Iluvcruising2

Thanks for your review- I'm following with great interest! I'm just wondering what the weather was like? Did you get to use the swimming pool and sunbeds or was it too cold?

The swimming pools and sun beds were well used, though I didn't use them because I'm not a swimming-pool type of person, usually. :)

Here are two videos that give you a glimpse of the activities in the Solarium as well as the pool deck. The first video is to show you the famous roast beef sandwich from the Park Cafe. It was awesome. In the same video, you can see that the Solarium was very well utilized indeed.

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In this other video, I fast forward to the day that the ship was docked in Helsinki. There was a poolside BBQ for lunch, which was great since the all aboard time was fairly early. You can see the BBQ food as well as the pool being used by some passengers.

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How old are your kids? Were there any activities in port that they really enjoyed? I'm traveling with teenagers in a few weeks.

My kids are below 12. Well, when it comes to port days, they just follow us around. We have conditioned them to do that - no complaining! :D:D

We did Chops, Giovanni's and Izumi during our recent cruise on the Serenade. We liked them all. Headed to Chops because we wanted to eat the beef, soup and dessert. Here is a video to show you what we ate.

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Again on Day 2, I look around some of the shops at Centrum. They were always having some form of sale on other, especially on a sea day. There was a watch sale going on. I also look at the duty-free alcohol and it occurred to me that I bought Johnny Walker Gold Label Reserve at a better price recently at the Singapore Changi Airport Terminal 3 Duty-Free Store. I include both videos for your reference.

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Singapore Changi Airport Terminal 3 DFS.

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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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Beyond fishy.

We cruised on the Adventure of the Seas out of Southampton a couple of years back and had a wonderful time. We had plenty to eat in the MDR and we always ask for extras. :):)

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

Thanks for your comment and for following along!

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. :):)

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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We were on the same cruise, and I have a review ongoing too!

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!

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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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hopped over here from your Serensde report. How do RCI and Celebrity compare in terms of quality, amenities, elegance? We've sailed Celebrity many times, not so RCI.

Don't forget to get your Celebrity loyalty status match to the Royal Caribbean Crown and Anchor. If you can get Diamond level on Royal, it really enhances the cruise because you get the Diamond lounge on the Serenade with the coffee machine, cocktail hours, as well as an additional 3 drinks pre-loaded on your seapass card that can be used every evening, 5pm to 8:30pm. I spent almost nothing on drinks for my cruise.

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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Very interesting. I've been interested to explore sailing on Aida and Tui cruise lines but don't really know where to start. Do their cruises cater to English-speaking passengers? We speak good English so we are very comfortable on Royal, NCL, Celebrity and the likes. Recently sailed on MSC, also ok.

hopped over here from your Serensde report. How do RCI and Celebrity compare in terms of quality, amenities, elegance? We've sailed Celebrity many times, not so RCI.

Hello again! Nice to see you posting on my Silhouette review thread!

Well, unlike you, we have sailed only on Celebrity once. I think Celebrity is more 'posh', if I can use that term. The ship is build with more elegance, like a nice 5 star hotel. We stayed in Concierge class rooms for our Celebrity cruise and fittings and stuff were also nicer. Furthermore, we sailed on the Silhouette which was a relatively new ship. Prior to this Celebrity cruise, we had only sailed on the relatively older ships in the Royal fleet.

In terms of food, I think the buffet and MDR in Celebrity is better (a bit more refined) than Royal.

All that said, we are easy to please and we are very happy to sail with Royal, especially given the Diamond perk we have.

In fact, we find Celebrity a bit too sedate. Some of the entertainment on our cruise was clearly catered to a very old crowd.

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!

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! :):)

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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Just booked the Serenade for s ten night Baltic cruise next year. How is the food onboard? We will be in the MDR most often due to a peanut allergy.

 

Also what is the vibe like onboard? We are used to Celebrity but RCI's pricing was too good to pass on this go around. We are a family of five--three kids 7, 7 and 13. We've booked a two bedroom family ocean view. Hopefully we will be pleased. Any input appreciated.

Did you manage to snag Cabin 1054?

Just booked the Serenade for s ten night Baltic cruise next year. How is the food onboard? We will be in the MDR most often due to a peanut allergy.

 

Also what is the vibe like onboard? We are used to Celebrity but RCI's pricing was too good to pass on this go around. We are a family of five--three kids 7, 7 and 13. We've booked a two bedroom family ocean view. Hopefully we will be pleased. Any input appreciated.

Some videos that I have already published on food.

Embarkation Day lunch in the Windjammer

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Chops Grille - this was awesome!

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We were just on the Serenade a few weeks ago on a 7N Baltic cruise out of Copenhagen. Am in the process of putting up videos and descriptions. Please do follow along the review - http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2367291

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... :):):)

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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!

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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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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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