BrennerM

Love Matt34 and would love to do another cruise with him. I believe is moving to the Royal in September, but how long will he be on that ship? I would so appreciate this info if possible.

 

 

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Matt told us he would be on the Royal until at least May. I don't think he knows his assignment after that yet.

Just got off this ship. Enjoy the cruise. If you get a chance, check out Laura Callaghan, a wonderful Irish guitar player and singer. She was playing somewhere every night, usually either Crooners or Wheelhouse. She was fantastic. Hopefully she's still on board for you. Also Micca (Cruise Director) is lots of fun in the game shows/trivia and Matt34 (entertainment staff - soon to be Cruise Director on the Royal!) is amazing in everything he does.

Just did the Norway cruise on the Caribbean Princess out of Southampton. We are Canadian but the vast majority were Brits, which was fine with us. We enjoy trivia and it was packed because apparently Brits love it too. Our last cruise was Alaska and trivia attendance was anemic.

Anyway, as mentioned by others this ship is a tad worn but still very clean. Occassional sewage smell around the casino area but never in dining or our stateroom.

Our biggest complaint (albeit still fairly minor) would be the anytime dining. They only had 1 full-time restaurant for anytime dining and the other only started serving Anytime diners at 7:30. I presume this is because they had a lot of fixed seating diners so they had to adjust the mix of restaurants. Lineups were always long for anytime dining between 6 and 8. We shared a table most nights which was fine with us because we got to meet a ton of nice people and learn lots about Great Britain. But really it would have been nice to be able to get a table for two more easily. The one night we wanted our own table we held a pager for an hour before we got to the top of the list. Not a huge deal but an annoyance for sure compared to our last cruise which was on Sapphire in Alaska and had two dining rooms fully allocated to Anytime (likely due to a different mix of cruisers).

The entertainment staff was great. Neil (CD), Micca (asst CD), Bailey, Ashleigh, Kimberly, Matt32, Karolina, and Marvin. Occasionally they booked the wrong-sized lounge for a particular event, but usually it worked out OK. We had an inside stateroom and our steward Pinky was fantastic.

I could do without the endless art auctions and constant ads (delivered by endless amounts of tree-killing paper) pimping the Spa and the jewelry stores but those were mostly easy to ignore.

The Norwegian fjords were fantastic! Beautiful scenery and lots of history. As Canadians the cooler weather (highs around 15-20 Celsius) didn't really bother us. We had a couple of really nice days and a couple days with a bit of rain and low-lying clouds which limited visibility, but that is pretty normal for Norway, or so I was told by the Norwegians.

TL;DR: overall a great experience with a few minor hiccups