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Neither are we. BTW: we also were on the Crystal 08/2015 cruise from Amsterdam to NY. What a fabulous cruise that was.

I promise no Doris Day revues. LOL. On one ship they did have a Billy Joel revue and on the other it was Elton John. Both were excellent and my daughter and her roommate (both millennial) who were on one cruise with us loved the Billy Joel revue. And the rest of the entertainment is usually excellent and will span generations somewhat.

Yes and as said used to be if you were in a PH or above (what's now Aquamarine) you had unlimited visits when they has space.

In the long run, I don't believe them not having a casino will hurt them. Viking doesn't have casino's on their ships and they seem to still be very popular.

No because the old PH cabins were quite spacious with no need to jump to a PS.

If they didn't want solo travelers, then they wouldn't have brought back the dance hosts.

Agreed. And correct me if I'm wrong but those in a regular cabin in the past were able to book in the specialties once ever 7 days? Not 11 days?

And our weather here in Fl is more like June weather. Too warm too soon

Yes but no main restaurant. No main theater. No known lecturers or even if there will be lecturers. (However you can take a tour of the ship with the Captain.) No known entertainers. No known classes. Yes I know we don't know if those will be back on NC, but I'm betting some of those will be. Personally we don't book because the ship looks good but because of everything else.

Deck 7 on Crystal for walking is covered. On all the other ships mentioned it is up top in the sun, wind, etc.

I would take SB over SS not only for the reasons stated but we had issues with lots of the crew not being 6 star like Regent, SB and of course OC.

I do know that quite a few of the staff and some of the crew are already onboard the two ships as they're being refurbished.

Stickman there was no Arts Cafe on Whisper which is why our butler made his comment. And our lecturer was one single travel lecturer. Entertainment at least 4 of the nights was a movie and on the other nights was the ensemble which consisted of 4 singers and not even alive band. I agree trivia was excellent and the prizes were better but that still left many hours on sea days. And no classes. No Japanese restaurant and you could get the same meal in the main dining room as in La Dame and save yourself $60 pp

And I know plenty who will not sail SS again

And to us SS was a huge step down. Even the cabin compared to our OC PH wasn’t as good and our butler was useless. Even commenting when i couldn’t get a cookie in the afternoon (we were on Whisper) that on the other ships I could. No offer to go get me one. On OC the butler would have been back with cookies before I finished my sentence. LOL. And don’t get me started about service on the rest of the ship or the lack of entertainment and enrichment

It is also more complicated to compare because of included things like entertainment, lectures and classes. For me, SB and SS don’t compare to OC (we of course have to see what NC brings) and Regent in terms of those three

Absolutely!

Funny because on the Regent Cruise we were just on, they definitely had 2 shows with updated music. However the problem was that so much of it was us saying, "what are they singing?" LOL

The cruises I had post Covid on Crystal and the one I had just last week on Regent did not have staffing issues. Both did an excellent job. However staffing definitely was an issue on both SB and SS. Big difference!

That would be a lot of fun and I'd use it.

I think you spoke too soon. 😄

I hope the food is better on Explora than what I experienced twice on Oceania. I would put their food close to the bottom of my list. Ok maybe HAL is lower.

If that's directed at me, I was on SS in September and would put it second to last of the ship's I'd go on again.

You do realize I hope that the majority of the crew you'll never, ever see? So you could have the same number of crew to pax on 2 different lines, where one line has more crew serving pax versus another line having more people working the ship that you'll never see.

The difference is in a hotel or restaurant, a guest can go outside and smoke. If the whole ship was non-smoking, where could a smoker go? Now having said that, I personally would prefer if the whole ship were non-smoking too.