Grandeur OTS May 20 - 27 overview

[edrussell]

Hello fellow cruising enthusiast's.  This post will serve as a mini-review and overview of our recent sailing onboard Grandeur of the seas.  I'll try and break things down into sections and provide some pictures as well.  I hope everyone finds it useful.  All opinion's are just that, opinion's and are not meant to be introduce any drama.

 

A bit of background, my wife and I are in our late 40's and this was our fifth cruise.  We took our first in Jan of 2022 and up until that point really didn't even consider a cruise vacation.  After our first we were absolutely hooked and will likely if possible take at least 3 a year for the time being.  So far we have sailed on Enchantment/Adventure/Oasis/Anthem out of Baltimore, Bayonne and this one Tampa.  This cruise had a number of firsts for us which I will mention as I get to them.  My wife and I do enjoy having drinks onboard and always buy the DBP.  We also play the slots and all of of cruises are casino COMP and this one was no difference. The itinerary on this sailing was a 7 night sailing from Tampa, with ports of call in Labadee, Ocho Rios, Georgetown Grand Cayman.

 

With the background laid down I am going to break up review/overview into a number of sections and likely will break them up in a few posts as it might drag on and I might not be as exciting as I think I am.  Sections will be, the ship, our stateroom, the itinerary (ports of call), the food, the bars, the service, the casino, the port, the trip to and from and lastly overall thoughts.

 

Let's dive in and begin with the ship.  As I had mentioned we have sailed on newer and larger ships than Grandeur.  Our first ever being Enchantment so we do have a special place in our hearts for a Vision class.  Grandeur did not disappoint us one single bit.  She is an older lady for sure, but she is aging well.  Showing some signs of age here and there but still in fantastic ship as far as we were concerned.  We just LOVE the centrum and spend so much time just gazing around it.  It is always a hub of activity and this sailing was no different.  The pool deck is more than adequate for our needs and the solarium is a nice haven of relaxation.  We enjoyed lots of pool time and lots of time in the solarium.  We quickly fell back in love with a Vision class and found it so easy to navigate, nothing being too far away.  The ocean views are everywhere (something we absolutely disliked about Oasis) and there are so many places just to sit relax and watch the world float on by.  Overall the ship exceeded our expectations and we would hesitate for a second to sail on her again.  In fact this class of ship is far and away our favorite.

 

A few pictures of Lady G below.

 

 

 

  

 

[edrussell]

I'll combine a few topics here as they will be shorter; the bars and our stateroom.  This sailing was a first for us in terms of the stateroom.  I did mention that all of our cruises have been casino COMP and this one was as well.  All of them were inside staterooms, but we used Royal Up on all of our past sailings and in all cases won our bids.  We've sailed a balcony (Enchantment), Promenade View (Adventure), Central Park View (Oasis), Oceanview (Anthem).  We put in a Royal Up for an Oceanview and a Spacious Oceanview on this sailing but since the sailing was sold out we did not get our upgrade.  So we were left with an inside stateroom.  My wife and I were concerned having never sailed in one before and especially so by reading here on CC.  

 

Our room was 7516 and we can honestly say after having an inside stateroom we would happily take one again.  We found on our only sailing with a balcony that we just didn't use it.  We spend so little time in our stateroom it just isn't worth it for us.  While it is great to have the extra space it just goes to waste.  We are typically up and our of our room by 8 and come back only to change for dinner and then back for bed.  We might come back for a quick mid-afternoon nap and that's it.  We tend to gamble late so we often don't get back to our room until after 1am each night.  This trip was no different.  I actually loved the room being so dark at night.  I slept so well.  We felt no more or less movement in our room either.  Our room did run the length of the ship so my wife did hear some noise from the hallway but I didn't.  I thought the stateroom was just fine.

 

I'll combine bars in this post to keep it shorter and this is something that my wife and I judge our cruises from.  We spend lots of time bar hopping and enjoy meeting people at the bars and the bar staff get to know us super quick.  Having well run bars with great bartenders can make or break a cruise for us.  Grandeur hit it out of the park.  Special mention goes to Mohan!  Pool bar was slow at times and their drinks were average, but that has been par for the course for us mostly.  The solarium bar was top notch.  Nice and fast, well organized and great drinks.  Next up was a surprise for us, the schooner bar.  We don't usually spend much time in that bar but Alexandria (I think that was her name) was amazing and we spent many an hour at that bar.  One of our favorite hideaways was the Viking Crown lounge before it turned into a dance bar.  We usually spent some time there each night and often all but had the place to ourselves.  The casino bar staff were also great.  Fast and entertaining.  We didn't spend any time in the South Pacific lounge or much time at the R bar.  

 

A few random pictures (forgive the mess in our stateroom).  My wife would kill me if she read this.

 

 

[superduper123]

2 hours ago, edrussell said:

we do have a special place in our hearts for a Vision class.  Grandeur did not disappoint us one single bit.

Me too! Grandeur was my first, back in 2007. Sailed Grandeur and Enchantment many times. Love them both!

[Cherful59]

I have enjoyed every ship I have sailed on, but Lady G is First Class.  Smaller (not all the bells and whistles), so pretty, older, but in really good shape.  I sailed on her for the first time August 2022.  Great ship and crew.  Would not hesitate to sail on her again.  Just an FYI, my interior room did not have a cooler or fridge.  They could maybe put one under the desk if it was really important to you.  It was not an issue for us.

[goldfish65]

Thank you! It's so easy to have a great cruise IF people do their research. I'll be very sad when they retire Grandeur. I felt so at home there as a solo cruiser in 7543, same cabin layout as yours. Everything is handy, you don't even need the elevators. Put your chair next to the rail on the teak promenade, with a book and a drink, and it's an even better view than a balcony and just as quiet. Your impressions are the same as mine. Sailing again in September!

[edrussell]

Next up the itinerary, this again contained a number of firsts for us.  We had never visited any of these ports of call and Georgetown was a tender port.  Something new for us.

 

The first port was Labadee.  We were very excited for this.  We have been to Coco Cay a few times and really had fun there but Labadee looked so much different than Coco Cay in our research.  We also booked our only 'excursion' here, the apline coaster.  We just love RCCL private destinations so that we can extend us of our DBP (hey why not) and having access to food when we want it is also great.  Labadee did not disappoint us one single bit.  We knew from our research that Nellie's beach would suit us well so we came off the ship, grabbed a ride over there and posted up near the waters edge.  Wow, what an incredible spot.  Amazing views, amazing beach and since we were on Grandeur no crowds!  Extra bonus points right there.  We swam and relaxed and had some drinks and just made the morning out of it.  We then rode the alpine coaster and it was so much fun!  The views were outstanding.  This is something we will definitely do again.  I explored other areas of the port and really enjoyed myself.  We ate some of the pretty tasty lunch while getting entertained by performers.  Overall a wonderful low stress day.  Precisely what we needed to kick off this cruise.

 

Next up was Ocho Rios.  We aren't much for organized excursions so we decided to just walk off the ship and planned to head to Ocho Rios Bay Beach.  From our research we knew it was close to the pier.  What we were surprised by was that we were docking at the secondary pier of Reynold's Pier.  This is on us as I am sure I could have checked the schedule myself.  This pier is far from inviting and the walk from it to Ocho Rios Bay Beach is also far from pretty.  Being bugged every 10 seconds by aggressive vendors/taxi drivers and being offered all sorts of 'party favors' was a bit much.  We've traveled enough to deal with this but combine this with the excessive heat and it wore on us.  We continued along into areas of downtown that were less that welcoming but eventually made it to the beach.  Paid our admission and then enjoyed several hours on the beach.  Very pleased to say the water was fantastic and we had a great time.  Not much in terms of food or drink options but we did know that.  We walked back past the main pier area and shopped a little.  We wished we had walked through this area on the way down.  Of course on the main drag back to the secondary pier we passed through another gauntlet of locals selling all sorts of party favors again.  Overall neither my wife nor I have much interest in coming back here, or if we do we will just go with an excursion.  The downtown area and walk to it reminded us of Nassau and we just care for Nassau at all.

 

Last up was Georgetown Grand Cayman and we had our hopes really high for this port of call.  Despite this being a tender port.  Turns out it was much ado, the line to grab a ticket took all of 5 minutes.  We then went to a bar and sat with our ship friends and looked out onto Grand Cayman (this is what we LOVE about this class of ship, views outside everywhere) and waited to be called.  It took maybe 20 minutes, we walked onto the tender and we were ashore.  We walked the downtown core, shopped a little and then grabbed a city bus ($3 each!) and met an amazing bus driver.  So super friendly and informative about the island.  They dropped us off along 7 mile beach and we spent a few hours on the world famous beach.  We opted to just toss out some towels and float in the warm beautiful water.  The sad part was that the seaweed was very plentiful and it really took away from the views at the beach and the beach experience.  We have experienced this many times in Mexico and of course knew about it, but didn't expect it along 7 mile beach.  We still had an amazing time and grabbed some refreshments from the locals setup where we were.  Fantastic.  We negotiated with a private transfer the same price to get back and got dropped off right back at the port.  Did a little shopping inside the port and tendered back.  We just loved this island would come back in a heartbeat!  The locals were just amazing.  Such a stark difference from Ocho.

 

I guess I can include our sea days here as they are part of the itinerary, but I don't have much to say beyond continuing to gush over Grandeur.  We had such fun between the pool deck and solarium.  Many naps were had and drinks were drank.  One negative was that the pool had to get closed and drained twice on this cruise!  Once because a kid barfed, once because a kid did something else equally bad.  Luckily we had the solarium and the pool in there was nice and cold and it eased our sunburns.

 

More to come, I hope those that are reading are enjoying this.

 

Some random pictures of each port of call.

 

 

[Cherful59]

Beautiful pics.  Thanks for posting them.  I haven’t been to Ocho Rios in 20 years and don’t remember where we docked, but I don’t think it was to far from shops.    It’s good to know it might be further out than I remembered if I port there again. 

[superduper123]

Great photos!

[onthewater51]

My wife and I took our very first cruise on Grandeur of January 1997, she was only a few months old and at that time I believe was the largest cruise ship in the world.  The moment we stepped on board and entered the centrum we just blown away at the beauty and elegance. Again, she was new, so everything was pristine.  

 

Since then, we have sailed on her about 4 times and like you with EOS, Grandeur holds a special place for us as well.  Thanks for the post, well done.

[TexasRon]

Grandeur is one of three Royal ships and two Carnival ships we have sailed on so far.  It is easily our favorite because of the crew, the intimate size of the ship and the ease of getting around the ship.  The crew was awesome and the whole cruise was wonderful.

 

My wife was skeptical after I told her about the ship.  Her skepticism was easily overcome by the experience. 
 

We will sail on her again if possible…

 

Thank you for your report!!!

Edited May 31, 2023 by TexasRon

[Jimbo]

Wow , that's a lot of sea grass to walk through.....

[edrussell]

One of the pitfalls of not being retired is that after a vacation you are often swamped and catching up for being off.  That is the case for me.  Thus the delay in finishing this review/overview  

 

On to the rest of the aspects of the trip.  Next up is food.  First off I get that food is so subjective and what is yummy for one is vile for another.  So YMMV on my opinions.  We don't go to specialty restaurants, as we enjoy the MDR and for the most part unless we've had too much of a day dine there each evening.  This cruise was no different and for the first time we made to the MDR each and every night.  We have 7:15 my time reservations which we had made long before the cruise.  6 of out 7 nights we were seated at the same table and have the same wait staff (Swapnil and Ruc).  Most nights we both chose one starter, one main and one dessert.  Some nights we chose 2 starters, with me often choosing the shrimp cocktail along with another starter when that was an option. 

 

I am extremely happy to say that this was our best experience with the MDR on any sailing thus far.  We had high hopes going in as our experience on Enchantment was fantastic.  Adventure was not good (food was awful) and Oasis was OK but the experience of getting in each night was a nightmare. 

 

Some of the stand outs for us were the prime rib, salmon and risotto.  Many of the desserts were far above average as well.  The only disappointments was the sole one night.  Pretty much all starters arrived hot and the cadence of service was about perfect for us.  We could have easily been out in an hour to an hour and 15 minutes each night, but on some evenings we hung out after dessert and enjoyed a drink.

 

Windjammer was also quite good, in fact much better than we are used to.  I am not a huge buffet person but I have to admit the selection varied just enough and service was great.  We were served drinks many times in the WJ and that all by itself was a pleasant surprise.  We also enjoyed Park Cafe from time to time.  I had more than my fair share of Kummelwick (if you know, you know) and fresh pizza.

 

Lady G may not have all the bells and whistles, lots of specialty restaurants etc but in my opinion she makes up for it in quality and service.  You most certainly will not go hungry.

 

Some select pictures are attached.

 

 

 

 

Edited June 1, 2023 by edrussell

[edrussell]

A few small sections in this post, service and casino.  Normally I'd not bother to include such topics by themselves but I wanted to do because both deserve it.  Service, what else can I say that I haven't already?  The service in the MDR and WJ were just outstanding.  Our wait staff treated us like part of the family each night we looked forward to our time in the MDR.  Bar staff were just plain top notch.  Any other crew members we encountered were gracious and took the time to smile and interact.  Not that we had an awful time on other sailings but when we compare this aspect of the cruise to our experience on Oasis it is like night and day.  It isn't that staff weren't nice or friendly, we just felt with the size of the ship staff just can't keep up and you lose that personal touch.

 

As I had mentioned we are slot players and this cruise was no different.  I am also an ex-smoker (definitely NOT the type to condemn current smokers), just wanted to mention it.  We really enjoyed the casino on Grandeur.  It definitely isn't the largest casino by any means but it is intimate and provided more than enough of a selection of slots for us to play.  Great bar staff, limited smoke smell and it was a great place for us.  We also rarely had trouble finding an open machine.  Now we do tend to only play later in the night (usually head into the casino around midnight).  Like any time spent in any casino we had our ups and downs but overall we did OK.  We almost made prime on this cruise and will easily make that mark within a nigh or 2 on our next cruise.  I had one night hit of 1,000.00 on WOF.  Picture attached.

 

 

 

[edrussell]

My last post will be about the port, the trip to and from and our overall thoughts.  I am sure most are getting bored of reading this by now anyway...

 

This is our third port to cruise from, our first being Baltimore, then Bayonne (3 cruises from there) and our first to be dropped off via Uber.  All others we've driven and parked at the port.  We live near Toronto and I am very much used to driving in extremely heavy traffic and in general being irritated while driving.  Baltimore was a dream as far as that aspect goes since the port itself is so small.  Bayonne is definitely hectic but reasonably well ran and I find it just fine to cruise from.  Tampa was an absolute dream!  The Uber drop off was smooth, porters approached right away and we were whisked into the terminal.  People were smiling, helpful and the entire boarding process was so easy.  Less than 45 minutes from drop off to our first drink.  Not driving was definitely different but it allowed me to be completely relaxed.  We'd not hesitate the cruise from Tampa again for a second.  The port area was clean and felt very safe.  

 

For the first time we flew to a cruise and we initially were booked on Westjet flying out of Pearson.  Westjet played some games were our flights and we eventually canceled them re-booked on America Airlines out of Buffalo.  Good thing we did because of the almost strike that happened our original flight was canceled!  Neither my wife or I can stand flying out of Pearson and the chance to fly out of Buffalo for the first time intrigued us.  We really enjoyed the experience out of Buffalo.  It was relaxing and a stark comparison to flying from Pearson.  We had a short layover in Charlotte and that is where things got interesting.  We made the connection without issue, but then were stuck sitting on the plane at the gate for over 3 hours!  A missing washer on a landing gear door almost derailed us.  Luckily after what seemed like forever we finally made it Tampa at 3:30am!  Yikes.  Our next bit of fun was the absolute DUMP of a hotel we stayed in.  We booked it despite the bad reviews and that is on us.  We try and read reviews with a grain but we should have listened.  Needless to say Days Inn near Ybor city is a HARD PASS!  I have pictures of this dump if anyone is interested.  When all was said and done spending less than 4 hours there was a blessing.  We slept (if you could call it that) on top of the covers and fully dressed.

 

Closing this out is my final thoughts on this cruise.  I can sum it up simply, relaxing.  

 

Next up is our first cruise on Carnival onboard Venetia in Sept.

 

Thanks to those that hung in there and read all the way through.

 

 

[Cherful59]

Thanks for the review!

[jean87510]

Thank you so much for your review.  We are on the Grandeur in 30 days.  Last on her out of Barbados and while we actually moved a Feb 2022 Grandeur cruise because we were so pissed at the BS at Barbados in December 2021, I absolutely loved the Grandeur.  So much, I picked it for a 2023 4th of July cruise.  

 

Did you like Labadee better than CocoCay?  I have been to both and prefer Labadee but it was 13 years ago.  I just remember really liking it there.  I am not a big fan of PDCC.  

 

Tampa has not been one of my favorite ports as it always is a mess boarding at least for us with 3 different cruise lines.  Hopefully it's improved since 2019.  Reading your review gives me hope.

[loug1601]

Thanks for the fun and informative review. I really enjoyed it. 

[edrussell]

2 hours ago, jean87510 said:

Did you like Labadee better than CocoCay?  I have been to both and prefer Labadee but it was 13 years ago.  I just remember really liking it there.  I am not a big fan of PDCC.  

 

 

Yes we do, that said comparing both as we used each destination is tough.  We went right to the pool and bar at CoCo Cay and partied our hearts out both times.  Heck one of the visits we barely remember coming back to the ship.  At Labadee we just took it so easy, floated in the crystal clear water and had only enough drinks to stay hydrated (that is my story and I am sticking to it).  Ladabee is SO much more relaxed.  Also the scenery is just outstanding.

 

We don't have much to compare Tampa to in the past, but our experience was great.  I know others we met said the same.  All the best!

[zebra36]

Enjoyed reading your review. Though I know it will never happen, I just wish they would build new ships in the Vision, Radiance class size. The behemoth ships they are building now have no attraction for me, especially with the non-existent views of the sea from interior public spaces.

[superduper123]

5 minutes ago, zebra36 said:

Enjoyed reading your review. Though I know it will never happen, I just wish they would build new ships in the Vision, Radiance class size. The behemoth ships they are building now have no attraction for me, especially with the non-existent views of the sea from interior public spaces.

Agree!

[edrussell]

5 hours ago, zebra36 said:

Enjoyed reading your review. Though I know it will never happen, I just wish they would build new ships in the Vision, Radiance class size. The behemoth ships they are building now have no attraction for me, especially with the non-existent views of the sea from interior public spaces.

 

I 100% agree with this and you are absolutely right.  Building ships like this is a thing of the past sadly.  With that said it appears from what I have seen that they have learned a little from the Oasis class and on Icon they are trying to get more sea views.  

 

Truth be told I am not averse to the attractions on the Oasis class, far from it.  If we don't want to use them then we won't.  What I didn't care for is the complete lack of ocean views.  Second the interaction with crew was nowhere near what it is on a Vision class.  We are booked on Wonder for Feb 2024 and I am keen to see what we think of that ship.