Empress of the Seas 2018 Review (Cuba & More)

[tweetylori]

For entrees Husband made the mistake of ordering "tender grilled flank steak".  It was anything but tender.  I do believe he called it shoe leather.  Of course, Fernando would have been happy to bring him something else, but he was okay.  He had had a giant lunch.  I was quite happy with my Penne with a "sweet and spice Cuban picadillo".  It was very tasty and had just the right amount of kick to it.

 

 

 

 

[tweetylori]

For dessert, we got the Tres Leche, and the Espresso Chocolate Cake (no sugar added), and Fernando brought us the Coconut Flan as well, which Husband was on his own for since neither flan nor coconut are my faves.  But the winner of these three was definitely the espresso cake!

 

 

[tweetylori]

Tonight's show was "The Fast and Furious Comedy of Alfred and Seymour.  The BlackStreetBoyz are One of the most hilarious comedy duos you'll ever see".  

 

These dudes had so much energy, and were indeed very funny!  My favorite part of their show was their impromptu interactions with the audience.  Don't be late for their show unless you want a starring role!  

 

 

[tweetylori]

After the show, I'm sure we hung out at Karaoke (Husband sang one night).  There weren't a lot of singers on this ship, as compared to ones we've been on before, but the folks that were there seemed to be having a great time.  If you wanted to sing, you had no problem getting a turn or two or three.  I know I headed back to the casino and had some blackjack fun.  

 

Before turning in, I checked out the stormy night.  Let me see if I can upload this short video and you can see what I mean.

[tweetylori]

Back in the room,  I turned on the tv.  Here is what Alfred & Seymour look like.  And the other shot you can see the rain.

 

 

[OceansOfTravels]

Lori,

 

Amazing review, I love seeing photos of the Empress! Snuck in a cheap 5 night cruise on her in 2016.

 

I am going on the mentioned MSC Armonia in June to Cuba, and since the ship has yet to begin its Cuba itineraries from Miami, there are not cruisers to answer our questions. We want to know what the procedure is for leaving the ship as an American, on an American-homeported itinerary. I see you booked your Havana tour online - is this legal with the visa you had to buy onboard the Empress? Or did you get a US-state apartment visa approved for the 12 reasons that let you do whatever? Can you just up and walk off the ship like any other port in Cuba, or are there restrictions as to where cruise tourists can go, like in St.Petersburg?

 

Thank you for your help, we have two full days in Havana and we want to plan the best days possible but also do not want to be restricted to the state-sponsored, cruise-endorsed, artificial tours. 

[tweetylori]

9 hours ago, OceansOfTravels said:

Lori,

 

Amazing review, I love seeing photos of the Empress! Snuck in a cheap 5 night cruise on her in 2016.

 

I am going on the mentioned MSC Armonia in June to Cuba, and since the ship has yet to begin its Cuba itineraries from Miami, there are not cruisers to answer our questions. We want to know what the procedure is for leaving the ship as an American, on an American-homeported itinerary. I see you booked your Havana tour online - is this legal with the visa you had to buy onboard the Empress? Or did you get a US-state apartment visa approved for the 12 reasons that let you do whatever? Can you just up and walk off the ship like any other port in Cuba, or are there restrictions as to where cruise tourists can go, like in St.Petersburg?

 

Thank you for your help, we have two full days in Havana and we want to plan the best days possible but also do not want to be restricted to the state-sponsored, cruise-endorsed, artificial tours. 

 

Hi Oceans!  First of all, please know I've never been to St.Petersburg, so I can't help with comparisons.  I can tell you though that we had absolutely no problem just walking off the ship (via customs, of course...had to show our passport), then went to the bank teller type booths to exchange money.  It was that simple.  As far as tours are concerned, the one we took was totally legit.  I found it online, paid with a US credit card before we went.  When we checked in for our cruise we had to check whether we would be doing a ship tour or an all-day private one (not sure of the exact wording).  We told the gal at check-in that we had booked a tour but it wasn't an all day one.  We were reassured that it was okay to check that box anyway.  So my suggestion would be to find legit tours, book them and enjoy!  I can certainly recommend the one we did.

[tweetylori]

Before we knew it, it was Tuesday Oct 16.  The stormy night was over, and we were in sunny Grand Cayman after sailing a total of 938 nm since the beginning of the cruise.

 

 

[tweetylori]

Let's take a peek out the porthole.  I don't know what I would have done if I had ever seen someone ON that ladder!  🙂  

 

 

[watertraveler]

General question for anyone in the know ~  Is it usual for passengers to be tendered in to Cienfuegos or was that particular day unusual?

 

There aren't a lot of ship's tours offered for this city and I'm a little reluctant to make reservations with a private tour company if you aren't able to get off the ship until all the cruise excursions have left.

 

Any thoughts

[tweetylori]

Note the other ship.  There ended up being FIVE cruise ships at this port on this day.  That's a lot for one island to take.  We didn't know it at the time though, because there was only one other ship around that we saw early in the day.

 

On this morning, we were bound and determined to not miss this port.  Especially considering we had pre-paid for a Caribbean Culinary Concepts food tour that was to depart at 10 am.  We were told the starting point (the fountain at the Bayshore Mall was just a two minute walk, but we didn't know how long the tender would take or where exactly to find that mall), so we decided to leave the ship around 9:00.

 

It was easy off the ship and quick boarding for our tender.  Grand Cayman is well equipped to handle the crowds, although our tender had certainly seen some glass-shattering times.  

[tweetylori]

1 minute ago, watertraveler said:

General question for anyone in the know ~  Is it usual for passengers to be tendered in to Cienfuegos or was that particular day unusual?

 

There aren't a lot of ship's tours offered for this city and I'm a little reluctant to make reservations with a private tour company if you aren't able to get off the ship until all the cruise excursions have left.

 

Any thoughts

 

My understanding is that the ship had to anchor outside of the harbor due to size.  Since cruise ships don't get much smaller than Empress, I would think there's no way other than tendering.  Therefore private tours must be used to dealing with this and must know what you can and can't achieve.    If you find one that sounds good to you, I would ask them.

[watertraveler]

Thanks, Lori.  I'm really enjoying your review. It is thoughtful and full of great information!

[tybeelucy2]

One more question you may have an answer to... we signed up for the My Time Dining every night at the same time. Do you know if we will be in the same table every night or will it move around? 

[tweetylori]

23 hours ago, watertraveler said:

Thanks, Lori.  I'm really enjoying your review. It is thoughtful and full of great information!

 

That means a lot to me to hear that, thank you

[tweetylori]

10 hours ago, tybeelucy2 said:

One more question you may have an answer to... we signed up for the My Time Dining every night at the same time. Do you know if we will be in the same table every night or will it move around? 

 

All I can tell you is they put us at the same table every night.  We never varied beyond 20 minutes time-wise.  And it was just two of us.  I don't know if that would be different if you have a large group or if you show up at completely different hour each night.  I can tell you there was never a line going in early like we dined, but sometimes we would come out around 7 or 7:15 and there would be a bit of a line.  I think they LIKE to keep you at the same table so the Servers get to know you and your preferences.  The last couple nights I would walk up to the podium, say Cabin 8026, table 5038a.  They got to where they told us to just go ahead.  🙂  The two two-tops next to us varied guest-wise.  Although there were nights where the same two would show up two nights in a row.  I also noticed that larger tables around us varied guest-wise.  

[tybeelucy2]

Thanks Lori. This review has been more helpful than all the other Empress reviews here combined!

 

One more question- was there an omelette station in the buffet for breakfast?  

Thanks!

 

[tweetylori]

On 11/19/2018 at 9:51 AM, tybeelucy2 said:

Thanks Lori. This review has been more helpful than all the other Empress reviews here combined!

 

One more question- was there an omelette station in the buffet for breakfast?  

Thanks!

 

 

I believe there was.  I can't say for sure.  

[tweetylori]

It didn't take us long to find our meeting location.  It's hard to miss.

 

 

[tweetylori]

By now it was only about 9:20 or so.  We had a good 40 minutes to kill.  So we walked a block or so to Hard Rock so Husband could get a pin or two that he collects.  I was also able to purchase sunglasses to replace the ones I had lost.  Meanwhile we were also trying to get our phones to work since we had been out of touch for a few days.  We wandered around a bit more, but not much was open yet.  So we went back to the fountain and waited.  And waited.  10:00 came and went, and no guide.  So I had booked this tour online, prepaid it ($99 each), and now we were going to be stood up?  Ugh!

 

 10:15, still no tour guide.  Left Husband to wait at the fountain, and went upstairs to a pizza/coffee shop to see if they'd let me use the restroom and a phone.  Thankfully there was a friendly young gal working, and that I had had the sense to write down contact info.  Got a hold of the Tour Guide, and guess what?  It was only 9:20 at this point, NOT 10:20.  The ship NEVER TOLD US that ship time was an hour ahead of Cayman time.  Cruise Director never mentioned it.  There was nothing in the Compass about it.  Why???  We never got an answer. It made no sense.  They had been so informative about every Cuban detail.   We have never had a Ship not let us know of a time change, and we went through many of them on our Transatlantic.

It really ticked us off.  But we were also incredibly relieved to not be ripped off. 

 

Having more time to kill, we sat down at the friendly pizza/coffee place for coffee for Husband, and tea for me.  Both were excellent.

 

 

 

 

[tweetylori]

When my  finally came up,  one of the first things I saw was an email from our insurance company saying we better get in touch right away about our car (the one that had gotten rear-ended three days before we left for our trip).  It said it was the last day they would pay for storage and that I had to call to give permission to move it to the collision repair shop,  or we would have to pay the daily storage fees ourselves.  Uh NO.  Husband had given permission to move it before we left.  We thought it had already been moved.  I'll spare all the aggravating details, but let's just say that it took several calls to get to the right folks to simply say "move the car!"  And tell us please whether you're totaling it or not.  We did get the good news that the guy who was at fault's insurance company was accepting responsibility.  But it was not clear whether we should deal directly with them, or our insurance company.  Grrrrrrr.

 

Are we having fun yet?  

 

Back down to the fountain and our Grand Cayman luck turned around with the arrival of Nicki!  We also were fortunate to have two other delightful couples with us as well.  One from a Princess ship and one from a Carnival.  

 

We hopped in a nice van type vehicle and off we went to our first stop.

 

 

 

 

[tweetylori]

Nicki explained that she would only be taking us to places that sourced locally.  This Roti shop is where the locals go.  We pretty much had the place to ourselves this early in the day.  We were offered our choice of curry ones...goat, shrimp, lobster, chicken...Husband tried the shrimp:

 

 

[tweetylori]

I had to have the lobster one.  It was full of potatoes, with a light curry flavor.  This is the small size.  We could have had one twice as big, but we knew better, with several more stops ahead of us.

 

Two sauces were offered with the Roti...the brown one is a slightly sweet Tamarind sauce, while the yellow/green one is spicy.  Mmmmm!

 

 

[tweetylori]

It was a good thing they were filling, because up next was all-you-can-drink rum time!  (and a tour of the distillery).  We're talking really GOOD rum!  Best part was Nicki had timed this perfectly to avoid the crowds.  Remember, there were 5 ships in port on this day.  Many were being bused here and dropped off to fend for themselves.  With a private tour, we had Nicki to make sure we could see everything, and got to taste as much as we wanted.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[tweetylori]

The tour was fascinating.