow at work today and I was alone so I was able to type up the next two days of my review, so I'll have them up shortly.

 

I think I remember seeing you an your mom at crafts one day (I was on the same cruise).

 

I was in the party with two teenage girls and attended craft class every day.

 

We went to nearly all of the craft classes, so you probably did see us.

 

 

Great review! Following along with anticipation of our August 18th cruise with the same itinerary. Any chance you saved the cruise compasses? Thanks for all the info!

 

I did take pictures of all the compasses. I can post them or send them to you. Let me know the easiest way for me to do that.