2010 Successive Spring Cruises

[rolfecms]

Have a safe trip home on the last leg of your journey. :)

[Love Cruises]

Thank you Roy so much for sharing your very interesting itinerary with all your Cruise Critic friends. You have a great talent in writing and I really enjoyed checking this site each day to catch up on your travels. I'm really going to miss your blog.

 

As you know I have a fondness for the QEII. Did you take any pictures of her docked in Dubai?

 

Business class upgrade ... how lucky you are !

 

Hope you arrive safely home to Maryland.

 

We leave on April 15th for our NIAGARA PRINCE back-to-back cruise from New Orleans to Nashville. On the first leg we are not able to go by ship to Knoxville since they are working on a lock between Chattanooga and Knoxville. They will bus us to Knoxville for a shore excursion. We will therefore be in Chattanooga for 5 nights no less! The passengers will have to disembark there and then the passengers coming on the next leg will embark there. This should be interesting !

 

Dan and I are looking forward to seeing you again on ACCL's GRANDE CARIBE in July on the Maritimes cruise. See you then!

 

 

Barbara

[rafinmd]

Sunbubble, I suspect they would complain about most anything, and I'd guess they would even do the same on Oceania. They said they chose this cruise for the ports, but constantly complained about the heat.

 

Rolfecms, I hope to see you on the QE. One of Cunards weaknesses is they don't really support meet and mingles, but we should be able to work something out.

 

Barb and Dan, I'm looking forward to Grande Caribe. The ACCL catalog shows a day gap between the legs of your cruise. With your B2B are you able to stay on the ship, or do you need a hotel in the interim?

[Love Cruises]

We paid ACCL to stay onboard for that day gap. The office staff told Dan there are 3 or 4 other couples that are also doing the same segments and also staying onboard. Wel'll let you know all about the trip when we return. Can't wait to be back on ACCL!

[rafinmd]

As you know I have a fondness for the QEII. Did you take any pictures of her docked in Dubai?

 

Barbara

 

Barbara, I thought this would be of more interest on the Cunard site than in this blog, so I posted a couple of pictures here:

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1149651&page=3

 

There was also a passenger on the Brilliance of the Seas who arrived in Dubai a few hours after we did who posted a lovely picture he took of the 2 Queens together as they were preparing to pull into their space:

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?p=23958654#post23958654

 

Looking forward to the Grande Mariner in July.

 

Roy

[rafinmd]

I have seen a lot of discussion, particularly on the Crystal Forum on questions of price and value. I have come to the conclusion that with the possible exception of some lines that do the same itinerary every few days year round, each cruise and each person’s situation is different and it’s just about impossible to make a general statement, and I’ll make a few observations based on my recent experience.

 

I just completed 2 cruises, 17 nights on the Crystal Symphony and 15 on the Queen Victoria. I paid about 30% more for the QV than for the Symphony, or almost 50% more per day. This is far more than I would have expected even considering that World Cruises carry a premium fare. With it’s superior service does this make Crystal a better value than Cunard? Not so fast. I also looked at the corresponding segment of the 2011 Crystal World Cruise, 14 days from Singapore to Mumbai. The price of those 14 days came to 93% of the TOTAL I paid for my 2 cruises combined. I consider it a fortunate accident that I ended up enjoying 17 days of incomparable Crystal Service and 15 days of excellent Cunard Service and great ports for not much more than 14 days next year.

 

They do not fully match, but I compared 2 segments of the 2011 Crystal and Cunard World Cruises. The segment I took this year will be 14 days Singapore to Mumbai on Crystal and 12 days Singapore to Dubai on Queen Elizabeth. Crystal’s price is over double Cunard’s and 80% higher on a daily basis.

 

I am booked on Crystal’s 12-day segment from Papete to Auckland. QE’s segment runs 23 days from Los Angeles to Sydney for only 7% more than I am paying, making Crystal’s daily rate about 80% higher than Cunard’s. The difference is less for me because a Crystal promotion for the World Cruise segment gives me a $900 discount on a future cruise I had already planned on taking; it is still more expensive but a cost I am willing to incur for Crystal’s superb service.

 

I think my bottom line is that there can be no general rule on value, each cruise and each cruiser’s situation is different. Even these observations are based on my status as a solo cruiser who chooses the most basic room to be on a better ship, other peoples results for the same voyage would probably be different. No cruise is really a “value” if it does not come up to the cruiser’s expectations.

 

Roy

[rolfecms]

You had indicated you might travel on the QE's maiden TA in January - is that still in your plans, Roy?

[rafinmd]

You had indicated you might travel on the QE's maiden TA in January - is that still in your plans, Roy?

 

At least for now it is. It will probably be one of the first bookings that gets dropped if financial reality intervenes, but I think it will really happen. A nice tax refund will help with that.

[rolfecms]

At least for now it is. It will probably be one of the first bookings that gets dropped if financial reality intervenes, but I think it will really happen. A nice tax refund will help with that.

 

Glad to here that you are still contemplating it. It's a good thing that tax time is only once a year, but for a refund I'd be willing to deal with it more often! Hope things work out for you.

[rafinmd]

My reviews on the ships are now published on the member ratings section. There will probably not be much new for people who have followed the blog but they’re there anyway:

 

Crystal Symphony:

http://www.cruisecritic.com/memberreviews/memberreview.cfm?EntryID=65503.

 

Queen Victoria:

http://www.cruisecritic.com/memberreviews/memberreview.cfm?EntryID=65831.

 

Something went wrong when I was entering the view and either the section on ports didn’t come up or I missed it but my missing reviews on the ports of call are:

 

Singapore: The Queen Victoria is too big for the passenger terminal, so we were docked in the container port with a shuttle provided. I was on the "Signature Heritage" tour. Our guide Alvin took us first to the National Arboretum. Singapore is the 2nd most densely populated country in the world, so the few natural areas remaining are deeply cherished, including lightning rods on a number of the trees.

 

When Singapore was founded there were a number of areas set aside to keep various ethnic groups segregated. We visited several of these including Little India with a number of small shops in quaint buildings, a small museum showing some of the history and culture of Singapore, and the Buddha's Tooth Temple.

 

The vibrant waterfront has some interesting buildings. The performing arts center, a rather strange building resembling a large turtle shell, is as unique if not as attractive as the Sydney Opera House. Just across the water, a spectacular new casino complex is under construction. The casino itself looks huge, even from a mile or so away, but right alongside is a hotel composed of 3 massive towers resembling inverted y's. These are nearing completion and on top there is a huge deck spanning the tops of all 3 towers and extending out probably 150 feet in either direction from the ends.

 

Kuala Lampur: We were again docked at a container port at Port Kelang. By the time we left the ship it was hot and so humid the feeling of stepping on shore was somewhere between entering fog and stepping into a steam bath. Our guide Julie Chang met us for the 45 minute drive into Kuala Lampur (KL) and our "Colorful Kuala Lampur" tour. On the way to our first stop, the botanical garden, we passed the Royal Palace. Malaysia has a number of states, with 9 under the leadership of Sultans. These 9 take turns in a 5-year rotation at being the monarch of the country.

 

At the national botanical garden we toured first the Orchard Garden, then went on to the Hibiscus Garden. This was a very elaborate garden since the hibiscus is the national flower of Malaysia. It was a very short ride to the butterfly garden. I wasn't particularly impressed with the butterflies but the setting was beautiful and there were several unusual turtles; a long neck variety with a neck as long as it's shell, and several soft shell varieties. Kuala Lampur’s twin towers are extremely impressive stainless steel and glass structures, about 80 stories tall with a scenic sky bridge between the two on the 41st and 42nd floors. It would have been a very scenic spot, but tickets to go there are very popular and usually sold out by 9AM.

 

Phuket: This was an anchoring port and our tenders docked pretty much at ground zero for the December 2004 Tsunami. The island has been fully restored after that disaster. Phuket is an island, the largest in Thailand, almost directly across the peninsula from Ko Samui, about 250 miles away by land. The island is about 50 km North to South and 20 km across, and is connected to the mainland by a causeway at the North end. My "Authentic Phuket" tour crossed a steep mountain pass to Phuket Town, one of the old settlements on the island. We explored the local market and continued on to one of the oldest houses on the island, originally built 100 years ago by people in the tin mining business, which was the original livelihood on the island. It is of Sino-Portuguese design, and is in the 6th generation of the original family, and a pair of Buddhist temples.

 

Cochin: Cochin is among the best harbors in the south of India, and is a major naval base. My "Fort Cochin Walking Tour", left about 10AM, and by then the weather had gotten very hot and humid, and most of the busses in Cochin, including ours, were not air conditioned. Cochin is about 50% Christian, very unusual for India. Fort Cochin has been a major trading and fishing port over the years, our walking tour started by the water with a demonstration of Chinese fishing nets. We visited 2 Cathedrals, one Anglican and the other Roman Catholic. The streets of Fort Cochin were an eclectic mix of Dutch, Portuguese, and British architecture.

 

Mumbai: Mumbai (Bombay) was originally 7 islands which have been filled in together to form a peninsula. The population of Mumbai is about 20 million, and it is the financial capital, although not the political capital, of India.

 

My tour was called "The Buddhist Trail", although it was a bit more of a heritage area than an actual trail. The site is north of the city and the pier is on the south side, so we were a couple of hours in the heavy traffic. We passed some very elegant buildings including especially the Victoria Terminus rail station, some fairly nice housing buildings, and a lot of slums.

 

The Kanheri Buddhist Caves date back from about 100BC through 1100AD, and there are over 100 caves in the complex. They are not true caves, although some probably started out as such and were enlarged to many times their original size. Most are fairly simple structures that served as dwellings for monks, but the first ones we encountered were massive temples with a huge Buddha inside and many elaborate carvings. They are set on a hill at elevations ranging from 385 to 675 feet, and there is a sort of "trail" running from one cave to the next, but the attraction is the cave/excavations rather than the trail. The site reminded me a lot of Petra on a smaller scale. It is not a WOW! like Petra, but I thought it was a legitimate Wow and the best excursion of the voyage.

 

Muscat: Oman is a Sultanate, ruled by a Sultan which is an Islamic variety of monarch. The current Sultan has been ruling for about 40 years and has greatly modernized the country. My tour in Muscat was "Mystical Dhow Cruise". Dhow is a generic term for ships of the Arabian Sea with several varieties in use. Ours was probably 70 feet long (20 meters) and had a capacity of 40 people. They have traditionally been sailing ships but ours was totally motorized. The view of the harbor was good but the main attraction turned out to be a large school of dolphin swimming within 100 feet of our vessel. Muscat appears to do the equivalent of a siesta in the early afternoon, so given the choice of a morning or afternoon tour, the afternoon tour would be better for people who also want to explore the markets on their own.