Brilliance of the Seas Review
Second time on the Brilliance was not an improvement
Rating by category
Additional details
We chose this cruise for the itinerary. We were on a Brilliance Baltic cruise in May 2015 that we enjoyed although the ship was way too smoky. With some misgivings we booked the British Isles cruise for May 2018. We like Royal Caribbean, but this ship always seems to have issues for us.
We traveled alone this cruise, but we wouldn't recommend this ship for young children. Especially this itinerary. It was really too cold to use the pool for most of the cruise, and there aren't many activities on board that I noticed other than possibly the kids program, which I didn't see. The rest of the ship would not be especially interesting for them.
Our first issues were not related to the ship, but to the RCI website. We booked morning excursions, and it changed almost all of them to the afternoon. (If the morning is sold out, they shouldn't show it as an option on the internet.) When we got our tickets on the ship, the morning excursion that we did get was changed to afternoon. We managed to get it changed at the excursion desk and perhaps we could have changed more of the afternoon tickets to morning, but it doesn't give me any faith in booking through RCI. I will be looking more closely at other shore excursion options on the internet. We have never had problems in the past with non-ship bookings, but the savings appeared to be very small for what I initially saw online, so we booked through RCI.
Cabin Review
An ocean view cabin. For the British Isles, we didn't need a balcony. We didn't really use it on a previous Baltic Cruise, because it was generally fairly cool and it was on this cruise also. There was lots of space on deck and in the solarium, so it worked well for us.
Port Reviews
Cobh (Cork)
We stayed in Cobh for the day. There are a number of interesting things to look at and we managed to squeeze on to a local tour boat to Spike Island which is a former monastery, fort and prison. There is a tour through much of the fort and then time to explore on your own through prison yards, cells and museum exhibits.
Amsterdam
We bought 2 day Amsterdam & Region travel tickets at the airport for 26 euros each. They include travel on buses, trains, metro and trams. They reach all the way to Keukenhof tulip gardens and all around Amsterdam, so we did some riding just to see the area and walked through much of downtown. We can recommend the Dutch Resistance Museum, but you have to book far in advance for the Anne Frank House and the Corrie ten Boom House. A canal cruise is well worth it and you can get combo tickets for a number of museums, so you might want to check it out online. Gray Line runs one of the canal cruises with the option.
Dublin
We had 2 days in Dublin. First day was a standard "Irish Countryside & Glendalough" excursion through the cruise ship. It was a very pleasant drive and interesting old 1000 year old site.
Our second day we walked into Dublin. We did a student led tour of Trinity College which included a ticket to enter the library and the book of Kells. Then we continued our walk to visit Dublin Castle and a walk past St. Patrick Cathedral. Returning to the ship, we walked past the Irish Famine memorial and other related museums and items. It was a great day, but we were tired by the end, having walked about 7 miles or so. You might take a shuttle in if you are not up to a lot of walking. Trinity College is fairly close to the shuttle if I remember from the map, and the major sites are near that, so you can save a couple of miles walking and still see everything, or walk less and see less.
St. Peter Port (Guernsey)
It was an interesting and scenic port with a number of walking trails.There is an old underground German occupation museum, but they only take cash and we didn't have it. We did take a walk and also visited Castle Cornet on the harbor. It is a well developed site with lots to look at and a story to read since the island was under German occupation during WWII.
Greenock (Glasgow)
We did a Stirling Castle excursion through the cruise ship. Stirling Castle is well preserved and has quite a number of exhibits to see in its various rooms and halls. This would be connected with the Braveheart story. The grounds are very well done.
Dover
We bought a city shuttle ticket for $8US each, which worked as a hop-on hop-off for the day. We walked around town for and hour or so and then took the shuttle up to the White Cliffs visitor center. A 10-20 minute walk gets to a great viewing area of the cliffs and the harbor. Then we got back on the shuttle for a ride to Dover Castle. This castle is extremely well done. Lots of rooms are set up to look similar to what they would have, including bedrooms, kitchen, dining hall, throne room, etc. When we were there it was a special weekend and there were lots of people dressed in WWII uniforms, with "camps" on the lawn. They were acting their parts as soldiers, nurses, photographer/reporter, etc. They were displaying all of their gear and had a number of cars, trucks, an airplane and lots of guns. All in all, Dover was very well done.