IOS Review: June 29 - 8 Night Norwegian Escapes

[pjd65]

I know I'm a little late on this, but I had trouble finding much on this itinerary when planning so wanted to write something about our trip for future over-planners out there. I tend to get long winded, so this will probably take a few days to complete. Part 1 is here. The other parts will follow along in the thread as I get to them.

 

Ugh - just discovered that cut/paste from Word messes up some of the formatting - trying to fix it, but I will probably miss some. If you find words run together, that is the reason :(

 

Some quick background info

 

We traveled as a family of 5: My husband & I, our son(18yo) and my parents. The trip was a gift from my parents to my son (he is an only grandchild). They have been taking him on a major trip each year for about 10 years. Usually,it is just he and my parents, but occasionally they include my husband andI. For some reason, the planning and organizing of this trip ended up in my lap. My parents travel a lot – usually 3 or 4 international trips each year and are in very good shape for their age (mid-70s).

 

We have all cruised before. My husband, son & I have been on 7 Disney cruises (3 Western Caribbean, 3 Eastern Caribbean, 1 Panama Canal transit). Way back in the early 90’s, my husband and I went on 2 Carnival cruises. My parents have been on Disney with us 2 times and have done a few other cruises including a Baltic and several river cruises. They have also cruised on smaller ships around Greece and Croatia. None of us have ever cruised on Royal Caribbean before this trip.

 

Travel to the ship

 

We have a family business that makes traveling together a little complicated. This particular cruise was selected because it was over the Independence Day holiday and it was easier to close the office down while we were away. To reduce the number of days we were closed,we were not able to fly in early or stay a few days after the cruise.

 

We booked the cruise in January and then watched airfare for4-6 weeks. The best we were seeing was a little over $1000 per person from Chicago to London round trip. My travel agent suggested we take a look at RCI’s Air2Sea and we were surprised to find much better pricing. We ended up booking our flights through Air2Sea both for the better pricing and for a little bit of peace of mind that they would get us to the ship somehow if our flights were delayed/canceled.

 

We flew from Chicago -> New York --> London and then the return was London -> Minneapolis -> Chicago. Our flying karma has probably been used up since every one of our flights was on time or early and everything went smoothly from the moment we left home! The flights were all Delta, but the New York-London flight was operated by Virgin Air. We were able to pre-select our seats for all the Delta flights, but there was a fee to select seats in advance on Virgin. We were trying to decide if it was worth it (didn’t really want to be scattered allover the plane for a long transatlantic flight) when we realized that we could purchase the “extra room” seats for only a little more (I don’t remember exact numbers but I think it was $15 more than the fee to just select a regular seat.)and part of that purchase was selecting your seats. That seemed like a great idea, so we had 3”more space on that flight and pre-selected seating.

 

I believe even with the extra cost for the Virgin Air seats,our flights cost around $670 per person round trip.

 

We landed at Heathrow and discovered that going through British customs was far worse than our past experiences. My parents have been through there many times and my son & I were there a few years ago – never before have we seen lines like that morning. It took us over an hour and 20 minutes from when we got in line to making it through to baggage claim.

 

Our flight touched down around 8am, but by the time we taxied to the gate, disembarked, went through customs and collected our luggage it was around 10am. We had hired a car service (Smiths for Airports) and they were fantastic. My husband has never been to England, so we wanted to stop and see something on the way to the port. My father’s favorite cathedral (and he has seen a LOT of cathedrals) is Salisbury and since that was convenient for visiting on the way we had arranged to make a stop there. Due to the airport delays, we had less time there than we had hoped but we spent a solid hour at the Cathedral and seeing their copy of the Magna Carta. We tend to be detail people, so a little more time would have been nice, but we saw most of what we wanted to see. Our driver then stopped at a supermarket so we could buy some wine to take onto the ship with us. We purchased 4 bottles (2 cabins on the ship) and then drove to Southampton.

 

The car service round trip cost for all 5 of us was 273 pounds (around $370). RCI Transfers from Heathrow to Southampton and back would have been around $1000.

 

Embarkation

 

We arrived at the port around 1:30pm. By that point we had all been awake for about 24 hours other than some napping on the airplane. Checking in was very fast and easy. There was no wait in line for security or to get our SeaPass cards and we were then able to walk straight to the ship and find our staterooms.

 

Staterooms

 

My parents and our son were in an Outside on deck 3 near the Romeo & Juliet dining room (3336). My husband and I had an Inside on deck 9 (9677). The ship was mostly sold when we booked and balcony staterooms were very expensive. Originally, there were no Outsides available and we were all booked as Inside. Our travel agent kept an eye on it and when an Outside came available snagged it. It was only available for 3 people, not for 2, so my parents decided to take my son in with them so they could have the Outside room. My husband and I were fine with the Inside for the 2 of us.

 

Given how port intensive this cruise was (5 ports, 2 sea days) and the Northern location, we didn’t really mind not having a balcony. Since the weather for our 2 sea days wasn’t that great, I don’t at all regret the decision.

 

 

The rooms are small compared to Disney ships, but there was plenty of storage and we were all comfortable. The mattress was good and although I didn’t much like the pillows, the room steward brought me an extra that was quite a bit better. Everything worked as it should and there was plenty of lighting in the inside cabin. We were surprised that the upper berth bed my son used was left down the entire cruise – for some reason we all thought it would be put up during the day and brought back down in the evening. It made that room feel a little smaller, but wasn’t a huge issue.

 

 

The Ship

 

I had read that the ship was getting “tired” and needed its upcoming drydock ASAP, but I didn’t really see much that was that worn on the ship. Yes, not everything was absolutely perfect – but the little wear I noticed was not anything that would impact my trip. I honestly don’t know if I would have noticed if I hadn’t read about it on Cruise Critic.

 

In general, I don’t really like the look/design of great big white blocky ships. Part of what I enjoy about Disney cruising is that the ship itself is beautiful. However, the look of the ship really isn’t ultimately that important to my vacation.

 

The part of the ship that surprised me was how I didn’t really feel like I was on the water at all. I don’t just mean that it was very stable and we were only able to feel the ship motion occasionally – I feel like the ship is very inward focused. Everything was centered on the Royal Promenade and there were very few windows or walkways where you saw the ocean. Some of that may have been due to the weather – it was chilly most of the trip and the two sea days had some rain. There was very little reason to go up to the pool deck or hang out on the walkways on Deck 4. Some of this may have been due to having an inside cabin, but the rest of the family agreed and 3 of them were in an outside cabin. Obviously, if I wanted to see the water, I could find places to do so – I just feel that the ship is focused inward away from the water. From what I have read about the newer, bigger ships, I suspect I would feel this even more on those.

 

None of us are that interested in gambling so the casino just feels like a huge waste of space, but I did like a number of the other spaces. The 3 level dining room is very elegant and we liked the openness of the area. The Pyramid Lounge seemed well designed and the theater had decent sight lines and acoustics. The ice rink is a cool concept but it does make getting around the ship from deck 3 a pain –having to go up/across/and down again to get to the theater was annoying. I liked the little seating area near the elevators on our floor that overlooked the promenade and I spent a little time on a sea day in the Library reading. The pool spaces look good, but other than using the whirlpool a couple times, we didn’t do much up there.

 

We took a look at the spa & gym areas the first evening,but never got around to using that area. 5 port days in a row is exhausting and none of us felt a need to workout.

 

Since my son is 18, we didn’t have anything to do with the kid areas. He tried rock climbing once,but it wasn’t open very much. On the port days it was only open for a couple hours in the late afternoon and we weren’t always on board. Whenever there was rain, it was closed. The flow rider had similar issues and he never got around to it.

 

The Promenade tended to be noisy and crowded which is not really our thing. We’re also not into shopping. However, we did like the café and went there a number of times for tea, coffee & scones. I thought of visiting the pub, but it was always so crowded that we never got around to it. My son bought an ice cream at Ben & Jerry’sand was not impressed. It had clearly been melted and refrozen – it had ice crystals and gooey bits and was pretty nasty. When a teenage boy throws out most of an ice cream you know it is pretty bad! We never got around to trying the pizza at Sorentos. No one was ever hungry when we were nearby and as Chicago natives we tend to be suspicious of most other pizza LOL!

Edited July 18, 2017 by pjd65

[cinnamon]

Interesting read, thank you. Looking forward to the rest, when you have time. [emoji846]

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Forums

[easyboy]

Nice start. Will be following.