Jewel of the Seas photos now online

[url="http://community.webshots.com/album/140741580OdzpCX"]Exactly what the subject line says![/url]

thanks so much for the pictures! they are wonderful and Jewel looks gorgeous... only 128 days left for me til I get my first look at her! [img]http://messages.cruisecritic.com/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

jstducky!
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...til 9/04 - Jewel of the Seas - Canada / New England

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...til 7/04 - Zuiderdam - Western Caribbean

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7/03 - Zaandam - Alaska
4/03 - Norweigan Star - Hawaii
7/96 - Noordam - Alaska
7/96 - Golden Princess - Alaska
8/95 - Jubilee - Mexican Riviera

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Hi Globaliser,

thanks for the great pics.
Please tell us mor about the ship and your cruise.
Are you going to see the christening tomorrow?
Three more weeks and I´m almost off. Can hardly wait anymore

First pics of the undocking of the Jewel of the Seas:
[url="http://community.webshots.com/album/125049819TVWuuS"]http://community.webshots.com/album/125049819TVWuuS[/url]

Jewel of the Seas left Meyerwerft Shipyard
See Photos of River Ems passage
[url="http://community.webshots.com/album/131001309cIkOdH"]http://community.webshots.com/album/131001309cIkOdH[/url]
Jewel of the Seas - 05/28/04 Scandinavia / Russia / Baltic
[img]http://escati.linkopp.net/cgi-bin/countdown.cgi?trgb=000000&srgb=00ff00&prgb=00bfff&cdt=2004;05;28;7;20;00&timezone=GMT+0100[/img]

Jewel of the Seas - 09/28/04 Canada / New England
[img]http://escati.linkopp.net/cgi-bin/countdown.cgi?trgb=000000&srgb=00ff00&prgb=00bfff&cdt=2004;09;28;16;00;00&timezone=GMT-0500[/img]


09/2003 - Legend of the Seas Hawaii
06/2003 - Norwegian Dawn Florida and Bahamas
2002 - MS Columbus - Cruise to nowhere
2001 - Grandeur of the Seas Mediterranean and Transatlantic
2000 - Splendour of the Seas Transatlantic
2000 - Viking Star on the Danube River
1999 - Vision of the Seas Panamacanal cruise
1998 - Vision of the Seas Transatlantic
1997 - Crystal Symphonie to Mexican Riviera
1996 - Delta Queen on the Mississippi
1995 - Legend of the Seas to Alaska

Globaliser,

Outstanding photos!!! Thanks so much for posting them. Commentary was also excellent. Will be on her next month. Can't wait!

Monarch of the Seas, Southern Caribbean, 1992
Majesty of the Seas, Western Caribbean, 1993
Vision of the Seas, Mediterranean, 1998
Splendour of the Seas, Mediterranean, 2001
Grandeur of the Seas, Baltic, 2003
Jewel of the Seas, British Isles/Norwegian Fjords, 6/21/2004

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by madforcruising:
Please tell us more about the ship and your cruise.
Are you going to see the christening tomorrow?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>Thank you all for your kind comments about the photos. It's the first time I've asked for the photo shop to let me have a CD as well as the negatives and prints, and it made uploading them very easy. Glad you all like them - but I know that there are many other people's good photos out there as well!

I have been warned off the naming ceremony - I was told that it will be a very closely guarded event. Not even crew family are being allowed anywhere near the ship tomorrow (which I was told will be unusual), and security will be extremely tight. I'm not prepared to risk a work day off for nothing, and have quite enough to do in the office, so I've decided to stay at home. I might have been being spun a yarn, but if all of that turns out not to be true then RCI will have lost a PR opportunity, at least for this potential customer.

The cruise itself was mixed. The ship is absolutely beautiful, as you can see - built, furnished and finished to a very high standard. She has an extraordinary amount of art on board, which is fantastic. However, the atmosphere on board was not welcoming, to say the least.

This may have had something to do with the fact that the ship was full of Norwegians. There's nothing wrong with Norwegians as such. But I think that the fact that English was not their first language (I suspect that fewer than 5% of the passengers were primary English speakers), and the fact that they spent much of their "entertainment" time in the bars and didn't require entertaining by the ship, meant that much of the crew just couldn't be bothered to make any sort of effort. It spoke volumes that my partner and I socialised more with the shop and restaurant staff than anyone else.

Also, there were virtually no organised activities - for the first time in many years, I found myself sitting around wondering what I was going to do with myself for the next couple of hours. But most of all, what was lacking was a sense of shared excitement, of "welcome on board our brand new ship, of which we are so proud", or of "it's so good that you are some of the first to be here".

Overall, it made for a disappointing cruise experience. Maybe my hopes and expectations were set too high; maybe I had fallen into the trap of being too excited beforehand. But as a "taster" cruise (which is what RCI marketing were calling it), with the intention of enticing repeat custom on a proper cruise, this did not do well.

I am still glad to have seen a brand new ship, though - new carpet smell and all.

I'm working on a proper trip report - but this might take a little time.

globaliser:

i am glad to hear that you enjoyed the ship itself and that it was every bit as gorgeous as you and others who have been on it have said.

i am sorry though to hear that the crew and your entertainment/enjoyment factor on the ship wasn't so high.

you are right, i would have thought that being on this brand new ship that the crew would be excited and would be welcoming and greeting everyone. they should have the "welcome and join our celebration of this new ship" feel. i would have been disappointed as well if i were you and felt that way.

you are right, hardly on a cruise ship do you sit and wonder what you are going to do next. most of the time, its the opposite and you are wondering how you can fit in everything you want to do. thats disappointed to hear that there was not much organized activity.

i have a couple of questions for you:

how was the food in the tides dining room? did you try portofino or chops? if you did, how did you like it?

who was the cruise director and what did you think of him/her and their staff?

finally, what nightly entertainment did you have? did you guys see tango buenos aires? if so, what did you think?

thanks again for all your information!

jstducky!
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...til 9/04 - Jewel of the Seas - Canada / New England

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...til 7/04 - Zuiderdam - Western Caribbean

=====================================
7/03 - Zaandam - Alaska
4/03 - Norweigan Star - Hawaii
7/96 - Noordam - Alaska
7/96 - Golden Princess - Alaska
8/95 - Jubilee - Mexican Riviera

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Thanks for the Review. Another vote that confirms the ship as a beauty. I can´t wait until I see her inside. The pics are helping me a lot to fill the wait time over the next three weeks. Your comments on the pics have been very helpful too.
I´m sorry to hear that the overall cruise expierience was not so high as expected.
I think especially these short cruises have been planned to introduce her and they should do their best to present the ship properly.
I´m not searching for an excuse but on the other hand it maybe that the crew is not familliar with the ship so far and still training. It was not too much time from delivery to the first cruises. This is just my try of positive thinking and I hope they get all this fixed during the next three weeks.
Thanks again for the pics and short review.
I´m looking forward to your detailed review.

I´m sure security is very high at the christening and it may be hard to get there so your decision to stay away is the right one for sure.

First pics of the undocking of the Jewel of the Seas:
[url="http://community.webshots.com/album/125049819TVWuuS"]http://community.webshots.com/album/125049819TVWuuS[/url]

Jewel of the Seas left Meyerwerft Shipyard
See Photos of River Ems passage
[url="http://community.webshots.com/album/131001309cIkOdH"]http://community.webshots.com/album/131001309cIkOdH[/url]
Jewel of the Seas - 05/28/04 Scandinavia / Russia / Baltic
[img]http://escati.linkopp.net/cgi-bin/countdown.cgi?trgb=000000&srgb=00ff00&prgb=00bfff&cdt=2004;05;28;7;20;00&timezone=GMT+0100[/img]

Jewel of the Seas - 09/28/04 Canada / New England
[img]http://escati.linkopp.net/cgi-bin/countdown.cgi?trgb=000000&srgb=00ff00&prgb=00bfff&cdt=2004;09;28;16;00;00&timezone=GMT-0500[/img]


09/2003 - Legend of the Seas Hawaii
06/2003 - Norwegian Dawn Florida and Bahamas
2002 - MS Columbus - Cruise to nowhere
2001 - Grandeur of the Seas Mediterranean and Transatlantic
2000 - Splendour of the Seas Transatlantic
2000 - Viking Star on the Danube River
1999 - Vision of the Seas Panamacanal cruise
1998 - Vision of the Seas Transatlantic
1997 - Crystal Symphonie to Mexican Riviera
1996 - Delta Queen on the Mississippi
1995 - Legend of the Seas to Alaska

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by jstducky:
i have a couple of questions for you:
how was the food in the tides dining room? did you try portofino or chops? if you did, how did you like it?
who was the cruise director and what did you think of him/her and their staff?
finally, what nightly entertainment did you have? did you guys see tango buenos aires? if so, what did you think?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>[B]Food[/B]

The only thing that we went into Tides for was breakfast on disembarkation morning, so we can't say anything about that at all.

In part, this was due to a stuff up on RCI's part. Our documents (issued by RCI in the UK) said to go to the dock. However, the dock was not expecting us to check in there, because RCI had actually set up check in at the Plaza hotel next to the central railway station - they were bringing pax to the ship by bus after check in, so theoretically the only thing that people had to do at the dock was to clear security.

As a result, we were issued with a paper boarding pass to get on board, and then guest relations issued extra keys so that we could get into our room and charge drinks (we later found that the shop would have refused to charge to the extra keys). We were told to come back after 6 pm (the ship sailed at 5 pm) to pick up our "proper" cards.

There was nothing in the room to indicate our dinner seating allocation, but our ticket had unequivocally stated second sitting as we had asked for. Expecting therefore to have dinner at 8.30 pm, we went back to guest relations at about 6.45 pm to find that our "proper" cards had our table allocation - in the main sitting, which had of course started at 6 pm.

Guest relations suggested that we just go along to Tides for second sitting and explain what had happened. But we weighed up all the factors and decided not to. We would probably get stuck on some horrendous table in Tides because there was no allocation for us. We had already worked out that virtually nobody was a native English speaker, and so any table companions would be talking amongst themselves in incomprehensible (to us) Norwegian. We had always planned to eat at Portofino on the second, "formal" night - the idea was to take advantage of the smart casual dress code there so we wouldn't have to pack any formal wear - and the whole tipping thing was going to get out of hand if we went for one night out of two. So we went back to the room, picked up the phone and got a table at Chops for 9.15 pm.

The food in both Chops and Portofino was very good. There were some "imperfections" in the service in both places, and the vegetable side dishes in Chops were too small, but one would not baulk at spending $20 in a restaurant ashore for that which was served. (Whether $20 is good value on a ship, on which you've already paid an inclusive fare, is a much more open question.) I would highly recommend both. However, the wine lists need to be watched - the Chops list is a very short one, and does not have anything cheap on it, and the Portofino list is little better. I don't know how they compare to the main wine list, never having seen it. But, basically, dinner for two cost us around $100 a night, each of the two nights.

[B]Cruise Director[/B]

The CD was a lady named Karen, an English lass whose mid-Atlantic accent sounded like it had originated in the Midlands before it went to sea. We were never told her surname, or indeed given the names of any of the officers or staff in any formal way. We heard and saw so little of her - or her staff - that it's impossible to give any view about them. In the end, we only went to one activity (team trivia) which was hosted by DJ Dave.

[B]Entertainment[/B]

The first night, the main show was on ([I]From Hollywood to Broadway[/I]? Or maybe the other direction?). We missed this because we were still in Chops having dinner.

The second night, there was a Scottish headline singer named Brenda Cochrane, who did a solo show backed by the ship orchestra. Her CV (resumé) includes a role in [I]Chicago[/I] (presumably in London) and a show at "the Edinburgh Festival" - that last bit was obviously thrown in to the spiel by someone who thought that most people wouldn't understand just how easy is to put on a show at the Fringe, and that that fact itself says nothing about your talent. In fact, she was good, but not outstanding - she had intonation problems in some parts of the songs that she sang. But it must have been very difficult trying to perform to a theatre with less than 20% occupancy. (All the Norwegians were in the bars.)

The only other entertainment that we really saw was the pianist, Ben Robert, who was working in the Schooner Bar. By the time we got there his voice was giving out, but that just gave the assembled throng a chance to do some impromptu singalongs and karaoke (yes, we took part in that too). That was fun, although it didn't seem like what he was expecting.

We did poke our heads into Vortex, the disco, both nights. But the music was pretty awful (metallic techno stuff for the most part) and the room is too bright for a disco.

[B]NB[/B] - The whinge about the boarding procedure, in answer to the question about food, omits one important fact. The ship worked very hard (as did the airline) to get my luggage to me. It had been left behind in London (although my partner's was properly loaded), and the next flight to Oslo was scheduled to arrive only 50 minutes before the ship sailed. It was always going to be a close-run thing, and the bag did in fact literally miss the boat. But RCI managed to get the bag brought out to the ship on the pilot boat, so I didn't have to spend a lot of money in the shop after all. That was an excellent piece of work on the part of all the departments that worked on the problem - it was the most impressive thing about the entire weekend other than the ship herself.

Globaliser,

great photos! They brought back nice memories.

I'm sorry to hear that you didn't have a great time aboard.

On our cruise, from Hamburg to Oslo, it felt as if the crew was very proud of the ship and everyone was very friendly. We had some nice talks with bar tenders, cleaners and waiters.

Also the technical guys in the theater were eager to show their stuff.

By the way, the show was called "From Westend to Broadway"... :-)

Marc Benz
Switzerland

Next cruises:

Yangtze River cruise: June 2004

Transatlantic Prinsendam, Lisbon-Ft. Lauderdale: 11/09/04

Previous cruises:
Ecstasy, Bahamas, 1996
Ecstasy, Bahamas, 1997
Jubilee, Baja California, 1998
Carnival Destiny, Western Caribbean, 1999
Carnival Destiny, Eastern Carribbean, 1999
Maasdam, Mediterranean, 2000
Carnival Spirit, Alaska southbound, 2001
European Vision, Mediterranean, 2001
Voyager of the Seas, Western Carribean, 2001/2002
Funchal, Baltic, 2002
Enchantment of the Seas, Western Caribbean, 2002/2003
Brilliance of the Seas, Eastern Mediterranean, 2003
Adventure of the Seas, Southern Caribbean, 2003
Inaugral Jewel of the Seas, Hamburg-Oslo, 2004

Globaliser,

Your pictures are fantastic! I especially like the way you showed the different lighting effects in the Centrum. My next favorite pictures are of the lion lounging by the pool and the flamingos in the elevator shaft. So cute! I am so excited about our cruise on the Jewel, coming up in just 46 days! Thanks again.

[img]http://www.thepreismans.com/carolpaint.gif[/img]


See our reviews and pictures at [url="http://www.thepreismans.com/"]Mike and Carol's Website[/url]

Costa Classica 3/94
Celebrity Mercury 4/98
Carnival Destiny 4/99
Crown Princess 7/01
Norwegian Star 11/01
Grand Princess 12/01
Sun Princess 3/02
Celebrity Constellation 11/02
Brilliance of the Seas 6/03
Navigator of the Seas 11/03
Jewel of the Seas 06/04
Tahitian Princess 02/05

Hi Globaliser,
Many thanks for your excellent pics. We have less than 48 hours to go before we go on board, so seeing them has made us even more excited.
There are seven pages to the "are you joining us" thread for this trip and it currently looks like a mixed UK/US crowd are going to celebrate her maiden voyage in some style. Re the Norwegians, I believe that part of the problem with some northern European countries is that their booze costs so much at home that unbelievable as it seems, shipboard prices seem so cheap to them so they go for it. Just think, if RCCI charged these folk the same price for booze as they are paying ashore, they would make so much extra that they could afford to reduce their prices for our trip !!! Just dreaming !!

Keep on Cruising
from
Oldsilverfox.

Great pictures Globaliser! Thank you for helping us hang in there for next month's cruise on the Jewel.

Mike


See our reviews and pictures at [url="http://www.thepreismans.com/"]Mike and Carol's Website[/url]

Costa Classica 3/94
Celebrity Mercury 4/98
Carnival Destiny 4/99
Crown Princess 7/01
Norwegian Star 11/01
Grand Princess 12/01
Sun Princess 3/02
Celebrity Constellation 11/02
Brilliance of the Seas 6/03
Navigator of the Seas 11/03
Jewel of the Seas 06/04
Tahitian Princess 02/05

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by CAPinBoynton:
My next favorite pictures are of the lion lounging by the pool and the flamingos in the elevator shaft.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>A lion? I went back to have a good look at the prints this evening, and I think you're right. I was just completely convinced that it had to be a tiger because it's a Thai-themed solarium. You don't get lions in Asia, just like you don't get tigers in Africa! But I suppose that geographical accuracy was rarely called for from artists ...

[url="http://community.webshots.com/album/140741580OdzpCX"]Now added - the daily planners for the two days that we received them.[/url]

Thanks so much for the beautiful shots. The ship is truly awesome...

[img]http://escati.linkopp.net/cgi-bin/countdown.cgi?trgb=000000&srgb=00ff00&prgb=ff0000&cdt=2004;11;6;17;00;00&timezone=GMT-0500[/img]
Until Jewel of The Seas<BR


Sensation 3/99
Majesty of The Seas 12/03

Globaliser,

I´m so with you when it comes to our fellow passengers. Not the typical cruisefolks... Alcohol and Bartime...

Well, they will catch up...

Fredrik

[img]http://escati.linkopp.net/cgi-bin/countdown.cgi?trgb=000000&srgb=00ff00&prgb=111111&cdt=2004;07;01;17;00;00&timezone=GMT+0100[/img]
Brilliance of the Seas West Med
[img]http://escati.linkopp.net/cgi-bin/countdown.cgi?trgb=000000&srgb=00ff00&prgb=191970&cdt=2004;10;18;17;0;00&timezone=GMT-0800[/img]
Serenade of the Seas Panamacrossing


So far:
Jewel of the Seas Oslo May 2004
Splendour of the Seas Med Oct 2003
Navigator of the Seas East C. Jul 2003

Globaliser. I´ll post my review here aswell.
I guess you agree with most of my impressions...
Too bad we didn´t meet up on the ship.

Fredrik

////
WOW, is really the word I want to start off this review with. The wowfactor is everywhere on the Jewel. Having sailed twice with RCCL on the Navigator and the Splendour this was the first time on a Radiance class ship and I now realize why Radiance is such a favourite on the board. It´s just the best of two worlds. Lots of things to do like the Eagle Class, but with much more glass like Vision.

We booked this short cruise a couple of months ago and people have been bugging me since that we chose a trip going roundtrip Oslo-Oslo and basically just drifting somewhere in the Ocean not going ashore for two nights. Even though I love port days and all it has to offer, seadays can be great too and especially on a brand new ship. Not all passengers where too content about this fact... Heard a lot of complaints that it was "boring" and a week would be like death... I guess Scandinavians aren´t really that used to the entire cruise experience. Most people in Scandinavia take short partycruises that only last a night, and then you´re off to sober up Well let me say it this way, a lot of people were trying to sober up on the second cruiseday. Vodka is the preferred drink and at a fraction of the cost onboard people could not stay away. a couple of large companies (Cisco among others....) had bought large ammounts of staterooms and something tells me that had open bars at some times.

Well. The entire check-in was a pain and some people waited more than three hours just getting on the ship. Fortunately for us we were first in line, got on the first bus from the Hotel and on the ship just after the eleven. The ship felt deserted for a long time and we had time to both explore and relax in the Solarium. (Since a large part of the fullybooked cruise were at the bars at all times there were plenty of deckchairs everywhere, and especially in the Solarium).

Compared to our other sailings the Cruisecompass was a little thin not even mentioning the captains name, or any other for that matter. First nights show was WestEnd to Broadway and the show was good, but the performers were great. Sure had voices and it looked liked they performed this to perfection. The second night was a Brenda Cochrane who has appeared in Chicago on the WestEnd. Her medley of Piafsongs gave me gooosebumps. So far the best performance I´ve seen on a ship. She got standing ovations after the show and she deserved it. The cruisedirector is a totally different story. I can´t even remember her name and I don´t know if she covered for someone or something but she didn´t feel all that comfortable on stage. Very few people attended the shows, they were held up... You guessed it.... In the bars....

First night was casual and second was formal. We had brought the tuxedos we bought a couple of weeks ago, and it was nice to see quite a few people dressed up. We had perfect service in the diningroom. The first night we were the only ones at a table for twelve.... Second night we were joined by two guys from Norway. Something that definately added to the diningexperience was that we had the same assistant waiter that we had on our first cruise nine months ago. We had no idea his contract was up and that he changed to Jewel. It was so nice to see him again and we talked a lot more to him than our waiter. (They had a total of eight guests to take care of so you guess the servicelevel....) The menu was same as usual. Formal night was captains dinner so steak, no lobster for us.... We only dine in the maindiningroom for dinner. Windjammer is just too good for breakfast and lunch. Breakfast is usually up until eleven, but people slept in and kept coming well after noon for breakfast.

The cruised ended way to soon and I can´t wait until Brilliance in two months time. We´re forced to change our reservation that we have for Serenade this October and Jewel is on the top of our list right now. If you have any questions or comments, feel free....

Fredrik

[img]http://escati.linkopp.net/cgi-bin/countdown.cgi?trgb=000000&srgb=00ff00&prgb=111111&cdt=2004;07;01;17;00;00&timezone=GMT+0100[/img]
Brilliance of the Seas West Med
[img]http://escati.linkopp.net/cgi-bin/countdown.cgi?trgb=000000&srgb=00ff00&prgb=191970&cdt=2004;10;18;17;0;00&timezone=GMT-0800[/img]
Serenade of the Seas Panamacrossing


So far:
Jewel of the Seas Oslo May 2004
Splendour of the Seas Med Oct 2003
Navigator of the Seas East C. Jul 2003

Well, it looks like [B]Fredrik[/B] and I may not have been the only people who were less than entirely pleased with this cruise. From [url="http://www.aftenposten.no/english/business/article786372.ece"]Norway's [I]Aftenposten[/I][/url]:-<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>[img]http://www.aftenposten.no/template/ver1-0/gfx/english/aftenpostenhode1.gif[/img]
[img]http://www.aftenposten.no/template/ver1-0/gfx/english/aftenpostenhode2h.gif[/img]

[B]Cruise leaves guests with big hangover[/B]

[B]More than 1,400 guests from Norway's finance, shipping and travel industries were in for a nasty shock when they docked back in Oslo after a promotional cruise on board Royal Caribbean's newest ship, [I]Jewel of the Seas[/I]. Waiting on the pier were angry customs officers.[/B]

<UL TYPE=SQUARE><LI>[img]http://www.aftenposten.no/multimedia/archive/00193/Jewel_of_the_Seas___193241h.jpg[/img]
<LI>[B]Every party has a pooper[/B], and in this case, it was the customs check that threw cold water on a promotional cruise aboard the new [I]Jewel of the Seas[/I], shown here on arrival in Oslo last week.
<LI>PHOTO: KNUT SNARE[/list]

Royal Caribbean Cruises, it seems, had opened its tax-free shop and let its guests party the night away in the vessel's casino and the bars. According to newspaper [I]Dagens Næringsliv[/I], that broke Norway's strict local laws governing the high taxes levied on tobacco and alcohol.

Tax-free goods, according to the law, can only be brought into Norway if the traveler has been out of the country for at least 24 hours. In this case, the cruiseship never left Norwegian waters, and wasn't away for the required 24-hour period.

That means Royal Caribbean had no right to sell a carton of cigarettes for around NOK 70 (USD 10) or a bottle of whiskey for around NOK 100. When guests came strolling off the vessel, customs officers were ready to pounce, reportedly demanding another NOK 420 in taxes on the cigarettes and NOK 260 in tax for every liter of liquor.

There weren't nearly enough customs officials, however, to handle the crowd of guests, so only some got caught. They collectively had to pay around NOK 18,000 in extra taxes, while customs officials confiscated around 2,000 cigarettes and 25 bottles of booze.

"We couldn't believe that the shipowner would do this," fumed Oddvar Saether of the Oslo Customs District to [I]Dagens Næringsliv[/I]. "Someone here has made a huge mistake, and we'll call the shipowner in for a meeting to find out what really happened."

Magnus Wrahme of Royal Caribbean's Nordic operation wouldn't comment, other than to say he would talk with the customs officials. Nor would he comment on reports that Royal Caribbean would reimburse its guests for any customs duties they were forced to pay.

He called the promotional cruise "an investment in the future." The event is estimated to have cost the cruise line, partially owned by the Anders Wilhelmsen group of Oslo, as much as NOK 5 million -- before tax.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>Now this surprises me, because we had spent the day dynamically positioning off Skagen, at the very northern tip of Denmark. I had assumed that Skagen was our technical "port of call" outside Norway's tax and duty zone, done to allow the ship to sell duty free goods. I've had this on a number of cruises to nowhere from Southampton, where a technical 20-minute call is usually made at Guernsey (while everyone is still asleep) for this very reason.

I think the paper is refering to the nonpaying pax taking the short cruise on the 30th of April. They just sailed around Oslo. I didn´t see any customofficial taking bottles away on the 3rd of May. We were out of Norwegian waters for more than 24 hours. Anyway, the rules are crazy and when a former swedish minister said that Norway was the last Stalinisstic government he wasn´t only a bit rude to our neighbours in the west, he was also right...

[img]http://messages.cruisecritic.com/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img] Fredrik

[img]http://escati.linkopp.net/cgi-bin/countdown.cgi?trgb=000000&srgb=00ff00&prgb=111111&cdt=2004;07;01;17;00;00&timezone=GMT+0100[/img]
Brilliance of the Seas West Med
[img]http://escati.linkopp.net/cgi-bin/countdown.cgi?trgb=000000&srgb=00ff00&prgb=191970&cdt=2004;10;18;17;0;00&timezone=GMT-0800[/img]
Serenade of the Seas Panamacrossing


So far:
Jewel of the Seas Oslo May 2004
Splendour of the Seas Med Oct 2003
Navigator of the Seas East C. Jul 2003

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Fredrik:
I think the paper is refering to the nonpaying pax taking the short cruise on the 30th of April. They just sailed around Oslo. I didn´t see any customofficial taking bottles away on the 3rd of May. We were out of Norwegian waters for more than 24 hours.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>Ah, that makes more sense. I didn't know that the ship had done a one-night cruise that night until I looked at the photo series from the other Norwegian website.

[url="http://messages.cruisecritic.com/2/OpenTopic?a=tpc&s=927093444&f=408097554&m=680104481&r=849105481#849105481"][B]KenC[/B]'s post[/url] and [url="http://community.webshots.com/album/141902872tRrVPX"]his pictures[/url] remind me to say three things.

First, I've added one shot (a daytime shot of the Centrum, photo number 17A) to [url="http://community.webshots.com/album/140741580OdzpCX"]my own offering[/url].

Also, if anyone would like a high res version of any of the images I've posted (they range between about 0.5 and 1.1 MB in size), please feel free to e-mail me - tell me which you'd like (for your personal and non-commercial use only, of course). Use my handle, at aol dot com.

Finally, I'm still trying to find time to write a report/review.

[This message was edited by Globaliser on 05-11-04 at 02:02 PM.]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Globaliser:
Finally, I'm still trying to find time to write a report/review.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>Well, [url="http://messages.cruisecritic.com/2/OpenTopic?a=tpc&s=927093444&f=069097554&m=904107102"]here it is[/url] at last.

Global, thanks for the beautiful pictures.

One question--do you happen to have the Compass, Day 1, Page 1? Not skinnier copy, the full 8X10 page.

Let me know okay? thanks..

*Stacy* View My Majesty OTS Pictures and Cruise Compasses @:

[url="http://community.webshots.com/album/67722635CJvUvZ"]http://community.webshots.com/album/67722635CJvUvZ[/url]

M/S MAJESTY OF THE SEAS, 18 TIMES!
Next Majesty Cruise...Back-to-Back June 18th & June 21st, 2004

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by LuckiStac13*Majesty*:
One question--do you happen to have the Compass, Day 1, Page 1? Not skinnier copy, the full 8X10 page.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>The only bits of the Compass that I've got are the two sides of each of the two daily planners. The other, "front", half never made it off the ship with us. So I'm afraid those four scanned images are all that I've got from them. Sorry!