Serenade of the Seas Cruise Reviews - Reviews

The WHOLE cruise was the best part of the cruise, from my cabin to going ashore. Could not have asked for better weather, better food, better service !!! The ports were great - learned a lot on St John's and Halifax !!!

We really enjoyed this cruise.  The embarkment  process needs work. 2.5 hours is too long. The late night snack options at the cafe could be better. A supreme pizza should be added to the pepperoni and cheese pizza options.

The staff was very helpful and friendly.

I would recommend to a friend.

We chose this cruise for the 5 night itinerary, not the ship. The check in process was lengthy and  frustrating.  The ship was understaffed; had to wait in lines at bars, guest services, shore excursions daily.  The bed was very comfortable and the shower pressure was great.  

Fantastic trip.  Smooth seas, great sites, great service and good food.  A little disorganized getting us on the ship, but after that it was excellent.

The itinerary was great-the Baltic was beautiful.  Iceland excursions consistently exceeded expectations.  Guides were excellent--English was excellent.  Ship staff frequently ignored the older traveler in the shops and in public venues, which is unusual as we tend to have more disposable income.  Excursions were as noted and met all expectations. Cabin was maintained in an excellent manner.

The Itinerary is always the most important part when we choose a particular cruise.  This one was excellent.  The Ports of call were all places we were interested in visiting and all measured up to our expectations.  Norway, Iceland and Halifax, Nova Scotia were all very beautiful with great weather.

The best part were the ports of call.  Iceland is awesome.  They also had a bridge director which was a definite plus on the sea days.  The entertainment was also very good.

On the negative side, My Time Dining was a disaster.  It took up to 1/2 hour to get a table even with a reservation.  Table and waiter requests were not routinely honored.  The food in the dining room was pretty good.  The service in the Windjammer was lacking.  The staff for the most part were unfriendly, unsmiling and not customer service oriented. 

Despite the shortcomings we really enjoyed the cruise and would recommend this ship and itinerary. 

Cruise was good.  Room good.  Favorite part: classical concerts and talks with pianist Brooks Aehron, and violinist Molly Cockburn.  Musical productions were overamplified, and we had to walk out in order to save our hearing.

Dining room the first day was too unorganized.  Too few people first day at customer service desk resulted in long line.

Liked the view from the elevators.  Food in dining room was sometimes not exactly what it purported to be.  Service in dining room was excellent as in stateroom.

THE FOOD WAS EXCELLENT AND THE SERVICE DURING THE ENTIRE CRUISE WAS EXCELLENT AS WELL THE ENTERTAINMENT WAS OK BUT FELT THAT IT COULD HAVE BEEN BETTER.

Having sailed Royal Caribbean in the past, I feel the Serenade of the Seas is found to be lacking in a number of ways. Most of the issues are with the service. Although almost all of the crew I encountered were pleasant, the actual service was below RC standards. I saw my cabin attendant twice on an 8 day cruise. Delivery of clean glasses and bath products were sketchy. In the dining room, it appeared the waiters were overwhelmed and had too many tables to serve. The wine steward was nowhere to be seen most of the time. It didn't help that this appeared to be a "training" cruise for a lot of the crew. Also, the tables were so crowded together one could barely maneuver getting to your table. 

 I would say two of the nights had entertainment that would be considered quite good. 

The Ports of Call were my favorite part of the cruise.  The ship was very clean.  The wait staff in the main dining were wonderful.  I did not like all the "special events" -spa info, good feet, art auction--felt like it was used car salespeople trying to rip me off!

This was another great cruise on RCCL.

Best part was St. Petersburg in Russia.

The A la carte restaurants were great, we eat 5 days in those. The food in Izumi was great, but the ambiance of this restaurant feels like a cafeteria. The ambiance in this restaurant needs to change, but the food was perfect.

Murat Inac, our head waiter, Nadia Zuniga Perez, our assistant waiter and Otto , our bartender.  They made the cruise so enjoyable.    The food was delicious too!

This was our first cruise and our expectations were exceeded at every stage. The serice by the staff in the dining room was exceptional and the food and menu were terrific. The shore excursions were well done by professionals and the ship reacted to a cancelled port in an extremely efficient manner. All in all, a wonderful experience. 

The best port on this cruise is the Geiranger Fjord, the last port of call in Norway.  The Serenade of the Seas ship is a smaller ship, so it is able to navigate the narrow passages deep inside the fjord.  The ship itself is pleasant, a little tired, but very clean and the staff are the best!  The dining options were great, we especially loved the Chops Grille specialty restaurant.  Our balcony cabin mid-ship was the perfect location.  They could use more activities during the day and in the evening, but overall, we enjoyed the shows they put on in the Theater and the Centrum areas. 

Roaming around the Baltic Sea is much more interesting than simply parking oneself in St. Petersburg and hitting the museums. It was a good opportunity to see how the countries interrelate. The shore excursions arranged by Royal Caribbean were excellent with very informative guides. If you want to see and do everything in St. Petersburg, however, you should arrange a private tour ahead of time that leaves the ship at 7 am each morning and returns at 11 pm. Royal Caribbean's excursions try to get back to the ship (a 20-minute drive from the city center) by 5:30 pm so that people can change and then go back out for an evening event if desired.

Royal Caribbean apparently leads the industry in Internet service. I measured 3 Mbits down and 2 Mbits up consistently for their Voom service (about $15/day depending on the number of devices connected). This makes it practical to work from the ship using Google Docs, Dropbox, etc. I uploaded about 30 GB of photos and videos using Voom. Streaming from Netflix worked well.

We didn't take any children but the ones that we saw were having a great time exploring the ship and looked only slightly bored on the cultural shore excursions.

Food? If you're trying to kick the bread habit, this is the place to do it. They bake everything from scratch every morning and yet somehow the donuts and croissants didn't work out at all. We stopped eating bread after a few days and consequently didn't gain any weight. Food safety is the #1 priority and we didn't get sick nor hear of anyone who got sick. The price that you pay for perfect safety is that you're not going to get spectacular and unexpected tastes.

Alcohol? I didn't see anyone staggering around drunkenly. People did seem to be enjoying the bars. I refrained from buying the unlimited drinks package and limited myself to one or two glasses of wine per day ($8-14 for regular wine; only about $6 for a Graham's port with dessert, plus 18% gratuity). For any given wine, the prices were comparable to what we would pay at a hotel here in Boston.

I'm not a coffee snob, but the regular drip coffee was pretty week. I guess it is comparable to what would happen if you bought Maxwell House at the supermarket and ran it through a Mr. Coffee. There were some on-board espresso bars (prices similar to a Starbucks) but there didn't seem to be a Dunkin' Donuts equivalent with slightly stronger drip coffee.

Staff are friendly and obviously competent. We never waited in a line for more than about 5 minutes. I.e., they manage to get 2400 passengers plus some crew back on the ship before sailing, putting everyone through a metal detector and all bags through an X-ray, without making people wait. The gym is fantastic with a great view towards the bow from Deck 12. It was never crowded. I got a great haircut for about the same price as I would pay in downtown Boston ($25; thanks, Annie!).

The ship was 13 years old at the time of our sailing and was in perfect condition. I wish these guys would come over and maintain our house.

The on-board entertainers were great. The band, mostly Eastern Europeans, could have played in any Broadway theater. I wished that they had done some longer performances, e.g., a full Broadway show or play instead of one hour of excerpts. The theater itself is an impressive facility that, again, rivals anything you'd find in a big American city. The cinema is kind of weak. It doesn't look like a 4K projector and the lenticular screen impairs resolution.

The itinerary is well-designed. Three days in St. Petersburg is kind of the minimum. Fredericia, Denmark is not a place a typical tourist would go and Royal Caribbean uses it mostly as a launching point for shore excursions, e.g., to LEGOLAND. However, I enjoyed the fact that the folks in this small town were delighted by our visit and turned out as volunteers, to park their classic cars, to dance and play in bands, etc. It was a good reminder of what it would be like to visit on a ship in the 18th century. I would have liked to stop in Poland at least briefly instead of having the "at sea" day from Lithuania to northern Germany. Alternatively I would have preferred to stop in Hamburg instead of a port that is a 3.5-hour bus ride away from Berlin (we did a local shore excursion instead; Warnemunde would be a great town if the weather had been sunny, which it wasn't). Stopping at all three of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania was wonderful and educational.

Our basic oceanview cabin was larger and much more usefully organized and equipped than our hotel room in Paris. That said, given that my mom could do only one activity per day and there aren't a lot of quiet indoor spaces on the ship (no library or reading room, for example), it would have made more sense to get a suite. We spent more time in the room than originally planned.

My mom suffered a minor medical issue at one point and visited the on-board clinic and was favorable impressed.

It was a great experience overall and Royal Caribbean puts together a pretty amazing floating city at a reasonable price.

As mentioned above, overall cruise was good. We did not always liked the lunch food choices - most of them tasted bland and did not look appetizing.  The dinners, on the other hand, were much better.  Almost every day we had very good food and some of the days the taste was excellent.  We also would like to recognize some people that served us.  To begin with, our dining room server Petrovic, Marko and his assistand Ferreira Dias, Ademerson.. the service we received from both was top notch - prompt, accurate, cordial, attentive and just pleasant to deal with.  We also would like to recognize our cabin steward.  Unfortunately we don't remember his name.  We would like to pint point that were were in Cabin 1102 on Deck 10 and maybe this way you will be able to figure out the name of the person.  In addition, we thought the the Entertainment Director were SUPERB - funny, witty , talented, articulate, and overall very pleasant person.  He was a star.  The rest of the crew were very good in making our life on the ship pleasant, organized and easy.  Thank you very much for well run ship. 

A good cruise for those looking to experience the Baltic, detailed visits with enough time in each port to experience the town and people.  We had children ranging from 7-17 and there was rarely a wait for any of the boats amenities.

I would recommend this to friends and family.  I'm glad it was a 3 day stop in St. Petersburg, so we were able to go to Moscow on day 2 In St. Petersburg.

Ports of call were wonderful. Did not do any of the ship excursions. Dinning Room Service was great. I do object to the asking of an additional tip on all signed receipts. We paid daily gratuities, 18.5% and than you make the servicers ask for more.