Review: Serenade 11-Day, Southern Caribbean

I apologize in advance, this review is rather long, but I've put it in sections so you can skip over what you don't want to read about.

Rainbows and Sunshine

Ship: Serenade of the Seas

Dates: December 4-15, 2017

Itinerary: Antigua, Aruba, Barbados, Curacao, St. Lucia; Leaving out of Ft. Lauderdale

Captain: Aris Medina

Cruise Director: Carly “B” Boileau

Our cruise history: 37 cruises total; 7 with RCI

Our eleven day cruise began the moment we stepped onto the Serenade of the Seas. Since we had sailed on her before I was looking for some obvious updates, and I did see some, like the metal reeds around the Centrum, and the carpet in the public areas looked new. The blue bulls are still there, there is the rock climbing wall, water park, the putt putt area, and of course the Solarium as well as the main pool.

The first two nights were pretty rough and they had to drain the water in the Solarium because the water was rushing out of the pool all over the deck. Once we got closer to the Caribbean, that settled down and they were able to refill the Solarium pool.

Embarkation:

Embarkation was easy. We arrived very early and only had to wait a little bit. We were on board having lunch by 11:15. We knew we wouldn’t be able to get into our cabin until 1:00 so we check our carry-ons. Since we brought a bottle of wine each we had to carry that around. I have two Thirty-One bags that they fit perfectly in so that was no problem.

Our Cabin:

We had booked cabin 8604 because of the hump balcony. It is a little larger than the typical balcony and we’d had one before and liked it. Our cabin was spacious enough with plenty of storage. The closet has smaller shelves in the middle for shoes, purses, etc., and on either side of the shelves are room for your clothes with plenty of hangers. At the desk, there is the large mirror with two smaller ones on each side. Behind both of these mirrors are shelves, and there are shelves behind the TV which also hold the safe. The safe uses a digital code that you program in. It is in a rather awkward location since you have to move the TV each time you need to get into the safe. We didn’t use those shelves for that reason. There is a hair dryer in the drawer at the desk. It worked very well and has a low and high setting. On the desk, there are three drawers on each side.

There are two outlets at the desk and if you bring one of those multiple plug things you’ll have plenty of outlets for charging phones, cameras, etc. at night.

We had our beds pushed together for a Royal King, and with that the night stands were on each side of the bed. They did not replace mattresses as part of the upgrades, at least not in our cabin. Once our beds were pushed together, my side was terrible. The mattress sank in the middle and slanted to the right, so my back hurt every day. They don’t have the foam mattresses anymore, which would have helped.

We had a loveseat and small table, and of course the desk. The lighting was bright and adequate at the desk. The bathroom is very small, but there was plenty of storage behind the mirror for most if not all of your toiletries. Now, for the shower. If you’ve sailed on RCI before, you know how tiny the showers are. My picture doesn’t really show how small is it, but I used the showers in the Spa every day. You literally cannot turn around in this shower. There is a soap dispenser and they give you a bar of soap, but no shampoo. Maybe it was a shampoo dispenser, since you had a bar of soap. In the Spa, you have a soap dispenser as well as a shampoo dispenser. As most know, the days of complimentary goodies are gone.

Our cabin steward was David, from St. Vincent. He was excellent, making sure I had everything I needed and presented me with the most creative towel animals! When I moved my dinosaur off the bed one night, I put some Mardi Gras beads around its neck. Later when David made a monkey, he put those beads around the monkey! He said I gave him some competition!

The Thirty-One Bags for our wine bottles

The Loveseat

Shelves behind the TV

Our Balcony

Beds

Shower

Wow, that is one saggy bed!

Safe

Bathroom

Spa Showers

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Very informative start! Nice photos too!

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The Solarium:

There is no longer a pool attendant, I suppose because they have to provide life guards now, not sure, but most people would stake out their chairs by 6:30-7:00 a.m. and come down maybe around 10:00 even though there is a sign telling you not to reserve chairs. As we all know, chair hogs do what they want without regard for others. We saw many chairs each day with lonely towels, or other objects for hours. We would get our chairs on the way to breakfast and I timed our meal. We always made it back to our chairs within the allotted 30 minute time frame without rushing. One day it took 35 minutes, yikes!

Chair Hogs' Chairs

Entertainment:

I thought the entertainment was good, it is your typical cruise ship entertainment. The singers and dancers are as good as any other ship’s; the comedians (Scott Henry and Sam Fidele) were both very funny, my face hurt I laughed so hard with them! The magicians, Kyle and Mistie Knight were very good, and you will be amazed! Try not to miss them. Craig Dahn, is a piano player and was very good. Billy Prudhomme is great; you will not stop laughing at him! Do not miss Karen Grainger if she is on your sailing. She is an impressionist and is excellent!

ABBACADABRA was another headliner and since we had seen them before we only watched a little of it because we wanted to get to The Quest early. If you like ABBA you will want to see them. Bobby Arvon was another headliner and he did not appeal to us as much as he did the older crowd.

The production shows are Vibe*Ology and From Stage to Screen. We had seen these before, but watched again. I understand the early show of From Stage to Screen was cancelled because one of the main singers had a throat infection. Another singer stepped in for her for the late show. The night we were in Curacao, the production show was a featured singers showcase starring the singer who was sick and a male singer. We went in for the “one show only” and waited. We noticed that there was a large screen pulled down with advertisement for the movie Elf. As more and more people came in, everyone was pondering whether this was our entertainment or not. No one had heard that the show had been cancelled. Carly B never showed up to tell us otherwise and when the movie began most everyone walked out. I found out that the show had been cancelled because the female singer was still sick. Unfortunately, we didn’t hear an announcement because we were at dinner, I suppose. There was no other entertainment at all anywhere on the ship. We went to every bar, lounge, and space there is trying to find something to do. From taking backstage tours on other cruise lines, they tell us that the singers and dancers all know each others’ parts so anyone can step in if needed. Guess they don’t do that on the Serenade… I realize that we were in Curacao until 10 p.m., but there should have been some entertainment somewhere.

We sang Christmas carols in the Schooner Bar one night and that was fun, and they had a ‘70s party one night.

Leaving Ft. Lauderdale

Solarium

Food:

We had My Time Dining and reserved for 5:30 on RCI’s website. It was not the time I wanted, but was the only option when I went to reserve. We went at 5:30 the first night and they were so busy the kitchen couldn’t keep up; it was very slow that night. Also, do not get the bream, it’s terrible. That was the recommendation on the first night, but it was very dried out and had no flavor at all. We left the dining room and went to the Windjammer for something decent.

The rest of the cruise we went around 6:30 and service was much better. I do believe they wanted everyone to choose 5:30 for some reason, but it was so busy then which made the kitchen slower. The service we got from our wait team was excellent with some exceptions. We had to ask for freshly ground pepper, freshly grated parmesan cheese, and horse radish.

Now for the dishes…

The French onion soup was delicious with LOTS of onions. The flavor was so good, you didn’t want it to end, and it almost didn’t! It takes a long time to eat this soup, so savor it. Other soups that we loved were roasted garlic soup, creamy potato soup, and mushroom soup. All were excellent and I’d love to have them cooked for me at home! The flavors of each of these soups were smooth and creamy, with just enough seasoning. All of the rolls and breads were good as well. The pumpkin seed roll is still my favorite.

For appetizers we had shrimp cocktail, crab claw (which wasn’t good according to my husband and our “neighbors”) crab cake, which was mouth wateringly delicious and I wished I’d gotten two of them! I also had a mushroom appetizer one night in a puff pastry that was excellent. Entrees included the bream, which I’ve already discussed, linguini pomodoro, a beef dish that was very good, mustard crusted beef and potatoes au gratin, coq au vin, chicken marsala, Thai prawns (my husband got a double order of this), beef bourguignon, fried Pollock, crusted chicken, prime rib, and lobster tail. I loved the coq au vin and chicken marsala. They were both delicious, as well as the beef bourguignon. My husband liked his dishes as well. The prime rib was good, but my lobster tail had no flavor. They pour the melted butter over it for you so you don’t dip it yourself. It just didn’t have that rich flavor that lobster tail has. We got roasted turkey the last night and it wasn’t very good. Most of the food would melt in your mouth, it was so good! Just closing my eyes now, thinking about those scrumptious, velvety, smooth, creamy flavors takes me back!

The everyday menu has the linguini pomodoro, steak, shrimp cocktail, and Caesar salad, among other items. My husband said the steak wasn’t that good.

Our desserts included pot de crème, Grand Mariner soufflé, hazelnut soufflé, chocolate cake, hazelnut ice cream, sherbets, cheese cake, sugar-free pineapple upside down cake, and apple pie, which my husband didn’t like. Both soufflés were delicious and you can’t mess up ice cream.

Our wait team was Junah and Vlady and they were great. Vlady will be leaving soon to get married in his home country of Ukraine and will become a police officer. Junah is from the Phillippines. We really liked this team. We did not eat at any of the specialty restaurants.

Pot de Creme:

Linguini:

French Onion Soup:

Bream:

Breakfast:

We ate breakfast most mornings in the main dining room. I always got the egg white omelet with ham, cheese, onions, and herbs. It comes with a little hash brown square that is pretty good. The bacon is cooked perfectly -- crisp, but not under cooked or over cooked. They still need to work on the consistency of their grits; they were too watery. The waffles were good and I loved the fresh fruit from the dining room buffet as well. The orange juice is perfect! It seems to be the real thing with traces of pulp. It is not the instant watered down orange juice you get on other ships. We were very happy with the orange juice. They however, had a problem with coffee and my husband’s eggs. The coffee was good one day, but most days it was so strong and bitter you couldn’t drink it. My husband ordered his eggs over medium and they were usually either under or over cooked. On about the fourth or fifth day, we talked with Marc, the dining room manager, we think. He was super nice and did all he could to accommodate us. As long as he was overseeing our dining experience, my husband’s eggs were perfect, but he couldn’t do anything about that awful coffee!

Egg White Omelet:

Park Café:

Unfortunately, this is all that’s open in the evening since the Windjammer closes around 9:30. There’s not much variety and it’s the same stuff every evening and for lunch. There is a charge for room service and looking back, I don’t remember seeing any room service being delivered.

More food...

Crab Cake Appetizer

Cream of Mushroom Soup

Fried Pollock

Coq au Vin

Thai Prawns

Prime Rib & Lobster Tail

Ports of Call:

St. John’s, Antigua

Here we took a tour with Scenic Tours Antigua. We booked the Island Tour on line. Our guide was Morven, pronounced Marvin. Morven was an excellent guide giving us a history lesson as we went along. We learned that there are 265 beaches in St. John’s and that Columbus discovered it in 1493. It has several universities, including a medical university and they are free to residents. Once we made our way through the city of St. John, our tour takes us into country villages on the way to an area with breathtaking views and lots of history. After exploring Shirley Heights, we stopped at Nelson’s Dockyard National Park where we saw the old guard house, pitch and tar store, boat house, Officers’ Quarters, and much much more. There was a yacht show there that day so we walked around taking pictures of the yachts until we got kicked out – we were not supposed to be in that area! There is a lot of history here beginning in 1713, when the Caribbean was the scene of struggle for navel supremacy. Today, the dockyards is a historic maritime monument and is used by private sailing yachts.

Morven’s regular job is working at a bakery when there are no tourists. He took us to the bakery where he works and he showed us the machinery and let us taste some items that had just come out of the oven – oh. my. gosh. Scrumptious! Winding through the mountains of lush vegetation on this beautiful island, we eventually end our tour and return to the pier. We opted not to go to the beach. Morven gave us a wonderful day and he was so much fun! I highly recommend this tour. There is free wifi just outside the cruise terminal, but it’s very spotty. I tried texting home when I had it, but my texts wouldn’t go. We had rain during the day here and saw a rainbow on our tour.

From Shirley Heights

View from Shirley Heights

Waiting for Tour

At the Dockyards

Morven at his bakery

At the Dockyards

Castries, St. Lucia

Here we booked a tour with Cosol. We had toured with him several years ago and knew it would be a great tour. Little did we know that it is even more than what we had before! Last time we were fortunate enough to be with Cosol, himself, and this time we had his brother, Yellow Bird. Yellow Bird is equally as informative and fun as Cosol was. We did so much, stopped at so many places, and ate so much, I can’t even remember everything! Getting a history lesson as we drive through the city, we come to Marigot Bay where Dr. Doolittle was filmed. The views from here are breathtaking and just gorgeous! We went to a banana plantation and Yellow Bird explained the process of growing the bananas. In my pictures you will see some covered with a plastic bag. That’s to keep insects off of them while they ripen. These bananas are sweeter than the usual banana. We got to taste some and they were so good! Yellow Bird took our peels and we stopped for a second so he could feed them to some goats. Yes, they were waiting on him! They wasted no time gobbling up those peels!

From here we stopped at two fishing villages. The last one is where we had lunch tasting some of the local foods. We were supposed to drive through a volcano and visit the botanical gardens, but I don’t think we did those. A lot of time was spent at the sulphur springs where some on our van took a mud bath. It rained pretty hard there and those of us who didn’t take the mud bath scrambled to find somewhere dry to wait. We then made our way to the water fall for a while. From there we took a boat to the beach. We saw the beautiful Pitons on the way to the beach. We had to take a boat to the beach because now the hotel owns the road to the beach so we can no longer drive there. The boat ride was nice, but getting on the boat was not so nice. If you are mobility challenged, this may not be good for you. There is a very high step down into the seat of the of the boat and another very high step down to the floor of the boat. My short legs made it impossible for me to bend my leg that much, so I slipped and fell into the seat. We saw people with canes trying to get into the boat, which was difficult. The workers helped as much as they could. We spent around 30-45 minutes here. The hotel owns half the beach and the other half is free.

We made many stops and got some wonderful photos. Every place you look is just beautiful. On the way back we stopped for some fresh, out of the oven bread and cheese. Of course, we had plenty of drink stops along way and you have your choice of anything from water to soft drinks, to beer, and of course Cosol’s very own homemade rum punch…or maybe it’s just rum! Again, I highly recommend this tour.

It rained during the day and after we were back on board the ship and on our balcony, we saw another beautiful rainbow…what a way to end the day!

Yellow Bird & Cosol

St. Lucia

They did the mud bath

Waterfall

Some of the food

The Pitons

I think this is enough for now...I will pick back up tomorrow.

Great review ! I was on this cruise also. I am enjoying reliving this great cruise again. Thank You.

Very informative start! Nice photos too!

 

 

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Thanks!

Great review ! I was on this cruise also. I am enjoying reliving this great cruise again. Thank You.

Thank you, and you're welcome. It's nice to relive it, even if it was just a week ago.

Great review!! I'm doing this same cruise in a little over 3 weeks! Can't wait to read more!

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im loving this review, one of the best i have read

That bed is so obviously bad, I’m surprised it wasn’t changed! Great pictures and thanks for posting this we are slated to go November 2018.

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Enjoying the review.

Keith

Thanks everyone. Unfortunately I need to put the rest of my review on hold. My computer is not working and I can't do all this from my phone. I hope to be back very soon. So sorry.

Following! What a great review. I hope to sail Serenade soon!

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Back in business! More on Ports of Call...

Bridgetown,Barbados

Been here several times and done different water excursions, so we grabbed a local tour that didn’t have a name. Our guide’s name was David. I don’t remember everywhere we went, but we saw some amazing views and beautiful beaches. We had plenty of opportunities to take pictures. One beautiful beach we went to was Bathsheba (pronounced bashe BA) Beach. It is so beautiful I could have stayed there all day. We visited an old church on a mountain top that has a cemetery behind it. Actually, there are graves inside the church as well as in the walls along the outside. The cemetery is beautifully located among hundreds of shade trees and overlooks the ocean. What a beautiful place for a final resting spot-- on a mountain top, under shade trees with cool breezes, overlooking blue skies and a beautiful ocean. I can’t think of anywhere more peaceful.

St. John's Parish in Barbados: Cemetery in Back

Bathsheba Beach

Back in business! More on Ports of Call...

Bridgetown,Barbados

Beenhere several times and done different water excursions, so we grabbed a localtour that didn’t have a name. Ourguide’s name was David. I don’t remembereverywhere we went, but we saw some amazing views and beautiful beaches. We had plenty of opportunities to takepictures. One beautiful beach we went to was Bathsheba Beach. It is so beautiful I could have stayed thereall day. We visited an old church on a mountain top that has a cemetery behindit. Actually, there are graves insidethe church as well as in the walls along the outside. The cemetery is beautifully located amonghundreds of shade trees and overlooks the ocean. What a beautiful place for a final resting spot-- on a mountain top, under shade trees with cool breezes, overlooking blueskies and a beautiful ocean. I can’t think of anywhere more peaceful.

St. John's Parish in Barbados: Cemetery in Back

Bathsheba Beach

Oh my, I apologize for the previous post. My browser is giving me a hard time and not pasting correctly. I corrected all the spaces but CC didn't save them. Let's hope this one will be better.

Willemstad,Curacao

Another beautiful place. We had taken a tour here several years ago, so this time we decided to just walk around. I love this place! It’s so colorful and beautiful with a lot of rich history. We walked across the floating bridge and it opened up while we were on it during the evening. There are a lot of Christmas decorations everywhere. I loved the floating market,the buildings, everything! It rained here, as well, and once again, we had a rainbow in the afternoon. We were here until 10:00 p.m. so we had all day. After dinner we came back out and walked around a little more. There is free wifi at the cruise terminal here.

Oranjestad,Aruba

Another place we’ve been to several times and have always done water excursions. We decided to walk around and check things out. We went to the mall since there is free wifi there and tried to make contact with home. I was unable to text for some reason, once again, but Facebook worked so I communicated that way. The mall is beautiful and has a pool with a canal that goes under the street to the other side where the boats are. We walked around taking pictures and then hopped on the free trolley and took a short ride through the town and back to the cruise terminal.

The Quest

Well, I guess that’s it. What? Oh, you want to know about The Quest? Okay, well, it was not your typical Quest, at least not completely. Some things were different but the majority of it was the same. Yep, men in women’s bras, men in women’s clothes, and men with big bellies! Guys, some of you walk better in those high heels than I do!

Unsanitary Practices:

I’m really bothered by so many unsanitary things I saw the staff do with as much emphasis RCI puts on passengers about washing hands. They don’t change the table cloths in the main dining room at breakfast. One morning we saw the waiter take the previous guests’ used napkins and brush off the tablecloth with them. Not only had those guests wiped their mouths with the napkins, who knows if they coughed or sneezed in them, or worse, blew their noses in them! One morning I had a huge grease stain on the tablecloth hidden under my napkin, which of course touched the the stain. Another morning, the assistant waiter placed our bread on the bread plate with the tongs, then took those same tongs and used them to remove the lid to the butter. Of course everyone has touched that little knob and who knows if they had washed their hands first!

And then there are the passengers…taking cookies from the buffet WITH their hands instead of the tongs, adults, yes, not kids, putting their hands down inside the ice cream cone box, laying the tongs with the handles on top of food instead of placing them in the little plates placed there just for the tongs. I could go on and on, but it seems most people don’t seem to care. I guess we’re just germaphobes and notice everything.

Debarkation:

The time has come to pack up. Our cruise is ending and we must return to reality. Luggage must be in the hallway by 11:00 p.m. We never saw or heard them taking the luggage like we do on other ships, but they got it sometime during the night.

We had to debark at 8:15 because we had a 1:30 flight home. It took an hour to get through the customs line once we got our luggage. That was the longest we have ever spent in a customs line and they’ve done away with the customs forms; you no longer have to fill them out.

Issues/Problems:

1. I had sent an e-mail to special needs in September and again in October and November because we changed cabins, for a Sharps container as well as a fan for my asthma so I can sleep. Neither was in the cabin when we arrived. Our deck supervisor said that they only had three fans and they had all been given away. I asked how since I sent my request in back in September. She checked and said that my request never got to the ship. She offered to have them adjust the air in the cabin so it would be cooler, but I said no, because I didn’t think they could actually do that. She apologized heavily and actually found a tiny fan in someone’s office and brought it to me. She tried her best. Later I went to Guest Services and they told me the same thing that my request didn’t get to the ship. That upset me very much. She told me that since asthma is a serious thing that they could make the cabin colder for me. I agreed to that and they actually did. The temps got down to 65 at night,which worked great for me.

2. We didn’t have our Cruise Critic Meet and Mingle invitation. The link telling you where, when, and what time on Cruise Critic wasn’t working before we left so I couldn’t check it. I found out from another person on our roll call all the info and I took my email confirmation from when I registered. They accepted that and said that they were having a problem with people getting their invitations. It was a slim group of people compared to the number registered.

Tips:

1. One thing I learned from Cruise Critic is to take a magnetic clip for the wall. I use it to put important things like the Meet and Mingle invitation (if you get it), and anything else you don’t want to lose with all the junk papers that come every day.

2. As I said earlier, there is free wifi at the cruise terminal in Antigua and Curacao, and at the mall in Aruba. Just follow the crew, they know where to go.

3. Shower in the Spa. Just take what you need with you, give them your set sail card and they’ll give you a locker key. Those showers are a little bigger than the one in your cabin, and you have shampoo and bigger towels. Take time to use the sauna and the steam room while you’re there, it’s free.

4. There are interactive screens near the elevators that help you find entertainment, how to get somewhere, and restaurant menus. It even has the Compass.

Would I take this ship again? Probably. I like the ship, but would prefer a different itinerary since we’ve been to these ports so many times.