April 26, 2019 Serenade TA - Is it LIVE, or is it Memorex🤔

[John&LaLa]

I should be in Galveston now, inviting y'all to join us on a Liberty B2B, but fate has prevented that,  so lets go to Copenhagen 😷

 

This was exactly one year ago, and I didn't invite you then, so lets cross the pond now.

 

At least I've got decent internet now

[Tree_skier]

I'm on board 🙂 

[John&LaLa]

Obligatory cruise planner shot

I really was planning on doing this a year ago, but got busy and never did

 

Our route

 

My travelling companions

My beautiful wife, Lala

And our youngest son, Patrick.  Pat and I will be sharing a cabin

 

And our ship

 

Pat hasn't been on a cruise ship since 2007, but he did spend 4 years on this little ship

 

And finally, a little side trip I'm planning in Amsterdam

 

Always good to have goals

[atgood]

15 minutes ago, John&LaLa said:

I should be in Galveston now, inviting y'all to join us on a Liberty B2B, but fate has prevented that,  so lets go to Copenhagen 😷

 

This was exactly one year ago, and I didn't invite you then, so lets cross the pond now.

 

At least I've got decent internet now

Besides spending four hours wandering around Paris back in 2015, we haven’t been to any of the ports for your cruise.  I’m really looking forward to see how it went and will be taking notes.  Cheers. 

[John&LaLa]

OK, here is a little background.

 

This trip was planned as a replacement for the April 23, 2019 Explorer TP

Royal cancelled it when they discovered they could make more money having Ovation do that trip instead😠

That was one of the few times Royal gave us the short end of the stick

 

BTW, the 2019 Explorer TP was a replacement for the 2018 Explorer TP which I cancelled in order to do the Mariner Not Quite Global Odyssey in April 2018. So it's really my fault Laura hasn't been to Australia yet. We are scheduled for next spring, but who knows at this point.

 

Since we had a great price on Explorer, we had two cabins booked solo. I found good prices on this and booked the same way. 

Aft balcony, and an inside just around the corner. So it was $1767 for the solo aft and $1421 for the solo inside. Probably should have just gotten two afts because a month later we found out Pat was leaving the Navy so Laura invited him to join us. And when I added him to my cabin, I didn't get a reprice, all I had to do was pay $163 in taxes.  Then I got a Royal UP offer and bid high on a balcony for $900 total. So like I said it would have been better to have just gotten the aft up front. 

 

I also found a great rate on Lufthansa for our flight home. $877 for Business Class in a 747. I was also able to grab seats in the upper deck. That's a bucket list item for me. Unfortunately, this was booked prior to inviting Pat, and when I went to get his tickets the price has doubled, so I had to pay $1224 to put him in Premium Economy. 

 

And to top off the financials, we had around $700 in OBC between the two cabins, and I applied a casino discount of $200 for Laura's cabin.

 

 

 

[John&LaLa]

Forgot to mention, post cruise we can only spend one night in Copenhagen and have an early flight, so we are staying at the airport. That's disappointing because we were in Copenhagen last summer and really enjoyed staying in Nyhaven. It just seemed to stressful to get an early cab from there to the airport, so the Clarion it is.

[atgood]

Ah.....the 2019 Explorer TP.   We were scheduled for that one too.  I recall seeing your posts on the roll call I think.  And, we rescheduled a TP cruise for this Spring on Ovation OTS (was supposed to be on it right now) and it didn’t happen again.  Oh well. 
 

The upper deck of a 747.  I finally got to fly on one in November on BA.  It’s something I’ve wanted to do for 30 yrs.  We had economy tix as the purchase was somewhat last minute.  Sat in the back on the regular/lower deck.  Before we got off, since we were among the last, we went and peaked upstairs.  On their 747 it was configured the same as regular seating (maybe premium plus or whatever is above economy on BA, but definitely wasn’t first class from what I recall seeing).  I had the FA’s confused as to why we wanted to look and as they told us it looked the same as downstairs.  They were right.  

Edited April 26, 2020 by atgood

[Tee & Chilli]

Excellent start...looking forward to the review.

[mugtech]

3 hours ago, John&LaLa said:

Obligatory cruise planner shot

I really was planning on doing this a year ago, but got busy and never did

 

Our route

 

My travelling companions

My beautiful wife, Lala

And our youngest son, Patrick.  Pat and I will be sharing a cabin

 

And our ship

 

Pat hasn't been on a cruise ship since 2007, but he did spend 4 years on this little ship

 

And finally, a little side trip I'm planning in Amsterdam

 

Always good to have goals

Your son looks very familiar, can't wait to hear about Amsterdam, was supposed to get there on Brilliance on 5/17/20.

[sgmn]

Thanks John. I always love your positive reviews and this is such a treat during this lock down time. Looking forward to this very much. 

Sue 

Edited April 26, 2020 by sgmn

[bigeck]

Im in.

Copenhagen is the best City in Europe I've been to before a cruise.

Edited April 26, 2020 by bigeck

[grapau27]

4 minutes ago, bigeck said:

Im in.

Copenhagen is the best City in Europe I've been to before a cruise.

I totally agree.

Been to wonderful wonderful Copenhagen 4 times and love it.

[Eastern flygirl]

Thank you John, I have really missed a fun review.  It will be read by everyone trying to escape our world problems.  Keep up the good work and I hope to meet you and Laura on a future cruise, if they change the 70 policy. I keep telling myself, I could be in a much worse position.

[Milwaukee Eight]

You must really be bored. Lol

[John&LaLa]

13 minutes ago, Milwaukee Eight said:

You must really be bored. Lol

 

Just cleaning up. I was bored a month ago.😉

[John&LaLa]

4 hours ago, bigeck said:

Im in.

Copenhagen is the best City in Europe I've been to before a cruise.

 

Agreed, we were there before and after for our Baltics cruise in 2018. 

[bobmacliberty]

Done the 747 upper deck twice.  That was on Delta several years ago when their BC seats were not as good.  I once got a seat far enough forward in the nose of the plane that it was both a window seat and an aisle seat.  Strange feeling watching the landing out the window since I was so much higher off the ground and very far forward.  The 747 upper deck was on my to do list also, but I prefer the A380 upper deck.

[John&LaLa]

4 hours ago, sgmn said:

Thanks John. I always love your positive reviews and this is such a treat during this lock down time. Looking forward to this very much. 

Sue 

 

The plan is to do it in real time, one day at a time. 

[John&LaLa]

5 hours ago, mugtech said:

Your son looks very familiar, can't wait to hear about Amsterdam, was supposed to get there on Brilliance on 5/17/20.

 

The Bella pic was a placeholder because I didn't have a picture when I did check in. 

 

And then I 'forgot' to update it. 😉

[depplep]

Excited for this journey. Never been to any of these places. Patrick is adorable as always.

[Ocean Boy]

10 hours ago, John&LaLa said:

 

 

 

 

And finally, a little side trip I'm planning in Amsterdam

 

Always good to have goals

So you shop chemicals other places than Mexico.

[mo&fran]

Wow. Last year on May 4 we were on a Tampa  to Amsterdam on Brilliance.

And the lovebugs were out in force on the drive across. The car was a mess.  We have kids living in Ruskin, so we left the car at their  house.

[Jimbo]

3 hours ago, Milwaukee Eight said:

You must really be bored. Lol

I agree.

[Tree_skier]

3 hours ago, Milwaukee Eight said:

You must really be bored. Lol

I think most people are bored.

[Sea Dog]

Thank you for doing this! I was really getting tired of reading the "what if they did this speculations...?" I'm aboard. Cheers!