Serenade of the Seas Review

Serenade of the Seas - Alaska

Review for Alaska Cruise on Serenade of the Seas
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tj_sc
First Time Cruiser • Age 70s

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Sail Date: Aug 2007

Intro: I am 60, my wife 54. This was our 7th cruise, 4th with Royal Caribbean (RC), 2nd to Alaska. We booked online, our fourth time. Air travel made by RC as part of cruise package. Embarkation: Upon arrival in Vancouver, we followed the US Direct signs. Note: Your bags MUST be pre-tagged with ship name, and cabin number prior to checking your bags at your first US airport. Your travel agent must supply you with the special tags. The Canadian end of the US Direct program went very well. We had to wait about 30 minutes in the bus holding area waiting for the bus to take us to the ship. Princess and NCL passengers had four buses before the first RC bus came. There was a 35 minute drive from airport to pier. From the time we stepped off the bus until we were on the ship was 10 minutes tops. Grade B+ Stateroom: Balcony stateroom, Deck 7. When we arrived the room was clean and set up. The flowers I had pre-ordered were there. Overall the room was small, but functional. Negatives: Desk could have been a bit bigger. Oval table in front of the loveseat was 24 inches by 9 inches, not overly useful. Positives: Bed was very comfortable, good quality linens. Bathroom: Small, typical for a cruise ship. Shower was small. You young honeymoon couples can forget about showers for two. However shower was round so instead of a curtain it had sliding half doors, the floor did not get soaked as with curtains. Great idea needs to be copied. Balcony was plenty big with two chairs and a small low table in between. Our room attendant was Maria from Nicaragua. She made that extra effort to know us fast. Not only was her service first rate, but she made sure each day we were getting what we needed. Stateroom, Grade B - Stateroom Attendant, Grade A++ Dining: Three times we ordered Room Service coffee. Never took longer than 10 minutes. Coffee came in big carafe, creamers, sugar and a good selection of sugar substitutes. They will bring extra if you ask. Breakfast and Lunch: Windjammer Cafe, buffet. Food B, selection B+, service A. Marc from Quebec took great care of us in the Windjammer Cafe, whenever he was there. We had lunch once in Seaview Cafe, no extra cost. You order the food, they give you a number you place on your table, they cook the food and bring it to you. My wife had a Cuban sandwich, fries and a diet Coke, I had a Reuben, fries and a Coke. Food B+, Service A. All except once, we ate dinner in the Reflections dining room. Food B, which is a good grade for this, when you consider that they are cooking for about 1300 people a seating. Service: Eric, our headwaiter from Chile, Grade A+. Hira, our waiter from Jamaica, Grade A+. Our Assistant waiter, Grade C. She was totally out of sync with our waiter and it is her job to be in sync with him. We ate once in Chops Grill. Everything A+. The only negative is the quantity of food, a lot; I mean a lot! Best onion soup I have ever had. We did use the Coffee Bar. The first time the barista making my latte did not know how to "finish" it. Other than that Grade B+. Entertainment: Never got to any of the big shows, wanted to but nothing we really wanted to see. Did not go to the screaming loud music clubs; did that sort of thing, when I was younger, now my hearing isn't so good. We did get to listen to individuals and groups play in small venues. Grade B+ for the entertainment we saw. Lounges: Our pre-dinner hangout was the Schooner Lounge. We would have a pre-dinner drink, listen to the piano or guitarist and people watch. All during the week we were served by Jeronio, from India. He was absolutely dead-on perfect. Grade A++. We did go to The Quest in the Safari Club. What a hoot. Leave the kids, adults only. Sitka: We took the Russian America/Raptor Tour. St Michael's Russian Orthodox Cathedral. The original cathedral burned down about 40 years ago and was rebuilt. Most of the relics and icons were saved from the fire. Smaller than you might imagine a cathedral to be, but then this was frontier town. The Raptor Center was where injured raptors: owls, hawks, falcons, ospreys and eagles, are brought back to health and returned to the wild. They have two resident eagles whose injuries prevent them from being released. We got up close and person with Sitka, a just mature, female bald eagle, who lost one of her talons, analogous to your thumb. With that talon, she is unable to grasp food and would starve, if released back. It is hard to describe being no more than six feet from her in a room. From there it was a 30 minute show of Russian dancing, very good. Lastly it was the Sitka National Historical Park for a trail walk viewing totem poles in a setting as totems were originally displayed; plus a small museum exhibit on the Tlingit Indians. Grade A Hubbard Glacier: This is one of the reasons we came on a second Alaska cruise. Hubbard Glacier, a tidewater glacier, 6 miles wide, 200 to 500 feet high. You enter the estuary in front of the glacier surrounded by large and small pieces of ice. The oxygen in the ice, compressed by the glacier, pops out as the ice melts. It sounds like you are in a bowl of Rice Krispies. You hear boom, white thunder, and look to the glacier and see pieces of ice as big, if not bigger than your house, fall into the water. Some of the splashes must reach 100 feet high. The ship gets to about 360 yards from the glacier. You are there about an hour; one ship at a time. I cannot even count how many times the glacier calved while we were there. If this is not on your 100 Things To See Before You Die List, it ought to be. It is unthinkable to grade something like this. Skagway: We took the Skagway Streetcar Tour. When we were in Skagway before we took the White Pass Train ride. If you go, take the train and squeeze in the streetcar if you can. The women who do the streetcar tour do a great job, it is a performance. Grade B+. Skagway itself was a gateway to the Klondike Gold Fields. It was there to mine the miners; it now exists to mine the tourists. I swear half of the stores must be jewelry shops, many of which are also in the Caribbean. Juneau: We went on the Whale Watch and Orca Lodge Salmon Bake. Saw orcas (killer whales) and humpback whales. One humpback whale actually got to within 10 feet of the boat, and looked at us for a minute. The on board naturalist had never seen this before. The salmon bake at Orca Lodge was great. They give you the recipe for the salmon. Grade A. Juneau is a wonderful town, unfortunately the ship left only an hour after we were dropped off from the Whale Watch. There is great real Alaska shopping on North Franklin Street, on South Franklin are the usual jewelry shops. Things Not Used: We did not use the Spa, but I think if my wife sees a full massage at a reasonable price, she will try one on the next cruise. Did not use the gym; a few hours on a treadmill will not erase a life of sloth. Did not buy any art. I wonder how many Joe Nameth signed jerseys there are? Debarkation: When it came to getting off the ship; great. RC had it set up going out like the US Direct coming in. Every time you came to a turn there was an RC person pointing the way. US Customs and Immigration was done at the Vancouver Airport. Very smooth, very good. Grade A General thoughts or things that don't fit elsewhere. We were both impressed by the friendliness of the staff. It is not the old friendly, which was very good, now there seems to be a very conscious effort to have the staff approach people with friendly greetings. I am sure that for a lot of people this helps their comfort level. Coffee. Since this was our 4th RC Cruise we have come to the inescapable conclusion that all RC coffee in the main dining room is uniformly made by a sect of people, from an unknown country that boil their coffee for days on end until black smoke wafts from the vessel. By the way, I have been to Egypt, where they do boil their coffee, and it isn't like this. Everywhere else on the ship the coffee was fine, a little stronger than we normally drink, but it was good West Coast coffee. The first night in the dining room it was burnt, and I mean burnt. Then our assistant waiter put skim milk in the creamer dispenser. I am not sure that heavy cream would have helped, but it might have. Smoking. Yes, my wife and I are both smokers. Unfortunately, our kind cannot die fast enough for the anti-smoking nutties (where did they go before non-smoking sections). The 2008 RC smoking policy, will in all likelihood, make this our last RC cruise. It is too bad that RC cannot just impose a flat $100 smoke-in-your-room cleaning fee. $250 is ridiculous, plus they are going to hand out warnings and what ever, maybe floggings. It is all part of their Wellness Program. If they are so hot on wellness why don't they cut out alcohol? Stop laughing out there. You non-smokers watch out. Soon we will be dead and THEY will tell you that you are living too long and cannot afford you. Soylent Green anyone? Overall, we loved the ship and our cruise. Grade B+. Point: We gave ALL people graded A+ for service or higher, additional tips above the recommended tips.

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