We are back from our Norway/Transatlantic adventure on Vision and Brilliance. We had a terrific time, in spite of missing two of our four ports on Brilliance, some service issues (also on BR) and some really rocky weather along the way (both ships). What follows is a review of the Brilliance TA, starting with our day in Copenhagen pre-cruise. I'll review the Vision cruise separately. There was a lot of good and a fair amount of annoying, but not much bad.

We booked this cruise because it commenced in Copenhagen, which we had visited on a port day on our Jewel Baltics cruise in 2007. We loved what we saw and wanted to have a couple of days to explore the city. We then saw the Vision 5-night fjords cruise and added that on for a chance to see a bit of Norway as well. The price was set very low when bookings opened, and we were able to snag a JS on BR and a D-1 on Vision for less than the cost of a JS on Jewel, and for 3 more nights (counting the hotel in between).

Brilliance was returning to the US for the first time in 5-6 years. The staff and crew were extremely worried about the pending health inspection, and of course the navigation crew was very concerned about getting us to New Jersey without going through the storms that kept cropping up. I think that some of the lapses we saw were the result of those two events. Nothing happened that ruined our cruise, but the experience wasn't what we've come to expect from RCI. I am confident that a few sailings in the U.S. market will turn things around. Read more