A great once in a lifetime adventure with family. Though I wish we could have done the White Pass railway tour in Skagway. I guess we will have to book another cruise....
Embarkation
5 out of 5
I will say this has been one of the smoothest embarkations I have witnessed in a while
Ship experiences
Food and Dining
4 out of 5
The food in the Windjammer was very good for a buffet restaurant. There is great choice of food to eat, and the food is always a good temperature (not sitting too long). My only complaint would be that the buffet seems too small for the size of the ship as there is a line up for busy times.
Schooner Bar
3 out of 5
I really only used this venue for trivia, and unlike the music hall, this was in a high traffic area, between the elevators along deck 6, so it was tough for trivia contests to occur.
Windjammer Marketplace
4 out of 5
The food in the Windjammer is always good as expected. However the four star rating is due to the fact that the venue gets too crowded during the busy breakfast rush, and it can be difficult to get a table.
The Grande Restaurant
4 out of 5
The service was excellent, however, this was downgraded due to some disappointments in the food on some nights. I was a little disappointed in my prime rib roast beef on night 1 (a little tough), and my pad thai on the asia night, however, most nights it was pretty good.
Sorrento's
5 out of 5
I always love the pizza at Sorrento's :-)
Solarium Bistro
3 out of 5
I was kind of disappointed in this venue, because the posted menu for lunch didn't seem to correspond to what was available in the bistro that day. Perhaps this was just a one-time error, so hopefully this isn't a trend with this venue.
Room Service
4 out of 5
Our family took advantage of the complimentary continental breakfast offered through room service, while attempting to catch a glimpse of the Dawes Glacier in Endicott Arm. This allowed us to warm up and eat in the balcony cabin, when not viewing the glacier.
Bionic Bar
1 out of 5
It was under maintenance during our cruise. Never saw it in action.
Onboard Activities
4 out of 5
The Seaplex is a very versatile space where the bumper cars, roller skating, laser tag, pickleball and volleyball. As a result of its flexibility, I will state that was my favourite activity venue on the ship. I did the bumper cars and laser tag, as did others in my travel party. The others also had fun with roller skating.
I also did various trivia contests in both the Music Hall and Schooner bar lounge. Of the two venues, the Music Hall seems to be better situated to host trivia, as it not only has a screen for movies (and powerpoint), but it is also a larger facility (though only the lower level is suitable for trivia). The schooner bar is located in a high traffic area that makes doing trivia difficult at times.
I did the escape room in the "Fuel" room which is normally the disco for the teen club at nights. As it isn't used during the day, this becomes the escape room where a team of adults will solve various puzzles to determine to find the way to escape the room (which in this case to find the last key to exit the room) It was a very fun exercise that we enjoyed doing with my family and other adults who filled out the team.
My niece was the only one who had did the iFly skydiving simulator, as the complimentary time slots were difficult to obtain, though I had done it on a different RCL ship before. I think she had a great time doing the activity, and it is certainly very popular.
Entertainment
5 out of 5
The stage shows were all good to excellent.
Of the three stage shows, I would say that the Sequins and Feathers was probably the weakest. This show is a typical cruise theater show featuring the ship's singers and dancers. It is good, but the other two shows were much better.
The other show in the Royal Theater, "Sound Odyssey" was definitely a most excellent unique experience. The earth harp, a musical instrument which spanned the whole theatre and is certainly an awesome sight itself, but the actual music and choreography of the show seemed much more superior to Sequins and Feathers.
The last stage show that I will review here is in the 270 Lounge. The show is callled Starwater, and that show does take full advantage of the special technology in that lounge including the robotic monitors in this lounge.
Two70
5 out of 5
One of the best shows was done in this venue (see my review on the shows in the main review). This also was where the Crazy Quest occurred, which is always fun to watch (though I do prefer seeing it in Studio B on ships that have that venue, but the cruise director staff still make it work in this venue.
Music Hall
4 out of 5
This was where more of the trivia contests were held, and was much better venue for trivia. The fact that this was a larger venue that was out of the main traffic flow made it better venue for trivia. Though the top floor was wasted during trivia because trivia contests were only done on the lower deck of this venue. However, people could still play pool above, which is a plus.
Children's Programs
We had no young children in our party.
RipCord Observation Deck
5 out of 5
I was able to see my neice try out the ripcord from this conveniently located deck right near ripCord. Great photo ops for myself and especially her dad (my brother), and her husband.
Service and Staff
5 out of 5
Our room steward (for 9309) made sure that my brother and I's experience was as great as possible. He first ensured that our beds were separated (I shared the cabin with my brother), and also got us extra towels when we requested. He also delighted us with the towel animals on various nights of the cruise after he cleaned our cabin in the evening.
The MDR staff were also very attentive. On opening night, there was an issue with our table assignments - my niece and her husband were at a different table than my brother and I, and also my niece and her husband were supposed to share a table of 4 with 6 other people. But in the end, we sat with my niece and her husband and all the other couples got their tables nearby.
Ship Quality
5 out of 5
Certainly this ship is very modern and filled with technology. It is also well maintained and very clean throughout.
Cabin / Stateroom
4 out of 5
The cabin was a bit small for what I would have expected from RCL, though I guess that is one of the gambles of booking a GTY cabin :-). In addition, there didn't seem to be enough hooks for hanging our jackets that we brought for this Alaskan cruise, and the ones available didn't seem to be a convenient spot.
However, I will state that the bathroom was very modern and had great ventilation, as the mirror didn't fog up after taking a shower (like it did on Enchantment and Rhapsody (smaller, older ships)
Ship tip
Book Starwater show (270 lounge show), Royal Society of Puzzles (Escape Room) prior to boarding the ship, as these complimentary activities book up fast. Try to book complimentary iFly, roller skating and lazer tag as soon as you can on the ship, as these go quickly too. However, even if you are unable to book these, you can still go the "standby" line if you wish to try these.
Our party had time to tour around after the cruise as our flight was a redeye back to Toronto. My niece's friend was visiting family in nearby Vancouver BC, ,so she acted as our tour guide,, taking us to the famous Pike's place market, the Seattle Center park (including seeing the Space Needle) and other sites around town before dropping us at the airport. If I do come back, I would like to have some time to revisit these sites and others spots in this diverse city.
We did a tour of the Sitka National HIstorical Park. The cruise ship offered a bus to take us to the park straight from the pier, and on the way back the bus had a stop in downtown Sitka so we can tour at a leisure after viewing the park. In the park, we got to see many totem poles carved by the indigenous people who lived on the island, as well as the battlesite between the natives and Russian settles in 1804.
As Sitka is a the former capital of Russian Alaska, one of the main attractions downtown is the St. Michael's Russian Orthodox Church. It is juxtaposed with the souvenir shops and other municipal buildings that would be required for a US city . It was a great stop to get an experience of a typical small Alaskan town.
Part of the rating for this port is unfortunately due to the fact that it replaced the Skagway which we was the main reason for booking this trip. But we did hear of the rock slide that took out part of Skagway cruise port, we did understand the reason. We made the best of that situation, but experiencing what we could of Icy Strait point. Our family took a ride on the SkyGlider, the gondola that takes us up the nearby mountain. At the top of the mountain is where the zip line starts (the main reason for building this gondola ride). There is a hiking trail at the top too, which was where my family and I went when we got to the top. We bought the ticket through cruise line (which was cheaper than getting the ticket at the port) and was unlimited rides (so we also did another round trip to get more views from the top of the mountain - great photo op towards the cruise ports and our ship) :-)
We arrived in Juneau in the early afternoon after cruising the Endicott Arm. Our party did the Mendenhall Glacier river float tour. The tour company picked us up at the pier and transported us to Mendenhall Lake which was the launching point for our tour. We opted for one of the self paddling rafts, and our crew with the help of our guide was able to provide us great views of the Mendenhall Glacier and navigate us safely through the rapids of the Mendenhall river. The river itself has some very mild rapids, due to the time of year, though it is also the same river that made the news recently with scenes of houses falling into the river, after the river had eroded the shore from season melt of the glacier upstream. However, most home owners have installed "rip rap" (or netted boulder walls) to keep the erosion away from the homes. Our guide also explained that those who do not take the precautions will not be covered by insurance as this is not covered by most homeowner flood insurance plans. As we descend down the river, we have views of the Juneau neighbourhood on one side and the national park on the other side, with bald eagles residing on both sides along the way (in the city, the bald eagles like to use lighting standards (similiar to the tall pine trees in nature). At the end of the tour, we docked at a quiet spot in the river where we were treated to snacks and apple cider before heading bussed back to our cruise ship.
This excursion did make up for the disappointment of missing the Dawes Glacier earlier in the day.
Not a lot of time in this great Canadian city. We arrived in the late afternoon, leaving around 10pm, so we opted for a bus tour of Scenic Victoria which started after our dinner time. We had a 2 hour bus tour which took us to Oak Bay, downtown Victoria, Chinatown, Empess Hotel, and the parliament buildings. It was a good tour as an introduction to the city. It is unfortunate that we don't have more time in the city, during the day.
You should have booked the excursion to Butchart Gardens. It was only 2 hours but we were able to see everything and even had time to go to the huge beautiful gift shop. We went in a beautiful air conditioned bus and had a tour of Victoria on the way, It was beautiful. Would love to go back.
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