Iluvcruising2

More of Xiamen University.

That is the bust of Mr Tan Kah Kee.

I shall continue with Xiamen.

We hopped on a taxi and our first stop was Xiamen University. The journey took about 20 minutes. The cost was less than 20 Chinese yuan (I think about 15 or so yuan). I rounded up the fare to 20 yuan as a tip.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiamen_University

Xiamen University was the first University in China founded by overseas Chinese. In this case, it was founded by Mr Tan Kah Kee, who made his fortune in Singapore!

The top tier event also has free champagne and wine. And, yes it's formal because it is held on formal night.

Our top tier event was hosted by the Cruise Director, Gordon. He said that the Captain would have attended this event, but Captain was on the bridge 'driving' the ship out of port.

Well, on top of the free canapes & drinks, you could go chat and take a photo with the Cruise Director and Captain (if he turned up!).

Great photos!

Thanks!

Your review is so good, I really need to save up so that I could go on this trip:)

Please come visit Singapore too! Thank you!

(Sorry, blatant advertising for my country)

It took about 10mins. for us to get a taxi. Official taxis are all metered and relatively inexpensive. The challenge may be that the drivers can't speak English.

Even after you account for the fuel surcharge, the fare is still inexpensive.

This was the queue for the taxi. Wait a second, why did they have luggage?

Turns out that they were not from the cruise ship. The Xiamen cruise terminal also has scheduled services from other destinations, including Kinmen.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinmen

The immigration checks were fairly quick. The Chinese authorities just wanted to match the passport photo against the actual person.

We went outside the cruise terminal to grab a taxi. And I saw all these buses waiting for cruise ship passengers! It was already past 1pm!!

If you look closely, you can see a placard for group number 25.

Looks like the ship-organized tours started very late, most probably because of the delay in getting off the ship.

Ok, back to the review.

Earlier, I shared that we decided to go to the MDR for lunch to let the queues clear. We re-joined the queues at about 12:45pm.

View of the ship from the cruise centre.

Iluvcruisin2, all your food pics are great. I hear people complain about the food on the ships; but you did pretty well in the Windjammer and MDR.:)

I would say that food is rather subjective. More than one cruiser have called MDR food as 'dog food'. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, I think they really meant it!

For our family, MDR food is generally very good and different from what we eat on a day-to-day basis. The desserts are especially great and I don't even eat desserts on a daily or even weekly basis. (Save the calories!)

Windjammer food isn't bad too.

We did have Portofino on the first evening. The first time we tried Portofino on the Brilliance of the Seas last Dec, we were blown away. This time around, I suppose we had a previous experience so we kinda knew what to expect.

May I ask if you booked this with a US agent?

 

The only reason I ask is I tried getting a future cruise certificate (open booking) on Radiance of the Seas this year but was unable to when booking with Australian-based agents. I was informed they were only for US bookings. I may just have to try again to get this certificate on Voyager next year! ;)

 

Oh, and keep the piccies coming! :D

I got the certificate onboard the ship, from the future cruise Crown & Anchor office.

Basically I had to pay US$150 to get a booking number. I was told that this sum would go towards the deposit for my next cruise, and I would also get onboard credit depending on the length of my next cruise. For a 7 night cruise, it would be US$100.

As we had already booked our December cruise, we could not use this certificate for the Dec. cruise unless we were to cancel and re-book.

So we will keep it for a future cruise. The validity is up till 2019.

I also note that you have a further cruise booked from Sydney at the end of the year and will be flying with Scoot. Will be interested to hear how you find them as I have just booked a return flight from Singapore with them for March 2013.

I would try my best to do a similar picture review for our December cruise. And, yes, that would include our Scoot flight to and from Sydney!

Thank you. Can you tell me how you found the entertainment and as we would like to see the shows what time would be most suitable for dinner? We have My Time dining.

 

I also note that you have a further cruise booked from Sydney at the end of the year and will be flying with Scoot. Will be interested to hear how you find them as I have just booked a return flight from Singapore with them for March 2013.

For our cruise, the main seating was 5:45pm and the second seating was 8:15pm. We opted for the 5:45pm main seating, as our kids usually have their dinners at around 6pm-ish.

On most nights, the shows at the La Scala theatre would usually be 7pm for the 2nd seating followed by 9pm for the main seating. We would usually attend the 9pm show.

On Day 2, the shows for Main Seating were 8:30pm, followed by 10:30pm for second seating.

On Day 1 there was only 1 show for all guests. That was at 10:30pm.

As the shows were popular, we went about 20 minutes earlier to secure good seats.

Next, the shows proper.

We absolutely love the Royal Caribbean Production shows. On our cruise these were on Day 2 and Day 6.

Day 1 was the welcome show which had a Chinese couple doing acrobatics and stuff (Han and Wu). They were absolutely awesome!

On another night there was a magic show by some illusionist. He was not bad, definitely above average, though I think we have watched similar acts before.

Yet another night, there was this pianist whom we didn't think very much of.

Other than the nightly shows, remember to definitely catch the ice show - that was fantastic!

Thank you so much for posting this informative review. I will be cruising on the Voyager out of Shanghai on 14th July and have to admit I have been a little concerned after reading some negative comments from others. After reading your very comprehensive report I am now confident that we will have a fantastic time.

Hope you have a great cruise!!

HK$ 12 is around $1.54 US, so not bad at all to US pricing

Currency exchange rate is around 1 us dollar equal to $7.75 HK dollar.

How much would the Oreo McFlurry cost in the USA? I assume there are regional variations.

After standing in line for 5 minutes, we realised that the line wasn't moving and nobody had any idea why. Some speculated that perhaps there was a jam at immigration. For this port, we had to bring our passports along as the Chinese authorities wanted to conduct a face-to-face check.

(Unlike HK and Ho Chi Minh where we just brought our seapass cards)

Since the line didn't move, and it was nearing noon, we decided to grab some lunch and let the queue clear first. So we proceeded to the MDR for some nice lunch. Service was very quick as there were very few passengers.

We finished lunch and headed out to the gangway again. The queues were still there! However, this time the queue was moving.

As we were standing in line, we still saw passengers wearing excursion stickers being led out of the La Scala theatre. It was 12:45pm! They must have been waiting in the theatre for the past 2 hours? Oh dear. The passengers didn't look pleased at all.

Great review, fab pictures and good detail. Thanks for taking the time to post about your trip. We sailed the Far East with Royal back in 2000, so are really pleased to see the route re-introduced.

Come again! Come visit Singapore! We have changed quite a bit since 2000.

Ship arrived at 11am and all aboard time was 6:30pm.

Our plan was to go onshore, take a taxi to a few places to sight-see, and get back to the ship. We decided to leave our kids in the Adventure Ocean as it was raining. This turned out to be a good decision.

The disembarkation was horrible. Massive congestion at Deck 4 and the queues didn't seem to move. The ship had arrived at 11am and these photos were taken at around 11:45am.

The gangway was at Deck 4. The queue started from the casino, all the way around the lift area and to the outside.

The Captain got the ship to Xiamen on time. By now, the Voyager had sailed 1,891 nautical miles from Singapore.

View of Xiamen cruise terminal from our balcony.

Crown and Anchor future cruise office. We bought our future cruise certificate. Yippee!! ;)

The Portofino restaurant was located beside the Windjammer. The connecting door was opened in the morning, as Portofino was used as the breakfast area for Gold Seapass card holders.

Breakfast in the Windjammer. I didn't take too many pictures of the Windjammer food. A lot more Asian food compared to our Brilliance cruise out of Dubai in Dec 2011.

For breakfast, I could have fried rice, fried egg, some sauteed mushrooms.

Day 7 - We would only arrive in Xiamen at 11am. The weather wasn't exactly very good. Ship was slightly rocky.

Thanks so much for the great pictures and your commentary. I am also enjoying all the food pictures....

 

Cathy

My pleasure! Glad you liked it.

We are enjoying your review and your great photos. Thank you ! ! !

 

In March 2011, we did a similar itinerary on Legends of the Seas (Singapore to Shanghai, with stops in HCMC, DaNang, HK and Xiamen)... it was a great experience. We also did 4 days in Singapore pre-cruise and we had a fantastic time in Singapore.

 

Since you live in Singapore... we will be on Voyager of the Seas next February (Around Australia & New Zealand, then Thailand and Vietnam and ending in Singapore). Has there been any changes to the Singapore Cruise Terminal? In 2011, we used the MRT from the Swissotel Merchant Court to the Cruise Terminal without any problems... does Voyager use the same Cruise Terminal? Would the MRT option work this time from the Cruise Terminal to the Bugis MRT Station?

 

Thanks :)

Big change to the cruise terminal.

Royal Caribbean is now using the new Marina South International Cruise terminal, which started operations in May 2012.

The older Harbourfront Cruise Terminal that you had experienced is still operating, but it is too small to accommodate the Voyager class. I believe Royal Caribbean has made the switch to the new Marina South international cruise terminal, even for the Legend.

You would have to take a taxi to the new cruise terminal. You can see pictures of it on the first page of my review.