Suites with Grand Pianos

[stravi]

I am new to cruising but am hopelessly hooked!

However, I am quite curious about suites that list a grand piano as one of the amenities.

If you don't have an Elton John or Liberace in your party, does the ship provide someone to play for you? Just typing that question makes me feel ridiculous!

Are any of the pianos possibly equipped with electronic player devices making it a "Jetson-age" player piano (which would be my personal preference) ?

Thanks in advance for any insight into this topic.

Sharon:confused:

[kitty9]

Only the largest suites on the mass market lines have grand pianos. No, they do not provide someone to play for you. The PH suites on Celebrity have a Yamaha Disk Laviere, as do the Royal Suites on the newer Royal Caribbean ships. In all our cruises in those suites, I've never found the disks that you insert into the player that plays the piano (I have a Disk Laviere at home and could bring my own disks, but those pianos can be incredibly loud and they do disturb the cabins around you). I believe the Grand Duplex Suites on Cunard's ships have the piano also, as do the largest suite on the newer NCL ships.

 

One thing these pianos have in common is: they are terribly out of tune. I play piano and I've not found one in all our many cruises that had a piano that sounded like a piano because they were so out of tune. And, to be honest, I think they just take up space and are a rather silly "amenity". Another problem is, when you play them, they do disturb the cabins around you.

[cb at sea]

They are "player pianos"--you don't have to actually know how to play to enjoy them. Generally, if you don't play, you'll use the "player mode' once or twice, and that's it.

[stravi]

Darcie, CBatSea, and Kitty9, thanks to all of you for all the good info. Especially the part about all of them being out of tune. That's a shame.

[CatServants]

We were in the PH suite on Celebrity's Millie last year and were informed that the player piano mechanism had been disconnected since the noise disturbed adjoining suites. On a previous cruise (2006) on Celebrity's Summit we made a visit to the PH for a party where the guest had booked one of ship's musician's to play. While that lent great atmosphere to the party, our experience after living with it for a week on our PH cruise was that it just got in the way since neither my DW nor I play.

[PennyAgain]

I do play and one of my secret passions on the QE2 in the old days before they locked all the pianos when not in professional use was to go around the ship late at night and play the different pianos. In the old days on the QE2 those pianos were always in as good a tune as you can get under the circumstances.

 

Being at sea is a very difficult life for a fine piano.