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Crystal Serenity Cruise Review to Europe - Mediterranean

Cruises: 7+ cruises
Reviews: 2
Helpful Votes: 90

Overall rating:

4.8 out of 5
Crystal Serenity

9 Night Italiano Avventura (Venice To Rome)

Sail date: August 31, 2018

Ship: Crystal Serenity

Cabin type: Balcony

Cabin number: 10091

Traveled as: Couple

Reviewed: 6 years ago

Review summary

We had cruised with Crystal twice before on Symphony prior to its recent dry dock renovations. Serenity will be in dry dock in October for similar upgrades. Crystal continues to impress and the ‘new’ Serenity and the already new ‘Symphony’ will continue the 4+ star performance of this brand. I think we prefer Symphony as there are more public spaces with windows. On Serenity, facilities that are on one deck on Symphony are on two. The second deck is devoid of windows to the outside in the public passageways and this given one a closed in feeling. Other than that, the ship’s staff was amazing and, frankly, a notch above Symphony. The cruise director on Serenity is also a ventriloquist and was a featured performer two nights ... be sure not to miss Gary as he is amazing!

Embarkation

5 out of 5

Ship experiences

Food and Dining

5 out of 5

Onboard Activities

5 out of 5

Entertainment

3 out of 5
The entertainment by Crystal’s entertainers was very good. Some of the ‘headliners’ brought aboard not so much so. One performer was a singer from England and he was simply terrible. High ego, off key and his voice even broke.

Service and Staff

5 out of 5

Ship Quality

5 out of 5

Cabin / Stateroom

5 out of 5

Ship tip

If you request a window table in Prego, make certain it has a view of something other than life saving equipment.

Ports of call

Venice, Italy

5 out of 5

Piran, Slovenia

5 out of 5

Rovinj, Croatia

5 out of 5

Dubrovnik, Croatia

5 out of 5

Corfu, Greece

5 out of 5

Zakynthos, Greece

5 out of 5

Taormina, Sicily

3 out of 5
Port was great, but Crystal did not provide free transportation to Taormina. Instead the bus was $69 per person. We could have taken a cab round trip for less than the motor coach and arrived and departed Taormina as we preferred.

Sorrento, Italy

5 out of 5

Gaeta, Italy

5 out of 5
Was not excited about this port and wondered why Crystal didn’t simply make this a sea day, as we had a port of call EVERY DAY on this cruise ... but ,... the shopping here was excellent and items were 30-50% less than similar in Rome. Great leather goods were found on “Independence Stree” (a shopping alley) near port.

Civitavecchia (Rome), Italy

5 out of 5

Disembarkation

5 out of 5
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3 Comments

GerryBCruisin    2 years ago

Thanks for sharing your cruise review.

cruisellama    5 years ago

IkeDeb    6 years ago

Very nice review