2018 Crystal World Cruise as seen by a 4-Star Mariner

The mini lemon raspberry does look.

Can't wait for the report on the oatmeal cranberry.

It is nice that HAL does try to get their cabins ready by 11:30 when people start to board.

As always, enjoying your thread, Roy. Loved your finery for St. Patrick’s Day!

 

Have you happened to run into Piano Man extraordinaire on Crystal? He is fabulous.

 

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I did get to see Mark several times while I was on Serenity. I'm afraid his days as Piano Man are pretty much over. He has pretty much created and set the standard for "Entertainment Host" on the River Boats and that is pretty much the equivalent of a Cruise Director. I think he leaves Serenity in Singapore March 27. He is not entertaining again until mid May when he will be on the maiden voyage of the newest boat, the Crystal Ravel. I'll bet between now and then he will be very busy getting things ready on the Ravel.

I kind of hope that was his only appearance on a World Cruise. Now that she is no longer with HAL I would love to see Crystal pick up Debbie Bacon for the World Cruise and hopefully Mark would still be able to do a few cruises on the Symphony when the river boats are laid up for the winter.

Roy

Thank you Krazy Kruizers. There seems to be a tradition among most luxury cruise lines that diner is late. Crystal has been my bright spot with a 6PM start which is pretty much ideal for me, and I suspect it's one of the reasons some people choose Crystal over Seabourn. On my Seabourn cruise dinner started at 7 which was definitely late for me, even though we gained an hour several times on the westbound transatlantic. The worst, however, was Silversea. I found it particularly galling that on sailaway on port days the Cruise Director would always say "For thous of you who want to dine EARLY, the dining room will be opening at 7:30". As a solo, unless I chose to dine alone it was always at least 8 before a table was assembled and orders were taken, plus on such a small ship they really wanted EVERYBODY in the lounge for the show.

As previously advertised, the cookie of the day was Oatmeal Cranberry, and I took 2 along with an oatmeal raisin.

I still prefer the oatmeal raisin although this one was very good.

My full Crystal post is here:

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/showpost.php?p=55610544&postcount=620

Roy

The Mint Chocolate Ice-cream a good choice for dessert:).:)

When we sailed Cunard many years ago, the small ships (Cunard Countess and Cunard Princess) -- our dinner time was 5:30. Things were different on the QEII -- we were in the Queen's Grill and dinner was 6 PM. Back then DH was not taking medications 5 times a day.

I know I would love those cranberry / oatmeal cookies.

Learning all kinds of interesting tid bits from you Roy.

I didn't know about the difference in dining options on luxury ships. Great tips!

Enjoying your updates. Thanks :D

And that brand of cookie sounds good to me ;)

I did get to see Mark several times while I was on Serenity. I'm afraid his days as Piano Man are pretty much over. He has pretty much created and set the standard for "Entertainment Host" on the River Boats and that is pretty much the equivalent of a Cruise Director. I think he leaves Serenity in Singapore March 27. He is not entertaining again until mid May when he will be on the maiden voyage of the newest boat, the Crystal Ravel. I'll bet between now and then he will be very busy getting things ready on the Ravel.

 

 

 

I kind of hope that was his only appearance on a World Cruise. Now that she is no longer with HAL I would love to see Crystal pick up Debbie Bacon for the World Cruise and hopefully Mark would still be able to do a few cruises on the Symphony when the river boats are laid up for the winter.

 

 

 

Roy

Thanks for the information about Mark. We so enjoyed him when he was on Maasdam that one and only time. He then returned to Crystal never to be seen sgain on HAL. Maybe it was a try out kind of thing??? I’m sure HAL would NEVER pay him what he’s worth.

I’m a friend on FB so keep up that way.

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Thank you everyone. I'm booked on the Crystal Bach next year so I should have about a 1 in 5 chance of sailing with Mark.

The cookie of the day was a cranberry macadamia wafer. It was quite good.

Here's my full post for Rangiora (some Maasdam cruises will go there later this year or next).

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/showpost.php?p=55618154&postcount=632

Thanks for the link to Rangiora, I think it is on our fall itinerary on the Maasdam. As a Canadian I am giggling about the language, somewords are just better in some languages, like toque

Oh -- that cranberry / macadamia nut wafer is definitely a winner.

Thank you Krazy Kruizers and bennybear. I'm having some second thoughts about my posting policy. I had planned on doing full posts here on ports where HAL NEVER visits. Perhaps it is more important to do it as well for ports where HAL RARELY visits. I see a couple of calls at Fakarava for Maasdam as well as one each for Amsterdam and Eurodam. I'll bet Eurodam is about as big a ship as ever visits here.

Day Symphony34, Wednesday, March 21, 2018, Fakarva, French Polynesia

The Crystal Serenity is in Ho Chi Minh City. The Sun rose at 5:47 and set at 5:54 The moon rose at 9:35 and set at 9:26PM. The weather, sunny and 29/84 with a real feel of 93/34.

Conditions were good for my morning walk with one of the best sunrises in recent days. Rangiroa and Fakarava are in many ways similar but the 2 days experiences were quite different. Both places are more or less rings of land around a large lagoon, but the ring around Fakarava is a little less continuous. It’s sort of a tilted rectangle, 37 by 13 miles, with Rotoava at the northern corner. Crystal provided very little advance information but there was a leaflet at the shore excursion desk in the afternoon and I used it for some of the information for this post.

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Not expecting to find much ashore I took a tender across to the landing about 20. At the landing there were several craft markets and a small tourist office; it indicated there was wifi (along with at a couple of businesses) but I didn’t try it. A sign near the landing had a map of the village. Unlike Rangiroa, we tendered into pretty much the center of the tiny settlement.

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Initially, we were not the only vessel in town. A small “deck cargo” ship, MV Cobia was at the dock, presumably one of the atoll’s sources of supplies. It left while I was walking around the town. The LDS church was also near the dock.

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The best of the beaches were reported to be some distance from the dock but there were some simple beaches along the road near town. The beach itself wasn’t much but the lagoon’s water looked lovely. There were a number of orange striped towels on the shore. (While walking Thursday morning a former tablemate told me the water was fine.

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There were just a couple of stores serving the hamlet of under 1000 people. One was a general store while the other was more oriented towards groceries but sold other things as well. The food was almost exclusively composed of things with a long shelf life.

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I turned around about the time I got to the Catholic church.

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Behind it was a small cemetery and then the Pacific Ocean. The surf on the ocean was pretty active.

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On the way back I passed the primary school which was quite small. I was back on the ship about 11:30.

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I opted to approach dining a bit differently. Lunch was in Waterside with a simple salad, four cheese macaroni, and a fruit plate. I entered at 1:25 and did not feel rushed, but did not linger.

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There was an afternoon lecture on “Coral Reefs” by Jay Christofferson Iwatched it on TV. It was pretty much the same talk he gave in the prior segment but he did add some new information on snorkeling he had done since his last talk and got a bit more specific about this segment’s ports.

The cookie of the day was a frosted pecan drop. I decided I had enough after 1 bite.

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My travel consortium had a cocktail party at 6:30. Not wanting to even consider entering Waterside evan later than their 6:30 opening I went to the Trident at 5 and tried the chicken burger along with fries and (of course) ice cream. While it had been hot in the middle of the day it was fine by early evening.

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The last tender was scheduled for 5:30. At 5:15 Captain Larsen reported all were accounted for with the last tender approaching the ship and we were ready to heave anchor. Louis sang at 5:30. Rotoava is on a corner of the atoll about 5 miles from the northern inlet channel. Most of the development is to the south of Rotoava but the airport (with Air Tahiti service on Beechcraft and ATR aircraft) is in the northern stretch. The exit channel is quite wide at this point and we made our way our around sunset which was beautiful.

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Some people at the party had reported that they had been to a great beach. It’s near the pearl farm which had a free shuttle and they weren’t pressured to buy anything or even attend a demonstration. The shuttle apparently only ran in the morning. I went up to the sun deck after the party and the moon has started to be visible in the evening.

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The featured entertainment was a double bill. Sara Hayes sang big band and swing hits in the Starlite Club at 8:15, joined for some numbers by Neil Lockwood or by Jonathan Hawkins. The second half, at 9:30 was comedian/ventriloquist Mark Merchant. I had planned on passing on his show having seen him perform in the last segment but it became a moot point when I dozed off, not really awake much after 9 but only officially in bed at 11.

My parting shot will come from my email messages. My boy scout troop was due for meetings both Tuesday (leaders) and Thursday (scouts) and both were cancelled due to policy that activities are cancelled when the schools are closed. Spring is SUPPOSED to be here.

Roy

Great reports.

There is now warrant out for the arrest of Punxsutawney Phil. We were suppose to get only 2 - 5 inches of snow. We ended with 10 1/2 inches of heavy, wet snow. We got our mail very late in the day on Wednesday. But our garbage and recyclables were not picked up until Thursday. Yup, many schools have to schedule another make-up day.

What beautiful pictures! That sunset! I thought the cookies looked good.:D

Fakarava was on the fall Maasdam itinerary but has been removed, not sure why. So thanks again for including.

As to the snow, this is the worst year that I remember. We still have several feet of it in our yard! And we are learning firsthand about ice dams, eek! Come on spring!

Here's my full post for Rangiroa (some Maasdam cruises will go there later this year or next).

 

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/showpost.php?p=55618154&postcount=632

 

......

 

I think the nearest settlement to our tender landing was actually a little place called Tiputa which had an interesting looking church but it was on the wrong side of the inlet from where we tendered.

There's a water taxi that makes regular trips across the inlet. 500 XPF or $10 (that's double) each way (in 2014). The church was open when I was there and is very attractive inside (festooned with flags). There's also a store and a post office there, and a couple of touristy places that seemed permanently closed.

Thank you Krazy Kruizers, bennybear, and someotherguy.

Day Symphony35, Thursday, March 22, 2018, At Sea, Crystal Symphony, Black Tie Optional

I had quite a bit of trouble understanding the trivia questions and answers today but here are a few:

1. What name did Captain Cook originally give Hawaii?

2. What smell is a natural repellant for mosquitoes, tomato, rose, or alavera?

7. What is a sampam?

10. Copper is named after what Mediterranean Island?

11. What 17th Century Pirate was knighted

The Cookie of the day was Hazelnut and Coffee Sandwich. They were gone from the Bistro when I looked. I found them at the Ice Cream Bar but did not take one.

Trivia answers:

1. Sandwich Islands (got it)

2. Tomato (guessed correctly)

7. A boat (got it)

10. Cyprus (missed it)

11. Sir Henry Morgan (missed it)

I knew the musical number (Nobody Does it Better) but did not know the corresponding movie (The spy who loved me). The winning team did quite well with 14 out of 17.

I guess for a parting shot I felt a bit more chipper Thursday night than I had the evening before.

Roy

Glad to hear you are feeling chipper, Roy.

That last cookie has no appeal to me especially following the two previous ones which sounded absolutely yummy.

Now I know why I have been craving cookings lately.

Spring is not here sadly. At least not yet. We just got through the 4th Nor Easter in less than 2 weeks which is probably why your activities were cancelled.

Hopefully it arrives soon.

Enjoy your good weather. You're not missing any back here.

Glad you are feeling better.

I will pass on today's cookies.

Great trivia questions. As usual DH got all of them. I got 4.

Roy,

Thanks for your reports and photos.

Hope you are feeling better today.

Roy glad you are feeling better and have your strength back.

Keith

Thank you Jacqui, Krazy Kruizers, erewhon, and Keith.

Day Symphony36, Friday, March 23, 2018, Arrive Nuku Hiva, Marquesas

The Crystal Serenity is at sea from Ho Minh City (6 ,864 miles away) to Sihanoukville, Cambodia (7056 miles). The sun rose at 5:24 and set at 5:30. The moon rose at 10:58 and set at 11:01PM. The “official” temperature was 76/24 with periods of showers but it appeared to be hotter and clouds pretty well obscured the morning sun.

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As I walked back on the port side I could I could see a tall white form behind us which turned out to be Oceania Marina. We stayed in front and stopped in the anchorage position nearest town. Nuku Hiva is not a major cruise port with just 16 visits for the year, primarily by ships smaller than Symphony or Marina. I could not find another time 2 ships called there simultaneously.

The island (population 2.700) does not have much tourist infrastructure. There was only 1 tour offered (Scenic Island Drive, $139) and Marina’s tour seemed to be the same. We were advised to stay out of the water due to sharks.

My tour left at 8:30 and despite being in what appeared to be a sheltered bay the tender bobbed quite a bit. There was only one tender slip and keeping the tender in control there seemed to be difficult as well. Once ashore we were in the heart of the capital, Taiohae. There is not a lot of infrastructure and I saw a couple of minibuses but no real bus. All tours were conducted using a ragtag assembly of trucks and SUV’s. While we got the prime anchorage, Marina got the close spot for tour disembarkation. We had about a 5 minute walk to a parking lot where a supervisor checked party size and sent us each to a numbered vehicle, almost like the Maitre’d at a restaurant.

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I was assigned to a very nice new Toyota pickup , but we were jammed in pretty tightly. We had about a 20 minute drive over winding (hairpin turn) roads climbing to an overlook looking down on Bay du Controleur. The 4th Survivor was filmed on some of the hills we looked at.

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Our next stop was a Festival Grounds where residents of all the Polynesian Islands gather for a celebration of their common culture. A spread of snacks was set out for us. I also noticed on our arrival that one of the vehicles was nearly empty. I asked to switch and lost my air conditioning but gained a lot of room and the open windows kept things cool.

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Our furthest point along the route was near the small Village of Houmi, looking out from a black sand beach on a bay that could almost have been a fjord. As we approached this spot we passed a caravan of Oceania Passengers leaving, a tight fit on the narrow roads.

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Our final stop in the country was an overlook where we looked down on Taiohae bay and the 2 ships. Even though the Symphony was closer the Marina still seemed noticeably larger.

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We had 2 stops in town. Notre Dame Cathedral dates from the 70's, replacing a 19th century church of the same. I estimated it sat about 500 people; seemed quite large for the size of the island.

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The final stop was Temehea Tohua, a collection of mostly ancient sculptures . One of the statues was modern, a gift from the people of Easter Island in 2000.

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We could have used more than one tender slip with 2 ships in port. They seemed to be alternating dockings between the 2 ships. It wasn’t bad for our 400 passengers but the lines were quite lengthy for Oceania’s much larger group. I was back on board about 1.

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The cookie of the day was Anis Snowball. It was ok but not great.

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A hopeless sailaway addict, I watched as the Marina hoisted up her tenders and departed about 5. The sun disappeared behind the surrounding hills a bit earlier than I had expected.

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The shared table filled up pretty quickly. I went for the consume double, turkey, and jell.

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The featured entertainment was Neil Lockwood with a musical recap of the great songs of his career. I dozed a bit and arrived late. It was dark after the show and the lights of Taiohae were visible but far from the normal "city lights"

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My parting shot will be weather again (sort of). I’m having a bit of difficulty with the arrest warrant for Puxatawey Phil. He only has 2 choices in making his prediction, 6 weeks of winter or an early spring. Of the 2 he made the best (if incomplete) choice. I come from a tradition where we always accept people’s best. So be it.

Roy

That was a very busy day for the port, they would have had to ask the townsfolk to help with available vehicles.

Was it a plain cookie ? .......no nuts, chocolate etc in it.

You had a very busy port day. We like tours that make stops and show you everything -- like yours.

Great pictures.

Was that shredded coconut on the anise cookies? We like anise pazzells.

People are upset with Phil since his 6 weeks of winter weather was suppose to have ended March 16 and this storm came later. People on the east coast just had their 4th Nor'Easter in 2 weeks.

Great pics, Roy!

You had much better weather than we did a couple of years ago. Nice to see some of the things we missed.

Thank you erewhon, Krazy Kruizers, and Jacqui. I think it was pretty much a plain cookie and think the white stuff on the outside was powdered sugar. I'm pretty sure all the drivers out Friday were regular drivers but most likely they usually get a trip perhaps every 2nd or 3rd ship. Friday was all hands on deck, with many of them working both Friday and Saturday.

We have been wonderfully blessed with the weather. We've had some pretty nasty days but almost all have happened on sea days when there was plenty to do inside the ship.

Day Symphony37, Saturday, March 24, 2018, Leave Nuka Hiva

The Crystal Serenity is in Sihanoukville, 7,056 miles away.

The sun rose at 5:24 and set at 5:29. The moon rose at 11:57AM and set at 11:59PM. The weather was mostly sunny with a high of 84/30 which felt warmer with the humidity. The surrounding hills prevented a real sunrise but the sun did come up above the hills about 6.

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Tender service had been suspended from 11PM Friday and resumed at 7. Having done the only tour on Friday my plan was just to walk around the town a bit and decided to go over early to get ahead of the day’s heat. The landing was a lot easier with just us in port. My first stop was a hill overlooking the port. The place was originally Ft. Madison in the early 19th century, renamed after it became a French possession, and was abandoned until recently. It is now the home of a massive Tiki statue. The place also has superb views around the heart of the town.

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Beyond Ft. Collette there was a short stretch of black sand beach and the island’s hospital.

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I had ridden around the northwest section of Taiohae on the tour but had no chance to stop at will. There was a monument to the dead along the waterfront with a cannon looking out over the water. There were 4 flag poles but when I approached none was bearing a flag. Despite the bay being rather long the waves were crashing pretty vigorously onto the beach.

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I ended my walk just short of the Cathedral. There were 2 stores close together; both offered primarily long life food items but there were also fresh produce and some general merchandise.

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Just up the road was Taiohae’s primary school. There are several primary and at least one middle school on the island but high school students must go to Papeete to complete their education.

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I returned to the ship just after 9 with a tender by myself and mostly relaxed for much of the day. The cookie of the day was orange meringue. I can’t really say I was a fan although I thought it one of the nicer looking cookies.

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There were a couple of time related firsts for me. It’s the first time I have cruised to a port where the time was other than an integral number of hours different than expected, and it’s the first time my ship hasn’t changed to the local time. Shane had warned us to be aware of ship’s time although it wasn’t really a problem. The last tender was scheduled for 2:30PM which would have been 3PM Island time. Even a couple on my tender who had left with ambitious plans to visit the other side of the island were back early. Louis sang at 2:30, essentially a half hour early.

There was an afternoon presentation in the Starlite club after we left. Hilary McCormack, Chief Crown Attorney in Canada spoke on the evolution of DNA evidence and how it has revolutionized solving and prosecuting criminal cases.

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The sun was down when her talk ended but there was still a red tint in the sky.

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The evening dinner was “Table for 8" at Prego. I was a bit surprised that there were none of the usual people from the shared tables but I was joined by 1 lady and 2 couples, all of whom were traveling together. My choices were the salad, Veal Marsala (½) and Vanilla gelato.

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The Crystal Ensemble of Singers and Dancers appeared in a double bill. They performed Rock & Pop-A-Mania in the Starlite club at 8:30 and 5-6-7-8 in the Galaxy at 9:45. With an hour lost as we moved towards Pitcairn time I attended the first performance and skipped the second. While we have departed our last French Polynesia port it is not completely behind us as my IPAD says we are now on Rikitea time but only for a day as we lose another hour Sunday night.

My parting shot is a wish for a blessed Holy Week for all who celebrate it.

Roy

Another wonderful report.

My new 2 month old computer crashed this afternoon and after nearly 50 minutes on the phone -- I got nowhere.

Thus my old laptop won't let me see any pictures.