LEGEND March 20-30,2015 REVIEW w/lots of photos

Wonderful review and pics!! Thanks for sharing!! So glad you had a great time!!

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Very nice review and excellent pictures. Did you happen to capture pictures of the CL & DL on your pictorial walk through?

Fantastic review with pictures.

Very nice review and excellent pictures. Did you happen to capture pictures of the CL & DL on your pictorial walk through?

Thank you Beachin and Susie for your kind words. I do have pics of the CL later in the review but not the DL... they are exactly the same but a mirror image of each other up on deck 9. Stay tuned, I"ll get there :)

Wonderful review and pics!! Thanks for sharing!! So glad you had a great time!!

Hey hey Debbie!!! Thx to you too. Only 5 months to go before we're on Radiance! I bet you can't wait :D... I've been back to reality for a week and I'm already counting the months :eek:

Excellent review!!

I was also on this cruise and am really enjoying your pictures from your point of view - and found myself on one of your photos. :)

I agree with your thoughts on this sailing. Paul Rutter was a great fit for this type of cruise. The cruise staff was wonderful and very visible, and they sure tried hard to get things going out on the pool deck. The ship was in great shape, considering it's age, and I really enjoyed the friendly atmosphere on board.

Again, wonderful review. Looking forward to more.

Let me start off by saying that I was really interested in seeing how I felt throughout this cruise having just come off an extremely memorable Quantum sailing. I truly hope Merion_Mom sees this review as well and chimes in the odd time as she sailed Legend a couple of days after getting off of Quantum, and then got back and Quantum a month'ish later again... so the contrast/comparisons are very vivid and likely some different views being a more experienced cruiser than me.

Thank you for bringing back the memories of the Legend. For another perspective of the Legend - Quantum comparison here's my review of the two separated by about 6 weeks. http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2127438

One of my reasons to do this cruise was the ability to see 2 Caribbean ports I had never been to: Tortola & Dominica. I had been following for sometime the new construction/expansion of the Tortola Pier, and knew that several ships (including Jewel OTS) were being re-deployed to St. Thomas instead. The Legend itinerary held fast for months, and I was super hopeful that we would stay with the Tortola itinerary (especially since their were a couple of other ships due there) but alas, we were given notice a couple of months out that St Thomas would be our port of call instead. Funny enough, with the many sailings I've done in the Caribbean and the amount of ships that visit there, I hadn't been to St Thomas for years so all was good.

I set my alarm to get up early as I always enjoy watching sail-in to ports. I believe I woke up on my own just before the 7am wake-up... documentation said 8am arrival so I figured this was perfect. Turns out that Capt Nordmo was pulling up to the pier about an hour early as the ropes were already being tied down. The announcement that the ship was clear was also much earlier (about 7:30am from what I recall). This became regular routine for Capt Nordmo as we arrived early every morning to each port on this cruise. Here we are moored at "Havensite" pier with the NCL Pearl docked behind us.

Today was going to be an easy day for us.... a little bit of walking around & shopping in the morning with a 1/2 day snorkel on a "Pirate" Boat to Turtle Bay... note the fine print on th RCI excursion "subject to boat availability". Anyhow, heading off the gangway we had planned on just walking around the Havensite Mall, but at 8:30am everything was shut down. We decided to get on one of the "open air bus shuttles" right at the gangway to go downtown... somewhat of a mistake. Being walkers, we would've had a super nice walk along the boardwalk to town in about 20-25 minutes, but this bus waited.... and waited.... and then waited some more to leave until jam packed (to maximize the fares). I should've known, never do that again. Nonetheless we were downtown in about 20-25 min once jumping on the bus (so same time as if we walked, no biggie).

Most of the flee market type booths were open as was main street and the ton of jewelry stores. I also shot some nice views across the bay of the ship. The main streets were soon bustling with cruisers.

We took a private taxi back to the ship for the same price per person as the very inconvenient open air bus, and the taxi got us there in half the time with

much more comfort. Before stepping back onto the Legend I was able to snap a couple of great shots of her from the aft view looking up at our cabin, and then also of the NCL Pearl behind us.

Back to our cabin we went to get ready for our afternoon excursion, and we were surprised by seeing RCL maintenance staff on our balcony. Also on our bed was a paper saying that they'd be cleaning the balconies... our stateroom attendant was in the hallways at the time and apologized for not having that paper there last night. Just a heads up... my white swim gear and shirt got smudged with black gunk on the first sea day out there, and I figured out quickly it was soot.

I've read many times on CC regarding soot on aft cabins. In fact, I had brought pool towels down and laid them on the chairs on 1st sea day.... when the room was made up the next, towels were gone. I asked our stateroom attendant right there if that's the case regarding soot and he said yes, normally they clean the cabins on turnaround day but that didn't get done this time.... makes sense because of that Coastguard inspection on embarkation day. What a big difference the pressure wash made for the rest of the cruise. The soot did not return so perhaps wind direction, etc, causes issues. I do know the previous sailing had awful weather and a couple of days of bad sea conditions, so that could've brought on some soot on the balconies.

As mentioned, today's half day afternoon excursion was an RCL excursion: Turtle Bay Sail & Snorkel Adventure - ST97. This was really well run. Gathering for the excursion was super simple right on the pier, and the schooner was moored right around the corner of the pier in front of Legend, so maybe a 5min walk from the gangway. The schooner was beautifully kept and we had a great day on the water. Here's a few shots of Legend as we departed.

The schooner was great, with plenty of aft as well as forward seating. I loved sitting forward and off to the side with my feet hanging over the edge. I took some really cool pictures of the boat... the Capt. has been sailing since he was a kid and has captained all over the world most recently coming from Hawaii, "living the dream" as he says doing what he loves to do. All in all, a great sail out to Turtle Bay

Arriving at Turtle Bay in about 45 minutes, the snorkel gear was handed out and we were given a 20 minute'ish snorkel tour with one of the staff. There were only a couple of turtles around us.... if you wish to see what 20-30 turtles all around you look like, take a look at my Quantum review in Barbados, simply awesome! "Turtle Bay" was a disappointment considering the name of the Bay.

The reef/bottom was also somewhat barren so the snorkeling here wasn't the best I've ever experienced in the Caribbean... if snorkelling is a high priority for you as far as seeing a large amount of colours, reef and fish, this is not the excursion for you. Just wait until you see pics of Dominica's Champagne Reef Day 6 and you'll understand better

I was lucky enough to follow around a stingray for a little while as well a a school of small squid. We got over an hour in the water so it was a decent amount to actually pay attention to the turtles and really watch them in their habitat, how they come up for air and feed at the bottom.

The journey back was great.... they cut the motors and opened up the sails for a while. We did sail for a short time but the wind was just not enough to

really keep us going and get us back to port in time, so they had to bring the sails back down and motor us in.

In the meantime a really mean rum-punch was served.... holy cow Batman!!!! Now that's strong rum!.... and in the pirate spirit we were all given the honour if the pirate tattoo to commemorate our sailing.

While starting this excursion, the Carnival Sunshine was just coming in to port and is now parked behind the NCL Pearl, and I took this photo now coming back to port with the 3 ships all lined up.

Goodbye "Silent Lady"! Thank you for this awesome day

Sailaway happened pretty quick once we got on the ship. And the Pearl was preparing to depart as well. As a side note, the Pearl had a supremely awesome welcome back going on at the pier, with many officers and staff hanging out, music going (ie. LMFAO "Tonight's Going to be a Good Night", Pherrell's "Happy", etc). The officers at times made a line, holding hands across from each other and return cruisers would go under/through. Many cruisers would hang out down there and watch the fun and join in. Very very cool as I watched this from my balcony.

Soon enough, and after Pearl set off, we set off as well leaving the Carnival Sunshine behind as they had arrived late for the day.

Dinner tonight was the Windjammer, as we had no plans and wanted to enjoy dinner without dressing up for MTD or specialty. This would be our only WJ dinner as we were unimpressed. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't all that great either. Unlike the breakfast and lunches throughout the cruise, this dinner was easily the worst meal at WJ on this cruise. It was a Caribbean themed night with jerk Chicken, oxtail, and other Caribbean dishes. Too bad, turned us off of WJ for dinner as we thought we'd try more than one night at WJ considering how much we liked breakfast and lunch variety thus far.

Keeping with my "laid back" theme this cruise, I barely took any photos tonight....wow!! For me that's huge, so I believe only 1 photo the whole night. We did our standard show.... Tonight was a Headliner and I forget this guy's name but I have seen him before.

He started out very slowly and the crowd was not overly responsive, but the show ended on a great high note as he really revived the crowd with some excellent comedy and involving two volunteers, a great sign of a good entertainer. Again tonight the nightlife was not to be desired after the show with not a whole lot going on late into the evening, for the most part we were in bed around 11'ish, and again we did just that in order to be ready for a great day in St. Kitts tomorrow.

I was a little more ahead of the game this morning with regard to sail-in... I had groggingly awoke just before 7am, and thus before the alarm. Instead of staying in bed to wait for the 7am alarm, I got up and headed up to top deck to see how early (or not) we were for sail-in to St Kitts, and guess what? So I up to top deck I went, and just in time to take this first picture as we were pulling into port. As mentioned, Capt Nordmo was always early!

Pulling in beside us at exactly the same time was the Thompson Celebration, years ago used to be HAL's MS Noordam. For those of you keeping track, this is the company that Splendour of the Seas has been sold to so it'll be interesting to see if they rename Splendour. Interesting to get a good close up look at some of the older ships, and to truly see how far the newer ships have gone.

We were looking forward to another perfect day in paradise today with hot & sunny weather. Today's excursion was a full day sail, snorkel and beach break to Nevis. I booked this privately on BlueWaterSafari's website. Initially on the website it did not show availability for this specific date, but I emailed them direct and they let me know that in fact it was available.

There were no other cruisers on this excursion as it seems I was the only one to find them on-line to book. All the others on board were from the local hotels, with a majority from the Marriott on Frigate's Bay. Had a great time meeting new people and discussing their vacation on land in St. Kitts compared to being here only for the day on the cruise ship. BlueWater was super easy to find as the pier has only one exit point and one of their reps were there waiting for me sign in hand. It was a 2 block walk over to the marina and we waited there a short 10-15 min for 2 buses to arrive with the various hotel guests.

Pulling out of the marina, most everyone was already making themselves extremely comfortable on the catamaran, and thankfully it was not full capacity as this vessel can hold about 100 persons. This company provided a full open bar the entire trip morning through to afternoon with unlimited beers, rum-punch, water and soda. Here I was able to snap some great shots of Legend in port as we crossed behind her heading off to our first stop, a snorkel site at the farthest southern tip of the island...

We had a superb sail down the coastline, passing by Carambola Beach Club (where I had spent an afternoon just this past December from Quantum) and Shipwreck Beach. The sails were opened up as there was some wind, but I believe we were power assisted most (if not all) of the way. The trip over to the snorkel site would be about 45-50 minutes, then another 20-30 minutes over to Nevis. The full trip back to the ship would about 1 hour 15 minutes.

We also passed by the luxury Seabourn Seadream II as she was doing some tendering over to the beach. I thought this was an odd spot for her to be tendering, but I guess perfectly arranged for her passengers who simply want a beach experience. I would guess it would be easy for them to bring in a bus or two to provide a land excursion if needed right from the Beach Club as I think there's only a little under 300 passengers on this ship.

Soon enough we lost site of Nevis in the distance as we hugged the coastline a little bit, and we came across this shipwreck in the distance. I thought to myself how cool it would be to snorkel at this site in order to check out this wreck... and sure enough we began slowing down, the staff pulled the sails and we entered the bay finding the buoys in order to tie up.

I just looked up that bay that we stopped at to snorkel on google map and, no joke, the name of the bay is "Sh!tten Bay"!!! Amazingly enough when you pull up Sh!tten Bay on google earth and drill down, you can easily see the shipwreck there on the beach and the two catamarans in the exact same position as the two catamarans we had sailed this day. For Google Earth's frame of reference, the catamaran I was on was the farthest away from the shipwreck.

We stopped for a 45 minute snorkel. Of course after asking the staff about the shipwreck, they didn't recommend swimming out there as there's not enough time. They also mentioned it may not be so bad heading there, but coming back could be a problem with being tired against any currents.

I went for it! Couldn't resist... Took about 10 min there, another 10 min to hang around and then 10 minutes back at full speed. Very cool to be that close to such a large wreck. However it was a great disappointment that there was very little animal life in the water... I thought this site would be teeming with fish, not the case at all. But I got some phenomenal shots of the wreck

Also had a good 10-15 minutes to snorkel around and check out all the great fish and reef at this site under the catamaran. The staff through some bread to the water which really got the fish excited as they gathered to feed. This was a great break out of the full hot sun, and an excellent snorkel/workout break.

Snorkeling done, the staff had prepared an on board bbq of chicken, rice, colslaw and a slice of rum cake. They also had a bottle of Caribbean hot sauce on board made with Scotch of all things, one of the staff told me it was for real Caribbean's only! So you know I just had to try it lol. Almost burned my face off!!!... and I love hot food. All you needed was the slightest dab at the tip of your fork and that was more than enough, wish I had taken a pic of the bottle. It was a great lunch, and washed down perfectly with a couple of excellent cold Caribe beers. Soon after we were off to Nevis, arriving at Pinney's Beach, right beside the somewhat famous (celebrities have stayed here) Four Season's Nevis Resort. Also at this beach is a somewhat famous restaurant/bar called "Sunshines" which has many excellent reviews.

We used this opportunity to chill out and get some beachtime. We walked over to get a look at the Four Seasons and watch 7/8 pelicans diving into the ocean to feed. We used this time to beachcomb for shells and swim in the clear blue Caribbean Sea.

It was here we met a lady in her 50's, a retired teacher with 3 beachdogs following her around. She's a retired teacher from Conneticut (I thought of Merion_Mom here lol!) and lives here on Nevis 6 months of the year, renting a 1 bed suite in the old Penney Hotel at the other end of the beach for ... get this ... $200 per month! She tells me she wakes up every morning and has coffee admiring the beach on her patio, living the dream I tell ya!!!! Great lady, we talked about her adoption of the dogs and we played with them too. She was out snorkeling for shells and was looking through the shells Lisa had collected. As we were about to get back to the boat, she gave Lisa a rare baby Conch (spelling?) she had pulled out of the water earlier that was a specific species I just can't remember the name, and now it's displayed proudly on top of Lisa's tallboy dresser. This afternoon was a great memory, but we were loading up to get back, so off we went

The wind was really non-existent on the way back, and considering they had to get us back for 4:30 all-aboard, they didn't bother with the sails. The ride back was quiet with many of the passengers laying around on the nets and lounge areas with eyes closed, or sitting about with rum punch in hand. Overall this was a great day and excellent way to spend the day in St Kitts... I enjoyed this day much more than the day I had off of Quantum with Gray's Tours

Thank you BlueWater for an excellent day! They dropped us off as promised at exactly 4:15pm, and we headed down the street to the port entrance... there was barely anyone around! We were definitely one of the last to get back to the ship

And here is the exact spot I stood less than 5 months ago when I shot an amazing sunset, as well as the Jewel leaving port while on my Quantum sailing. This spot also provided a great shot of Legend.

As we walked towards the gangway, RCL staff was pulling back the water station, towel station, etc in order to prepare to get going, but surprise surprise.... they had cold face towels waiting for all cruisers returning to the ship

Dropping off our stuff in our cabin, it was 4:35 and I could hear Capt Nordmo on the speaker system with his usual address just before pulling away that all guests were accounted for and that we were heading off, so I quickly headed up to top deck to watch sailaway

I saw something new today... quite funny. As Legend departed Capt Nordmo blew her horns, Thomson replied and that went back and forth a couple of times. But then I noticed down below on the bow a few of the RCL workers with the big red hand waving up at the Thomson... and the Thomson officers waving back from their bridge lol!

And finally we were off... backing out into the Caribbean sea and turning south facing Nevis in the distance in order to head to our next port of call Rouseau Dominica

Tonight's dinner was set for Izumi's at 6pm. We left sailaway and got ready for dinner, enjoying the view from our cabin as we sailed away from the port... just gorgeous!

From 6 to approx 7:30, there were a total of 4 tables at Izumi's... totally underutilized. As mentioned before, the view up there as we continued to sail with the sunset and dimming skyline was phenominal. Really a shame they designed Izumi at this part of the Viking Crown. I'll give the food a 7.... I'm spoiled... I have amazing Sushi in my home town so maybe that's not overly fair. I think for those of you who do not have plenty/ of sushi options, I think Izumi's would be great, especially for a change and to enjoy the view. The signature hot rock and Creamy lobster rolls were really good.

If I remember right (maybe I should've taken pics of the Compasses after all), tonight was a Headliner some of you may know very well: the well known pianist Ray Finkel on this night, and I had seen him before... too bad this wasn't his best performance imho as I was totally floored by how good he was on previous sailings. I'll give him bigtime credit as he tried to modernize his show a bit by doing the song "Happy" with members of the Orchestra rapping the lyrics, but it didn't work out too well imo. I heard many rave reviews so other cruises really liked this performance more than me.

Tomorrow is a day I was really looking forward to and it didn't disappoint as my favorite port of call on this trip, Rouseau! Stay tuned

Love your review, thanks for sharing

Pulling in beside us at exactly the same time was the Thompson Celebration, years ago used to be HAL's MS Noordam. Interesting to get a good close up look at some of the older ships, and to truly see how far the newer ships have gone.

 

Oh the humanity, how did people ever survive on cruises in those days with so few balconies!

Thanks again for this review. 5 days before I am on her.

Did they have a good amount of free weights available in the gym?

Thanks again for this review. 5 days before I am on her.

 

Did they have a good amount of free weights available in the gym?

Hey kandj05. Gym is pretty small in terms of all the other ships, and so is the free weight area... can really have one person using the free weights at any one time. 5th post down on this previous post http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?p=46143046&highlight=gym#post46143046

Here's a clearer picture

Love your review, thanks for sharing

Thank you, you're welcome :)

Oh the humanity, how did people ever survive on cruises in those days with so few balconies!

Lol!! Yes, the only balconies this ship had were forward, just above the bridge deck. The only pic I have of decent quality is the one below... you can see 2 of the balconies just above the lifeboat. There were only 10 balconies, so I assume another 10 on the other side.... that's it!! Splendour will fix that problem for this cruise line, I suspect she'll be a very popular addition

What a lovely day at Nevis....made me feel like I was right there with you. Thx so much.

Can't wait to see Legend.