Our Surf and Turf Honeymoon Mediterranean Cruise on the Rhapsody of the Seas!

We are back from our maiden voyage on the Rhapsody of the Seas from Venice to Barcelona! There is so much to talk about I am going to break this into two parts to review – The Rhapsody as a ship first, and then the ports of call. This review will be thorough and detailed, as those are qualities I appreciate in trip reports, especially since while planning our trip detailed reports about the Rhapsody were hard to come by. There will also be as many pictures as I can squeeze in.

Here’s the TL;DR version:

This was our honeymoon and first cruise ever and we loved it. Food was excellent, service outstanding, entertainment was “meh” to only ok, and the ports were fantastic. We are totally hooked on cruising and planning our next one on the Anthem for some time in 2019, although we would never hesitate to book any sailing on the Rhapsody again.

Ok, and now onto the longer stuff! I am going to review the ship first. Since there are so many parts to this review, I will also use this“intro page” of sorts as a directory with links to each individual post about a certain part of the ship or our trip. So check back here every few days for the new additions!

First up - Embarkation, Muster, and Sail Away.

We splurged and took a water taxi from our hotel in Canareggio to the port.It took about 20 minutes and was a nice last ride through Venice, a city we fell in love with (more about that later when I talk about ports). We glided up to the dock passing the Rhapsody, MSC Poesia, an AIDA ship and one other at the docks. We left our checked bags with the baggage drop and walked around to the end of the opposite side where Rhapsody was docked. We arrived to check-in around 12:45 pm. After getting our photo taken we were shown to the check in desk and walked right up. We had done online check in a couple weeks before leaving for Europe and I had our documents and passports in hand. We filled out the necessary forms and medical forms, and then we had our Sea Passes! There was a queue for security though it only took about 15 minutes to get through.Then the long walk down the gangway to enter the ship! All told it took maybe an hour from the time we left our hotel in the northern part of Venice until we walked on board. It was a very easy process start to finish.

We walked into a fairly crowded Centrum on deck 4 a few minutes after 1 p.m. There was not a chair to be found and the R bar was hoppin! Since it was after 1 I thought our room would be ready, but a crew member said they hadn’t made an announcement yet. We decided to walk around the ship a little bit but as we waited for an elevator Captain Tobias came on the intercom and said all staterooms were ready! We had a short walk down the stairs to deck three to check out our home for the next 8 nights.

Muster drill was 4:30. We were in our room getting settled in when we heard the announcements 30 and 15 minutes prior to the drill. We were getting our shoes on when our attendant knocked on the door and asked us to go. They really mean be on time to this drill, lol. We checked in at our station, stood in the neat little rows, and stared out across the port at the Poesia as their passengers did their muster drill at the same time (only they were wearing their life vests). It took about 20 minutes for the drill, the announcements, and the drill station guy to take attendance and make sure everyone was there. When it was over, we headed up to deck 10 for the sailaway. We got a lounger on the port side toward the forward part of the ship and watched as the lines cast off and we sailed around Venice. The views of St. Marks Square, Basilica, Doge’s Palace, and Campanile were stunning. After our favorite city had faded into the horizon, we wandered around to explore.

Pictures coming in the next post!

Us on a bridge in Venice the day before our cruise

Being silly in Pompeii

Our Stateroom and Steward

We were in cabin 3574. Deck 3 (obviously) on the starboard side. When selecting our cabin, we were going for low cost. I would have been fine with interior, but Husband really wanted to have a window. We didn’t have the budget for a balcony, and with a port-heavy itinerary didn’t anticipate being in the room all that much anyway. So for a larger view outside than the portholes on deck 2, and to avoid public spaces overhead if we were on deck 4,deck 3 was a good fit. We were midship, a good suggestion from my travel agent(I will take this time to shamelessly plug Magical Journeys! Use them!) as I am prone to motion sickness. I will admit I did feel a lot of motion the first night and felt a little woozy. It wasn’t due to rough seas, mostly just my body adjusting to the motion of the ship. The rest of the time I was fine, but next cruise I will look into Bromine or use the patches.

Anyway, our room! The beds were together to make a king size and are oriented under the window as you can see in the picture. As you can also see, there is a very happy husband, lol! It has taken me years to sell him on Disney, but one hour on the ship and he was totally hooked on cruising. More about that later. We thought the bed was quite comfortable, and we like a firmer mattress that has a little give to it. The sheets were soft and the comforter kept us warm. The pillows were fine, I used two and husband used four just because he was having a bad time with heart burn and needed to sleep more upright. This is where the orientation of the head of the bed directly under the window was a disadvantage because there was no wall or headboard to help support the pillows. But he still managed all right.

We unpacked before the muster drill and found the storage space for the size of the room to be more than adequate. We each had a larger drawer for our clothes, I made good use of the shelves in the bathroom and we stowed our behemoth of a suitcase in the closet. Shoes and sneakers went under the bed when they weren’t being worn and we kept our smaller carry on sized suitcase at the foot of the bed to use as a hamper for dirty clothes. We used the laundry service on the ship because we had been gallivanting around Europe for a week before we boarded so we needed clean clothes. Our stateroom attendant gave us the bag to fill for $35 and we stuffed it! We got the bag back about 24 hours later and were really happy with the laundry service.

The bathroom was small, but actually larger than I expected. I think I had a vision of a teeny tiny RV style bathroom where the shower took up the whole room and the toilet folded out of the wall, hahaha! The shower curtain didn’t bother us that much although we couldn’t figure out why sometimes the water would be contained to inside the curtain, and then other times the floor was wet despite the ridge and drain around the outside of the shower area. On sea days the water pressure in the shower was noticeably lower but the water was always hot and we still were able to get clean when we needed to. There is no fan in the bathroom though, so if you like a really steamy shower, leave the door open a crack. The towels were just ok, they are a little on the smaller side and a touch rough. If you’ve ever been to Disney and stayed in a value or moderate resort on property they are very similar.

Other random room observations: Walls were a little thin, we could hear coughing from the room to our left and they tended to slam closet doors and drawers, but never when we were trying to sleep. We didn’t hear much hallway noise at all. I sleep with earplugs so if there was noise after I fell asleep I didn’t hear it. There were two US outlets and two European outlets at the desk and one US style outlet in the bathroom. This is an older ship built before everyone had devices to charge, so it would have been great to have more outlets available, but we survived. I used the hairdryer a couple times and it was ok for a low voltage hotel style hairdryer but don’t plan on creating any hair masterpieces with it. We felt the lighting was very adequate in the evening and the three large mirrors on the walls did a good job of making the space feel larger than it was. The TV was a flat screen mounted on a swiveling arm on the wall, which was nice when we wanted to watch from bed. The TV channels were a mixed bag of programs in English, Italian, French, and German. We were able to keep up on news and world events on CNN and BBC and enjoyed episodes of Friends, The Detour, House Hunters, Blackish, Super Store, and some movies. We also spent way too much time getting sucked in to the Next Cruise and other channels about Royal Ships. It was cool to watch a “How It’s Made” style special about the creation of Ovation of the Seas and Freedom of the Seas.

Our room attendant, Helena, was outstanding. We met her shortly after we got to our room, she came by to introduce herself and answer any questions we had. We asked her about the laundry and she explained the roomservice, etc. and reminded us about Muster. We asked her to bring more pillows as well as some wine glasses and a cork screw. Royal had just re-instated thedining room corkage fee ($15) but wouldn’t charge if you brought a bottle you opened elsewhere on the ship. We were a little miffed by that but Helena brought us a corkscrew and a bucket of ice for our Prosecco that was always refilled to keep it chill. She was always prompt with any request we had and really helped make our stay very enjoyable. The room was always made up well and shemade some very charming towel animals! We left some extra money for her at the end of the trip and gave her hugs on our last night. She set a very high bar for all future room attendants!

Great Start. Congratulations on your marriage!

Kathy

Thanks for your review. Great pictures. Congratulations on your Wedding. And best wishes for many more happy cruises during your marriage

looking forward to reading more, thanks for sharing.

Thank you so much for this review I will be on this ship in December and I have not found too much info.

Thanks everyone for the well wishes! We plan on cruising a lot during our marriage. This was a wonderful way to spend our honeymoon and I wish we hadn't taken so long to try cruising.

Here's my next chunk of review - our impressions of the Rhapsody crew and over all service.

Service on the Rhapsody was top notch from start to finish. I don’t know if it was because we had rose colored first cruise glasses on, but we were so pleased with everyone on the crew. They had great attention to detail, always friendly and greeted everyone with a smile and a hello or good morning. They kept public areas very clean and asked us constantly if we wanted anything or needed anything. Everyone from Graham the CD to the baristas at Café Lattetudes were a pleasure to interact with every day. The crew on the Rhapsody is billed as the Friendliest Crew on the Seas, and we definitely would agree. Long contracts on smaller, older ships are probably not very desirable to most cruise employees, and if any of the Rhapsody crew was displeased with their jobs, they didn’t show it or we never witnessed it. I think this crew is a smaller, tight kit family making the best of what they have to work with.During the Parade of Nations (or as we called it, Fun with Flags!) Graham made a really nice speech at the end about how diverse the crew is from all parts of the world, and how while some of the leaders or citizens of their home countries don’t always get on well together, they can make it work on the Rhapsody crew. And wouldn’t it be great if those world leaders could just work together on a cruise ship! At the end of the day, it was really apparent to usthat this Rhapsody crew really take pride in their ship and it shows in their work.

Entertainment and Activities

Evening shows & Headliner Shows: While the performers are all very, very talented singers and dancers, the shows they are made to put on are woefully outdated and need to be refreshed to bring them into the 2000’s. All the shows we attended in the Broadway Melodies theatre are just stuck in the 90’s. It felt to me like Royal is doing their talented performance staff a disservice by having them perform these shows night after night.Special headliners brought on the ship for one night only were ok, especially the last night’s show which was very cute but too short. I couldn’t believe my cruise compass that the first night’s headliner was a shadow puppet artist.Look, I understand the ship is older and the theatre has limited technology for its size and their entertainment budget is obviously not what it would be on a larger class ship. But come on – a shadow puppet artist belongs in a Borscht Belt resort in the Catskills a la Dirty Dancing, not on a modern day cruise ship.

Schooner Bar Piano Guy – This is what we called him, anyway. Again, he was a talented guy but picked slow, mellow stuff to play. I had been hoping for upbeat and, again, something more modern to get the crowd into it. All I have to compare is Jellyrolls at Disney, which is a dueling piano bar, and this one just fizzled. The one night we went to hear him and order a couple drinks we were bored in 5 minutes and left.

Centrum Entertainment/Game Shows: We watched from the decks above when something caught our eyes as we were passing through on our way to dinner or a show. They had the typical game shows (sometimes held in the theatre, too) like Love & Marriage, Battle of the Sexes, Sing/Dance it,etc. No Quest though, so we will have to discover what that is on our next cruise. Our favorite was the Parade of Nations (aka Fun with Flags) and the speed table tennis competition. We went to morning Sudoku and trivia on sea days, our team won on day 8! We did not have our kids on this cruise, but did peek into the Adventure Ocean area and the arcade. The few kids who were on this sailing seemed to be entertained.

Halloween: there were some special Halloween events. October 31st was our sea day. There were decorations up all over the Centrum, they held a costume contest in the Centrum, free cupcake decorating, Thriller dance lessons, etc. It was very cute and there were quite a few adult guests dressed up all day. We aren’t big Halloween people, so we didn’t take too much notice of anything else they may have done on the ship that day.

I have some pictures in the next post!

Halloween Cupcake decorating and costumes in the Centrum

Dispalys like this were at the main elevator bays on the main decks (at least 4-7 where we noticed them)

Waiting for the farewell show to begin. We went to the 7 p.m. shows whenever possible as the 9 p.m. shows were quite crowded. We also watched a couple movies in the theatre, too.

Thank you so much for this review I will be on this ship in December and I have not found too much info.

Please let me know your questions! There are some good YouTube walk throughs of this ship that I used to help get oriented before leaving. I am a visual learner so that was really helpful.

hi OP...will you be posting more?

Yes, I haven't abandoned ship :) Just busy with the holidays and still going through photos. I should have a couple food posts shortly! Thanks for checking in!