Saab4444

This is not true. At least the Europe part on Serenade is much better booked at much higher rates than any other Royal ship in Europe next summer. Just look at remaining cabins from June to August including rates and compare it with other ships like Anthem, Jewel or others.

Of course Royal can simply adjust some cruises to relocate ships around Africa to keep the current deployment schedule. There is currently no reason to reshuffle all ships as some are speculating here. Suez is currently not closed for cruise or cargo ships by any government decision but shipping lines decide to avoid it.

No, they do not reshuffle staff on all ships according to age of ships, this is nonsense. If they bring a new ship into service they simply select experienced staff and not newcomers because everything needs to be set up and should run smoothly.

If 5.000 people decide to roll off at 7.30 this will not work. Same chaos as if 5.000 decide to ignore boarding time and arrive early....

Sure, with all the thousands of guests and several ships the crew has nothing better to do...

In worst case they can go from Dubai to Istanbul around Africa and just cancel the current two May departures (Suez cruise from Dubai to Athens and Black Sea and Turkey cruise from Athens to Istanbul). Then they could continue with Med cruises in June as scheduled.

Even if they do not check it there is a reason they let you pick a time and send emails to follow this rules. Do you follow other regulations like e.g. speed limits only if the police is present? And if you decide not to follow Royal's rules I would do it quietly and not encourage everyone to do the same.

By no means Sun Princess and Norwegian Prima are small ships…

First of all people should have kind of a similar definition for a small or smaller cruise ship. For sure this is not all below 200k GT just because a few monsters have this size. No ship over 100k GT and 300m lengths can be called small. All new Norwegian, TUI, Cunard, Princess and Celebrity ships are in the range of 110k-160k GT wich still make them large ships that are far too big for many ports in World. Saga, Viking and the luxury brands like Explora, Regent and Silversea have built smaller ships (still not small between 40k and 70k GT) in the past years. Only Hapag Lloyd, Havila and other expedition brands have built really small cruise ships below 20k GT.

For sure Geiranger and Flam from 2025, Royal has no stops there anymore (only few in Flam 2024), Bergen and others also implement more limits that Royal ships can not comply with.

There are still many smaller ships around, older and newer once, just not from the big US brands…

It‘s not all about US and Florida ports. They need smaller ships for other regions in the World if they want to remain a global cruise operator.

Why is this your dream? Just to do more 4 nighters out of Galveston with four free drinks per day?

Two pages of laundry. Is this the only important topic happening on the World Cruise?

Cadiz is in Spain.

Absolutely no because then they have to stop sailing to most Adria ports like Kotor, Dubrovnik. Voyager class is already at the edge for most ports.

Would be interesting to know how many people are parking their car for nine months!

At least they are puting some paint over the rust!

No, also in Europe there are many Credit Cards where you can chose between paying the full balance or just a part in monthly installments plus interest. This is how they make money.

They are, that‘s what I said.

Just because you mentioned the Arctic and not Antarctic. However, a special training is required for sailing the Polar regions but this also includes e.g. parts of Alaska, Iceland and Norway and many officers have done this. I believe only for Spitsbergen (and the North Pole) region an additional license is needed.

This license would be required for Spitsbergen region only and the World cruise does not go there. He was Captain on Jewel and Brilliance as well for many years but indeed Serenade is his ship. Hence he might still initiate a paint job somehow to present his ship better in all those ports around the World…

Last dry dock was Autumn 2022.

Problem is they can only paint over the rust and it comes back soon. She needs a dry dock for a real paint job with deep ckeaning before. Really not good to start a first World Cruise like this!