Voyager Of The Seas Dubai - Singapore Review w/pics

[tsundet]

Hi folks,

 

before I start with my review i'm gonna see if I can manage uploading pictures :)

[tsundet]

yay! It worked :) A bit small perhaps... anyway, here we go :)

 

the above pictures show you the Dubai cruise terminal.

 

My wife and I just returned home after 2 weeks in Thailand, before of which we sailed with Voyager OTS on her repositioning from Dubai to Singapore.

We are both in our early/mid thirties, and have done one cruise before, also on the Voyager OTS, in 2010, a 7-day western med. cruise from Barcelona.

Looking back, my wife and I find we refer to our first cruise all the time!

Simply because those 7 days were absolutely fantastic! Everything was great!

 

Now it was finally time to go again, and expectations were high. Maybe too high. Maybe I remember our first cruise as better than it actually was, as a result of me telling a lot of people about our experience, urging people to take a cruise!

 

In some ways perhaps it’d be wrong to compare an 11 day repositioning cruise with 6 sea days, with a much more port intensive Mediterranean cruise.

 

I will focus on the shipboard experience. As far as the ports are concerned, if you want to know anything specific, I’ll be happy to answer any questions you might have.

 

Our dubai-singapore cruise started as expected. Our ticket said “show up at 2pm”. Boy am I glad we went earlier. We arrived at the pier at app. 11.00. Maybe a little later even. We were onboard in not more than 30 minutes, and during those 30 minutes we spent time exploring the cultural display put on by the Emiratis inside the terminal building! I learned later that passengers showing up in the afternoon found themselves queuing up for hours before getting onboard!

Check-in/boarding process was smooth as silk. But only because we showed up early J

We took some pics around the ship, including some from the renovated casino. To be honest with you I don’t remember what it looked like before the renovations.

[tsundet]

the casino, and view from deck 12 towards downtown dubai

[tsundet]

Uploading those pictures is a bit of a struggle, for some mysterious reason. Some will upload, others won't :)

 

I have uploaded all the pictures to my flickr account, here's the link:

 

much easier this way! :)

 

Dining: We had early traditional seating. We were very pleased with how it worked out in 2010. This time we were pleased. Our waiter was the total opposite of what I read about other people’s waiters. He came with the menus, took the order, and served the food. That was it. We don’t expect our wait staff to juggle or do the Riverdance for us, but a little enthusiasm wouldn’t hurt. A little disappointed there. On one of the last days, our tablemates said “look, he smiled again!” I mean, it wasn’t bad. He wasn’t rude in any way, but he did his job, and his job was to take the order and serve the food. Last time we would be given extra food, cheese platter with the wine and double helpings with the dessert if we couldn’t decide between two. This time, we didn’t see any of this. Result of budget cuts?

Our assistant waiter was great though. He was one of the new Chinese recruits, and was much more vocal than our waiter. He simply was a much nicer guy and gave more of himself!

 

The quality of the food was good. Some days better than others, obviously, but all over fair enough.

Portofinos was excellent! My wife had the seafood platter, and I the osso bucho (if that’s how you spell it) (I’m not Italian) J Service was great, the somellier knew what she was talking about (or at least she pretended to, but she was convincing and that’s good enough for me). Simply put, it was a very lovely evening.

Windjammer, great selection of food, great taste, great staff! We had dinner there 3, maybe 4 times, no complaints what so ever J Very pleased.

Wine package. Not impressed. I’m not a wine expert, I know the different grapes, and that’s it. But I like to drink wine, and drinking my way through the diamond package, in my opinion, none of them really stood out as very good. To me they tasted very cheap, and next time I’d rather spend that little extra and buy single bottles from their selection outside the package, instead of purchasing the package itself. And a final remark: The wine glasses also had water stains on them.

Reading this it may seem we had a terrible time! Please understand we had a great time! But things were just not as fantastic as our previous cruise.

[tsundet]

Entertainment: Our cruise director, Gordon, was a breath of fresh air. He was very visible; you’d bump into him (nearly) anywhere. He would introduce the shows at La Scala, and sometimes those introductions would be as enjoyable as the shows themselves. A funny man, simply put. La Scala offered diverse entertainment; a comedian, Guy Bavli – Master of the mind, various music acts, Newlywed game… We didn’t catch them all, but the ones we did see, entertained us.

 

Again, very varied, something for everyone I should think.

 

70s dancing on the promenade was awesome! There was also a, what do you call it, white night party? Pool party under the stars, with food, desserts and live music. Very nice :)

 

One thing we missed though, was the parades. There was only one Dreamworks parade on our 11 day cruise, and if it had been up to me, RCCL wouldn’t have needed to bother with the Dreamworks package. It might be a big hit with the Asian passengers though :)

The Pig & Whistle Pub was packed every night, so we never really got to experience nightlife there. I do consider that a sign the entertainment there was good though :) Piano bar… the pianist was a talented player, but his singing put me off a bit. It was too loud and intense. Not our cup of tea.

High Notes; our favourite place on the ship. Just a shame the band seems to be on “repeat mode” every night.

Service in general was good. Not great. Good. I felt they lacked that little extra spark, that little extra enthusiasm we had experienced earlier, where barstaff would seem genuinely happy to see you. Still some confusion amongst the new staff I think; keep the glass by buying the drink of the day. First the glass “was not available to give away”, then if we paid 2 dollars extra we could keep it anyway.

[tsundet]

Cabin: we had a balcony stateroom on deck 7. We didn’t see much of our cabin attendant, but he kept our room clean, nice and tidy :) Very pleased.

The ship looked good, despite her age. It has been said that, being the first from the Voyager class, Voyager OTS enjoyed a much bigger moneybag dedicated to art and decoration, than her sisters. I couldn’t tell as I haven’t been on any of the others, but if art is your thing, you might enjoy the Voyager OTS :)

Obviously you can see some wear and tear in between; but as I said, considering her age she looks great :)

There were renovations going on during our voyage. The entire area behind Johnny Rockets was closed for most parts of the trip. I saw maintenance guys removing (and installing new) carpets in some cabins. Shops on the promenade underwent renovations.

 

I have pictures from the new aft area on deck 12, and one of the new shops on my flickr account mentioned earlier in my review.

To sum up; we had a great time, despite some disappointments. A cruise (or whatever holiday) is what you make it. We chose to focus on the good things, (and leave the not so good for the review) ;) We would definately go again.

Again, for more pictures, check out my flickr account

 

[mike@sea]

Great review. Thank´s for taking the time to share this !

 

Mike

[Bluekat74]

Thanks so much for sharing your photos. Was on the same cruise and luckily like yourself got to the cruise port early ... having the ship to ourselves to take photos was actually so much fun. Love seeing the cruise through over peoples eyes and cameras. Also have to look up your camera, has some awesome features that you used well.

 

Thanks again

 

kylie

[tsundet]

thank you for reading, and enjoying the pictures :)

@bluekat74: the cameras we used were quite standard, but I used special lenses for my iPhone which really did their job :) there's an online store called photojojo, they've got pleny of neat stuff :) Also on some pictures I used HDR photo iphone apps.

 

again, glad you liked the photos :)

[Topo Gigio]

Thanks, I'm thinking of taking this very same cruise next year on the Mariner.

[bionicman97]

Enjoyed the review and photos :)

[Bluekat74]

Thanks, I'm thinking of taking this very same cruise next year on the Mariner.

 

If you get the chance to do it on Mariner, definitely jump on it. The prices for our cruise were at their lowest point right at the start so grab the right cabin then. It quickly ended up by around 250% for some of the cabins. If you do it, you can easily organise shore excursions yourself and there were some good options out there, once you have looked. Just realise its a very HOT cruise, though there were so many people who were constantly out on the deck, I guess that type of heat was a total novelty to them, and didn't feel it as much as I did? Would definitely do that cruise again given the chance ....

[Topo Gigio]

If you get the chance to do it on Mariner, definitely jump on it. The prices for our cruise were at their lowest point right at the start so grab the right cabin then. It quickly ended up by around 250% for some of the cabins. If you do it, you can easily organise shore excursions yourself and there were some good options out there, once you have looked. Just realise its a very HOT cruise, though there were so many people who were constantly out on the deck, I guess that type of heat was a total novelty to them, and didn't feel it as much as I did? Would definitely do that cruise again given the chance ....

 

I'm especially interested on the last stretch to most probably Singapore. Good friend who lives in Dubai, so spend a couple of days there and jump on the ship.