Alaska cruise, Sept 6 - 13/2008 RCI Serenade of the Seas

Our group of 22 set sail on the Serenade of the Seas on Sept 6 from Vancouver's Ballantyne Pier. We had a mix of previous cruisers and "cruise virgins". We have cruised Princess and Holland America, but this was our first RCI cruise. Throughout this review, I will compare RCI to Princess.

As you can imagine, coordinating 22 people to get to and from the ship, dining arrangements, excursions and various other details can be daunting. Our favorite phrase throughout the cruise was "it's just like herding cats". Unfortunately, our direct contacts and our travel agents contacts with RCI prior to the cruise were rarely met with positive results. As 50% of our travellers were new cruisers, we wanted to make this experience a "once in a lifetime". We felt it was important that our dining experience include window views and instructed my TA to contact RCI and make appropriate arrangements. She was advised that RCI would contact her 30 days prior to the cruise with a special form. She did receive the form, which HAD to be return by a specific date for the arrangements to be honored. The specific date was the day before the fax was sent! Fortunately, we did receive 2 tables with windows and 1 interior table. The other directive that was received regarding our dining arrangements was that we must stay at the table we were assigned unless we pre-paid gratuities. We can understand pre-paying when you have an extremely large group (22 is not extreme and only encompassed 3 tables). We chose not to pre-pay and knew we would circulate. Fortunately, the same wait staff looked after all 3 tables, so tipping was not an issue. Read more