Serenade of the Seas 7N Baltic Cruise Review Copenhagen, Stockholm, Tallin, St Peter

[Iluvcruising2]

Also enjoying the videos.:)

 

Thanks for watching!

[Iluvcruising2]

Thanks for sharing your videos and trip summary. I'm going on the Serenade next month and it is my first time in Europe. It's great to see what it will look like crowds and all.

 

Enjoy Europe. It is certainly very different from the USA. Hope you have a great cruise.

[Iluvcruising2]

Enjoying your review

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums mobile app

 

Thanks for letting me know. Glad you are enjoying the review.

[Iluvcruising2]

Thanks a lot for the Helsinki info' date=' Iluvcruising2. Exactly what I was looking for. Our cruise is Stockholm to Stockholm, but we are adding a couple of days in Copenhagen after the cruise. We are also staying at Hotel Bethel so your videos are great. Enjoying your report.[/quote']

 

Glad to be of help. Hope you have a wonderful cruise and calm seas!!

[Iluvcruising2]

Perfect-contemplating this cruise next year. Thank you for the wonderful videos.

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Go for it!

 

We chose it largely because of the itinerary. And I brought my retired parents along hence cabin 1054 was perfect. Bucket-list for us.

[Iluvcruising2]

I booked 1054 yesterday because of your YouTube video. I didn't realize how current that post was. I want to thank you for posting. You pointed me to a room even the agents at rcl don't know about. Ill be thanking you when I sail next May. Best regards I loved your enthusiasm in the video. So did my kids. We are all excited.

 

Thank you for letting me know of your success in booking 1054! So exciting!

 

You will love it. It is an awesome cabin at a great price. During the cruise, my Dad joked to me and said that I should do a video or put up pictures of this cabin so that fewer people would know of it. I told him the only reason we knew of this cabin was from an earlier cruise critic post! (If you do a search, you will probably find it somewhere in the archives.) So this content is not new, but perhaps put in a different way (i.e. video instead of still pictures).

 

Hope you have a wonderful cruise and calm seas! And thanks for watching my videos too. :):)

Edited June 17, 2016 by Iluvcruising2

[Iluvcruising2]

It is Saturday morning in Singapore. The weekend is here! I had a busy week but glad there is a bit more time to rest and relax this weekend. Once again, thanks to everybody for your kind and encouraging words so far. It has made me want to process my videos more quickly just so to share with you. So here are three more short clips.

 

The first clip shows you some random scenes that I took while walking around the ship on embarkation day. This was before lunch. The ship was still rather empty. We checked out the pool area, Cafe Lattitudes and the Main Dining Room. Cafe Lattitudes sells speciality coffee and this place was busy during the cruise. However, the snacks are complimentary!

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In this next clip, a very short one, I show you the Teen Lounge area. I figured this was the only time I could get into the Teen Lounge, since this place was for 12-17 years old.

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And in this clip, I show you the helicopter deck. I'm not sure if all passengers know how to get here. But it is worth visiting.

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[Iluvcruising2]

In this video, we were in our cabin and in the background you can hear my family talking to our stateroom attendant who came to introduce himself. Take note gratuities are now US13.50 per person per day and automatically billed to your shipboard account. While they were chatting, I was busy filming this interesting ship sailing past. I later found out that this was a cruise ferry, MS Crown Seaways, abt 36,500GT, operated by DFDS Seaways. The cruise ferry operates between Copenhagen and Oslo. Interesting!

[YOUTUBE]FdsYwMDDZXU[/YOUTUBE]

[Iluvcruising2]

From this cruise, I realised that I liked to take videos of passing ships! This was an Aida cruise ship, the AIDAdiva sailing past. In the video, I talked as if she was leaving port. In reality, she was arriving in Copenhagen, and not leaving. Enjoy!

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[Iluvcruising2]

Next, let me show you the letter we received from the Diamond concierge that was waiting for us in our cabin when we arrived. As well as all the water and Diet coke!

[YOUTUBE]OQ1eZN-2niM[/YOUTUBE]

 

And in this video, I show you the Diamond lounge, which is on Deck 13 very near the center elevators. We visited the lounge early (our seapass card could give us access) when nobody was there. The lounge wasn't very big. Later that afternoon, we visited the lounge again, this time during evening cocktail hours, and had some food and drinks. The next day, the Diamond concierge told me politely that I could not bring my kids to the Diamond Lounge during cocktail hours. Since this is the rule, we were fine with that.

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[Iluvcruising2]

For this cruise, we were planning to do more speciality dining, since we had enjoyed MDR on Royal Caribbean for the previous cruise and were looking for something different. We read that there might be offers (packages) so we waited till embarkation day. True enough, as we waited to board the ship, there were staff advertising packages.. There was a $70 per pax package for 3 dinners and $100 per pax package for 5 dinners. The dinners could be at Chops, Giovanni's or Izumi (any order, any number of times). Take note the upcharge for Chops was now $35. For Giovanni's I think it was $30. Since Izumi is an a la carte restaurant, the package gave you up to $30 credit per dinner. For the kids, it was $10 per kid (below 16) per dinner, no need to buy any package.

 

After some consideration, we decided to go for the $100 package for the 4 adults. Works out to be $20 per dinner for 5 dinners, so that sounded cool.

 

Not that we don't like the MDR food. We do. However, this time round, we thought just do more speciality. I was looking forward to eating the beef (good steak in Singapore is expensive) and my kids like Izumi very much. So why not.

 

We eat early so we made a dinner reservation for 6pm on the first night at Chops Grille. The restaurant opened at 6pm. So here is the video I made of the experience. It was awesome. We had all the usual favourites, including the beef, the Forest Mushroom soup, the Shrimp Cocktail, Red Velvet Cake, Mudpie. And one more thing - as Diamond members (all 6 of us), we had 3 drinks pre-loaded into our card. On the Serenade, Chops and Giovanni's were both located in the Schooner's Bar. So we got our complimentary drinks from the bar outside the restaurants and brought them in with us to dinner. How cool is that... :):):)

[YOUTUBE]8Z_babm5mhI [/YOUTUBE]

[Iluvcruising2]

Managed to catch the last part of the welcome show in the theatre. During this cruise, we didn't really watch the shows in the theatre, since we spent our time doing other things, including walking around the ship. Anyway, this clip is interesting because it shows you the Cruise Director (who is Finnish) and he was talking about the nationalities of the passengers on board. He went through the top 10. I realised that the English-speaking world was very well represented. No prizes for guessing which was the top nationality (think Star Spangled Banner). The number was surprising (high) too, at least to me.

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We love walking outside Deck 5, round and round the ship. Brisk walking is good. And breathing the fresh sea air and watching the seas go by is something we cannot get when we do our walks on land! So my wife and I treasure these moments. Good fun and great way to work off some of the food.

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Short clip of this blue ship. I thought it belonged to a cruise line that I was not aware of. Color Magic of Color Line. Later on, (thanks to google), I realised that the MS Color Magic was the largest cruise-ferry in the world. She is about 76,000GT and launched in 2007.

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[quandrea]

Thank you for letting me know of your success in booking 1054! So exciting!

 

You will love it. It is an awesome cabin at a great price. During the cruise, my Dad joked to me and said that I should do a video or put up pictures of this cabin so that fewer people would know of it. I told him the only reason we knew of this cabin was from an earlier cruise critic post! (If you do a search, you will probably find it somewhere in the archives.) So this content is not new, but perhaps put in a different way (i.e. video instead of still pictures).

 

Hope you have a wonderful cruise and calm seas! And thanks for watching my videos too. :):)

Enjoying all the videos now. So much useful information in one spot. Chops girlie looked great. Thanks for taking the,time to do this.

[Havin'fun]

Enjoying your videos. Thanks for doing this

[Iluvcruising2]

Enjoying your videos. Thanks for doing this

 

Thanks for the feedback. I am reliving my cruise doing this, and honestly I see things in my videos that I didn't notice before! :):)

[Iluvcruising2]

Enjoying all the videos now. So much useful information in one spot. Chops girlie looked great. Thanks for taking the,time to do this.

 

This is still the first evening. Live music from the Centrum.

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quandrea, watching this video reminded me of one very important negative point that I have to warn you about cabin 1054, that is noise.

 

Because of the way the 2 bedrooms are angled, you will be able to hear some of the music and dancing from the Centrum. It is by no means very loud, in fact it didn't affect our sleep at all, however I can imagine that if you are a light sleeper, you may get affected. The live music won't end till about mid-night, every night, and I cannot imagine that they will turn the music down.

 

So, my advise is to bring ear plugs, just in case. Other than this point on noise, Cabin 1054 really cannot be faulted given its price point and space!

[Iluvcruising2]

I knew that the Serenade had Park Cafe in the Solarium, with good food too, but for some reason I didn't visit the Park Cafe till late evening on Day 1 of our cruise. Must have been too busy doing other things! By the time I got to the Park Cafe, it was after 9pm. Just nice to see what they offered for supper. Take note that the Windjammer closes at 9pm every evening, so this is about the only place you can get food (of course you could order room service, or get cookies from Cafe Lattitudes). What did they have here? Not much variety at this time of the evening, but the all important pizza was available. Check it out.

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[Iluvcruising2]

In this video, I show you the coffee machine in the Diamond Lounge, which comes with interesting light effects. The first part of the video was on the first night, after cocktail hours. Notice the lights of the machine - fancy!

 

The second part of the video was next day morning. You can see the continental buffet breakfast available in the Diamond Lounge. We didn't have breakfast here but we always come here to get our coffee. A very quiet lounge in the morning. If you just want a simple continental style breakfast, there is enough to eat here. Sometimes, in the morning, the coffee machine had run out of coffee beans, probably due to the high demand from the previous evening. I have watched the staff pour in the coffee beans, not difficult to do. Perhaps the Diamond Lounge can consider to put these beans in an open area so that Diamond members can help to self re-fill the beans when they run out in the machine!

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Edited June 20, 2016 by Iluvcruising2

[Iluvcruising2]

This next video was made the next morning. Breakfast in the Windjammer! It turns out that we had breakfast at the Windjammer every morning for this cruise. We skipped the MDR breakfast, as we wanted something quick. In the flurry of activities, I must have forgotten to go have breakfast at MDR at least once so as to remind myself of the experience! In the center of Windjammer, they had a live waffle station, which was cool. Overall the buffet spread was definitely enough for my breakfast. Enjoy!

[YOUTUBE]BiVzCCS1vZo[/YOUTUBE]

[Iluvcruising2]

Ok, this is officially in Day 2 of the cruise, which is a Sea Day. Pardon me for taking my time. It takes a while to put the videos together and the work week has started! Day 2, sea day, was a very relaxing day. On top of all that eating, I remember attending 2 lectures in the theatre. The first one was a sales pitch for the shore excursions. We have all our excursions planned, but we attend these to get further information and ideas, if indeed we missed any. At the end of the session, they conducted a raffle and the winner got a free shore excursion! A short clip of the proceedings.

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The second lecture (in the afternoon) was a personal lecture delivered by Ms Assy, the Russian Activities Manager on board. It was a wonderful lecture, covering so many points about Russia that I didn't know about. Really appreciate her effort (she said personal, so I assume it isn't in her job scope to do this?) as it added a lot of value to the cruise. I was recording snippets of it so that you can see for yourself what a good lecture it was! I don't know much about the history of Russia. Now I know that for many centuries, they were under foreign control. It was also touching to see how they continue to honour their World War 2 veterans. Some 20million or so Russians died in that war. That is almost 4 times the current population of my country, Singapore.

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[quandrea]

This is still the first evening. Live music from the Centrum.

[YOUTUBE]IdS6aa0lE4s[/YOUTUBE]

 

quandrea, watching this video reminded me of one very important negative point that I have to warn you about cabin 1054, that is noise.

 

Because of the way the 2 bedrooms are angled, you will be able to hear some of the music and dancing from the Centrum. It is by no means very loud, in fact it didn't affect our sleep at all, however I can imagine that if you are a light sleeper, you may get affected. The live music won't end till about mid-night, every night, and I cannot imagine that they will turn the music down.

 

So, my advise is to bring ear plugs, just in case. Other than this point on noise, Cabin 1054 really cannot be faulted given its price point and space!

 

Thanks for the heads up. Was the kids' programme up and running? Did your children like it?

[EJ33333]

Thanks for your great videos. They give us a great insight into the ship.

[Iluvcruising2]

Thanks for the heads up. Was the kids' programme up and running? Did your children like it?

 

Yes, there was a kids' programme but my kids decided not to go at all! In the past they used to, but I think they are just in a growing up phase where they want to chill out and be alone. They spent a lot of time watching TV in the cabin. They hardly get to watch TV at home, but we are on vacation. :):)

[Iluvcruising2]

Thanks for your great videos. They give us a great insight into the ship.

 

Thanks for your comment and for following along!

[Iluvcruising2]

Earlier on Day 2 (sea day), after breakfast, we were walking around the pool deck and came across the towel exchange as well as this place where you could borrow personal flotation devices. I hadn't seen this on any previous cruises, so I guess this is something relatively new? Anyway, it is a good idea. There are no lifeguards on duty. Swim at your own risk. Look after your loved ones! In the same video, I also show you the kiddy slide, which was at the back of Deck 12, if I recall correctly. A different area from the main pool.

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