This was my 6th cruise on Grandeur, second repo on her. Eighth cruise overall with RCL. We're partial to longer cruises, the shortest we've done so far is a 7 nighter on Mariner. We've also cruised onboard Radiance, 8 nights. The rest of our cruises on Grandeur consist of three 9 night cruises to the Caribbean, and we did the April repo from Tampa to Baltimore consisting of two 7 nighters back to back.

For the first time, we flew to Baltimore on the day of the cruise. We usually like to fly in at least one day early, but decided that since we were flying back from Tampa, it'd be so much easier to fly directly back to PIT than to BWI, then drive 4 hours home. We got a really good deal on flights from PIT to BWI on Southwest, so we flew in early. Southwest has never disappointed, we arrived at BWI early and met up with our fellow riders. I contracted with Corporate Sedan Service to pick 7 of us up from BWI and deliver us to the pier. My wife and I met up with 5 folks who flew in from Kansas, had to wait a while longer than originally expected. Grandeur was late getting into port due to bad weather, but Corporate Sedan Service had informed us the night before, so we were prepared for the wait. They took us to the port, we checked in and had a seat to wait our turn to board the ship. We boarded Grandeur and went to get lunch right away. It was great being back onboard. We checked out our table, Deck 5 in the Gatsby, port side, forward, Katrina and Darko were our waiter and assistant waiter. We were thrilled to have Katrina again, she was our waiter in April for one week of the B2B. She is a wonderful waiter and we were thrilled to have her again. By the time we were done with that, we could go to our stateroom. This was the best stateroom we'd had yet, 7150, the port, aft, corner JS on Deck 7. The corner JS's are about 5 or 6 feet longer than a standard JS, equipped with a walk in closet, which is not standard on Grandeur JS's. The balcony is huge, and since it partially wraps around the side of the ship, it's probably 5 times the size of a standard JS balcony. The room was comfortable, clean, in good repair and we loved it. Our stateroom attendant Angela, was very friendly, and took great care of us. She cleaned out the fridge for us, so we could stow our stuff in there, no problem. We had pastries and coffee on the balcony every morning, and my wife used the balcony to lay out in the sun several days.

The Grandeur is in excellent repair, with a great crew. We love the ship and have enjoyed every cruise we've done on her. The food was consistently good, in the Windjammer, Gatsby, and Solarium Cafe. The crew couldn't do enough to help with one exception. Several times, people called the Purser's Desk and asked to have the solarium roof opened. The never opened it once the entire cruise. The Purser's would make nice noises, they'd try to get the roof opened, but it never happened. That's the only complaint I had. Metroline and the D'Four Rhythm Band played every night in either the Centrum or the South Pacific Lounge. Metroline, especially is an outstanding ballroom dance band. They play a nice variety of dance music, and will play requests. D'Four played music for the ballroom dance competition, my wife and I competed against another couple from the Pittsburgh area, and two other couples. The four couples treated the audience to tango, waltz, cha-cha and swing. My wife and I won the champagne with our tango. It was a lot of fun, especially considering the ship was rocking pretty good. There were quite a few couples dancing in the Centrum every night, and it was funny, there was one elderly couple who were pretty irritated when the photographers set up on the center landing and they couldn't dance there. Read more