berkeleykel

Just to confirm I’m booked on Symphony from Barcelona next summer and I also don’t have any excursions available to book yet, so it’s not an interport specific issue. Barcelona is pretty compact with good transport and close to the cruise port so I wouldn’t worry about a lack of ship excursions and just book a private excursion or DIY.

What ports does it stop at?

We were recently on the Wonder from Barcelona and I mentioned to my husband how unfair the breakfast situation seemed to continuing cruisers. They close down everything early like it is a regular disembarkation day even though it’s just a normal day for 1/4 of the ship! However, you do have the luxury of booking shows for the second half of your cruise before the new cruisers join in Barcelona. And I heard, although I’m not sure how true it is, that they held back spaces at shows for those boarding and each port so neither group would be completely locked out.

You might find it helpful to compare recent cruise compasses for the two ships: https://www.royalcaribbeanblog.com/cruise-compass

I would not be willing to put holes in my clothes for a pin, but the lanyard idea sounds good.

I'm booked on the same itinerary (minus La Coruna) for a kids-free holiday next year. Excited to see what you think and what excursions you do! How has the weather been?

From my limited experience of a Greek isles cruise on Rhapsody in 2019 and a Mediterranean cruise from Barcelona on Wonder this summer, the Greek isles cruise food seemed more default "American," like what you would expect on a Caribbean cruise. The cruise from Barcelona was much more multi-cultural, European. On Wonder, the Windjammer included a UK, US, Asian and European breakfast sections, and the MDR included a pie and curry each evening. My theory is that that this is due to the fact that many passengers from France, Spain, Italy, the UK etc were drew to the Wonder (being an Oasis class ship docked in Europe, a class of ship that other cruise lines in Europe can't compete with) whereas the passenger base on the Rhapsody cruise was much more American (presumably because Europeans would be able to find something that catered more to their language/culture/tastes on a similar size ship from another cruise line). I've also heard that the cruises out of Southhampton cater for British tastes due to the high number of UK passengers on board. So I don't think there is a blanket answer for all European cruises and it will depend somewhat on the specific ship and itinerary.

I apparently took exactly 3 photos on Day 7, so here is a view the Mediterranean Sea in the morning and my husband and Monster sneaking in an afternoon nap.

Day 7 - Sea Day I may be three weeks late but I refuse to give up! However long it takes, this blog will be completed… In our last full day of the cruise l spontaneously woke up around 7 am and spent a few hours on my own while the kids were still sleeping. I used this opportunity to check out the Solarium for the first time, which was pretty nice, and I took a few moments to relax and do some reading. However, towels were already laid out in most of the prime loungers with the forward view which was a bit baffling. Who are these people who wake up at 6am??? I also picked up a couple of extra tip envelopes from Guest Services and reserved our casita location for later in the day. Once back in the stateroom the kids were up and we headed to the Windjammer for breakfast around 10 am. We had been debating doing brunch in the MDR instead, but decided we’d rather have something quick so we could get to the pool deck before it was too crowded since it was the only sea day. Before heading to the pool we tried to catch the parade at 11:15 am on the promenade deck. We got there right at the start time, but by that point it was too crowded to see anything, especially for the kids (strangely it seemed like more adults were watching than kids), so we left for Splashaway Bay. When we got to the pool deck just before 11:30 am we didn’t see a single spare lounger, so we were glad to have the casita reserved even though we didn’t end up staying too long. It was our third day spending time on the pool deck and the kids had a bit of a been-there-done-that attitude, so they were happy enough to leave after an hour or so. I should note that my 6 year old spent about half his time in the beach pool on our first day at the pool deck, but after that he only wanted to stick to Splashaway Bay because he didn’t like the salt water in the pool. We had lunch at El Loco Fresh which I thought was pretty good (at least compared to UK Mexican food), and it was convenient to be able to eat outside while still wet in our swimwear. We planned to spend the rest of the day doing our favourite things on cruises that we hadn’t had much time to get to yet: trivia, bingo and game shows. First up was cartoon trivia where we got second place after a tiebreaker, driven 95% by my husband (I literally only knew one answer)! I then headed straight to bingo while my husband took the kids to play mini golf again and to finish up our arcade credits. I paid $49 for six cards (three games each) plus one extra for having gold C&A level, which was an unexpected perk (the staff noticed this when I went to pay; I didn’t bring it up). The expected value of bingo was super low relative to jackpots in the $300-500 range, but I love bingo and the only time I ever get to play is on cruises so I was willing to eat the last investment. I also got a scratch card as part of the package and won $10, to be redeemed from the casino. I did not win at bingo sadly. What remained of the trip took a big turn at this point. I had woken up with a stomachache that got progressively worse throughout the day, until sitting through bingo, which went 20 minutes over schedule, became agony. Since bingo went over my husband had already started Trivia at 5 at Schooner’s, so I met him there. We did miserably bad again, as had been a trend for any of the general knowledge trivia sessions on this cruise. Afterwards we should have gone to dinner at 6 pm in the MDR, but I wasn’t up to it at all. I ended up in bed with bad chills. My husband took the kids to the windjammer for dinner but dropped off our tip envelopes with our MDR waiter staff first and explained our absence. We didn’t want them to think we were ditching them on the last night on purpose. I proceeded to sleep from 6 pm to roughly 3 am, when I got up in order to pack in a panic, despite feeling like death, with only the force of sheer adrenaline behind me (given we would be leaving the room within 5 hours at that point and hadn’t packed a thing). I took a a rapid antigen Covid test to be sure that wasn’t the root of my illness, but tested negative. I then crashed in bed again around 5 am for basically a nap before needing to get up in the morning to get everyone ready to leave the room by 8 am. That brings us to the end of Day 7. At some point in the near or distant future, I’ll update on Day 8 and overall thoughts on the trip.

What is the ship and cabin type?

Day 6 photos I’ve included photos of Naples from the ship, the swim diaper area, the separation between the swim diaper area and potty-trained area, a view of the closest casitas from Splashaway Bay, and the laser tag set up in Studio B. Non-participants can sit inside to watch the laser tag sessions, although you can’t see much.

Day 6 - Naples Okay! So I’m only over a week late on this. As mentioned before we were supposed to go visit Pompeii with transportation provided by Royal, but they switched our time to an early morning departure which we just weren’t up for. Instead we decided to play it by ear. We slept in and had breakfast at the windjammer after 10. Then we finally capitulated to my oldest’s begging to play mini golf. While outside we were blown away by the views of Naples, but also oppressed by the hot sun bearing down on us. We had been debating going into Naples for lunch or taking a bus on our own to Pompeii , but the heat reminded us of our struggles, and M’s constant whining, of the days before. We decided to scrap getting off the boat entirely. Instead we took advantage of the lack of crowds on the pool deck and went back to Splashaway Bay. There were plenty of loungers and Monster was literally the only kid in the swim diaper area. In the afternoon we headed to laser tag, which started at 4:30 pm. We arrived 25 mins in advance, and proceeded to wait over TWO HOURS for my husband and M to make it to the front of the line. At this point we were late for our 6 pm seating at the MDR, so Monster and I went ahead and ordered for the others. It took until after 6:35 for husband and M to make it back from laser tag. I had read about 30-45 minute waits, but nothing like this. Had we known, we wouldn’t have even told M that laser tag existed. However, they did have fun (albeit for less than 10 minutes after more than a 2 hour wait). Note that although they had an age requirement listed in the app (5+), when you arrived they also added a height requirement (40”). Thankfully that wasn’t an issue for M. That evening we took both of the kids with us to see the magic show. It was pretty par for the course as far as magic shows go, and husband and I were impressed by how the magician was able to stretch so few tricks to last such a long time. However, M was on the edge of his seat impressed. Monster was a little fussy but we managed. Which brings us finally to Day 7, the sea day.

If you did not have an RC excursion booked then you exited on Deck 5. If you just wanted to go to the outside of the port, then I believe the buses were free and there were several lined up ready to go with almost no wait. If you wanted to go to the train station, a couple of the shuttle buses were sign-posted as going to the train station, and those were the ones that cost €3 per adult.

We did not handle the heat well at all (foreshadowing for day 6)! We will definitely avoid Italy in the summer from now on. I'm looking at October for a land-based vacation to hit the rest of Rome and maybe the Amalfi coast. Its a trade-off though because on a cruise we really like the ability to swim on the boat and with school holidays being as they are there isn't a great medium where we'd get hot enough weather to use the pool/Splashaway Bay on the pool but not swelter on land

Day 5 Photos One thing they reminded me of that I meant to mention is that while the Coloseum was stroller accessible, I think you’d struggle with a stroller at the Roman Forum or Palatine Hill. The road was too rocky so you’d have to carry it over long stretches.

Day 5 - Rome The morning got off to a bit of a rough start. We wanted to leave the ship at 8 Tom have plenty of time to catch our pre-booked train at 9:16, and as we are not morning people we ordered a room service breakfast to be delivered. When it hadn’t come by the end of the window, I checked outside our room and saw that the room service order had never been taken off our door. I think the blue order forms against the blue doors was not a wise decision on Royals part. So instead we scrambled to get something from the Windjammer and left the shop around 8:15. We exited on the deck 5 gang way (where we first boarded in Barcelona) rather than the deck 2 gangways (those were excursion only). It turns out the slight late start as more than fine because there were shuttles directly to the train station right next to the normal shuttles which cost €3 each, cash only, kids free. I had misunderstood other’s who had posted on this before and thought you needed to take the free cruise ship bus into town, then the €3 shuttle from there to the train station. There is a small food bar adjacent to the train station with snacks and some pastries. We tried to validate our tickets on the green machines at the station before boarding like I’d read was required,but they wouldn’t scan the bar code. Not sure if this was human error on my part or not. Since our tickets were for a specific day and time I hoped that it wouldn’t be an issue of our tickets were checked on the ride. We had booked 1st class table seats in car 1. When the train arrived we ran to the front thinking that would be car 1, but it turned out that the train was travelling backwards and car 1 was on the extreme opposite end. It took about 10 mins to slowly make our way down the entire length of the train to car 1, and by then our seats were taken. We decided to just take two sets of seats nearby rather than make the family there move. We arrived into Roma Termini and found a cafe to grab sandwiches from for a picnic lunch at the Roman Forum. There is also a pharmacy and several shops, cafes and other food options in the station. We then took the metro 2 stops to Coloseo. Again the first ticket machines we got to had long lines, but if you continued into the station there were more machines with no lines. At the Colosseum area we found the entrance to the Roman Forum to be poorly marked. We followed arrows to what turned out to be the exit, along with a steady stream of being making the same mistake. After about 15 mins in the baking hot sun we found the correct entrance, where there was a long but quick-moving line to enter. The ticket office was closed so only people who had pre-booked could enter. We spent most of our time in the Palatine Hill area which is adjacent to the Roman Forum. Because it was hot, it was pretty slow moving for us with lots of breaks in the shade. We tried to have a picnic lunch but got swarmed by a few bees wherever we went, so didn’t actually eat very much. Because we were so hot no one was really in the mood for food anyway. At 1:00 we went to the entrance of the Colosseum for our guided to of the Colosseum and Underground. We found staff to be helpful in directing us to the right area and the meeting location was well-marked. The tour was “guided” in that we were lead as a group throughout the underground and given tiny bits of information here and there, but we were expected to supplement the tour ourselves by listening to the free audio guide you can download on the official app, Parco Colosseo. So something to keep in mind if you do this option, as we hadn’t brought headphones. After the tour we headed straight back to the metro to Roma Termini caught the fast train back into Civitavacchia. A shuttle bus back to the ship was waiting directly across from the train station and we were back in the ship around 5 pm. At this point I headed to the excursion desk to cancel our Pompeii on Your Own excursion for the next day. The evening before we’d come home from dinner to find that our 1 pm tickets had been replaced with 9 am tickets with a meeting time of 8:30. We were really counting into the chance to sleep in so decided against keeping the revised tickets and decided we would figure something out on our own. I That evening we had 150 Central Park booked for 7:30 pm. My husband said the honey glazed scallops were the best scallops he’d ever had. The service was really good as well, with the server taking several minutes out to help distract and play with Monster when we started getting fussy, so that my husband and I could enjoy our food. M then went to kids club, but came back crying that night because he said older kids had been hogging the video games and he hadn’t gotten to play. Monster finally fell asleep on a timely basis and we were able to drop him off at nursery while we went to the casino for an hour or so.

I’m not much of a photo taker so here’s all I got for Day 3

Day 3 - Marseille Today we had a pool day planned and to hopefully make it extra relaxing I had booked a casita on the pool deck. I couldn’t remember or find any details from my booking on when where and how to actually reserve the specific casita on the day, but from Googling it seemed like I was supposed to go to the Lime & Coconut on deck 16 at 9 am. So I went ahead of my family while they were getting dressed for breakfast. It took until closer to 9:10 for someone to show up but they had a binder and put down my selection. I chose #3 because it is closest to Splashaway Bay where we would be spending most of our time (the other cabana on the Splashaway Bay side is #4). I then came back to the Lime & Coconut around 11 to check in once we had eaten breakfast. At that point they took our order for our two welcome drinks. The casita had a table with a cooler underneath filled with ice and 4 cans of water. It was advertised as coming with storage and I saw a video of someone saying it came with a safe, but we had no storage or safe of any kind. There was a USB plug. Having the casita with young kids on a port day is pretty much a waste I think. There were plenty of free loungers and since the kids couldn’t play unsupervised we couldn’t really spend any time lounging in it. We had one again on the sea day though and that day I think was worth it because when we got to the pool deck after breakfast there were literally no loungers left. They are really comfy too so great if you think you can actually spend some time relaxing in them. We nearly had a meltdown because M, who is 6, was not quite tall enough to ride the water slides I’d been playing up to him. He’s been on rides that required 48” in the past so I never questioned him being tall enough, but I realised he always had shoes on for those. As it was, he missed the height by probably less than half an inch. We didn’t try again to see if another operator would have been more lenient because he turned out happy enough to stick with the smaller slide in Splashaway Bay. I was also happy that Monster was perfectly content sticking to the under 3s section of Splashaway Bay. I had been worried he’d see the big kids section and throw a tantrum to go in. One annoying thing was that even though it was nearly empty, M wasn’t allowed to join Monster in playing in the younger kids section. That meant both that the kids never got to play together without a wall in between and also that two parents were necessary to supervise both kids at all times. After we finished up at the pool we had lunch at El Loco Fresh which I thought was pretty good, but we had to waste awhile for it to open because it doesn’t open until 2 pm on port days apparently. But it was a good excuse to swing by the Lime & Coconut for another drink. It was nice having an outdoor food option near the pool deck. We went to a general knowledge trivia session trivia session at Schooners in the afternoon. It was HARD. I think we got like 5 out of 15, maybe. We did try for Bingo at 5:30 pm but the line was too long so we just had a quick drink instead. We then headed to the Mason Jar for a 6 pm booking. We liked the food but the music was fairly obscure country which we are not into at all. Portion sizes were HUGE. Sorry to say but the fried chicken was just bad. We are from the south and it tasted like a person who had never been there imagining what fried chicken would taste like. I also love banana pudding with all of my being but the banana pudding was almost inedible. Everything else was pretty good though (cornbread, ribs, mac & cheese, cocktails). One observation that proved true again a couple nights later was that the restaurant was more than half empty. I’m not sure if this is typical or if people were just not as interested in the specialty dining for this cruise. After dinner M went to kids Club. Monster was supposed to go to nursery but again refused to we had to skip out on the adult comedy show we had booked. Instead we just had a drink in Central Park and caught some adult karaoke. Now onward to Day 5! Whew, getting there. (In real life it’s Day 8 and I’m on the way home from the airport).

I’m so behind I got completely confused and skipped Day 3, which was Marseille but which we turned into a sea day. Oh well. I’ll post the photos for Day 4 and then backtrack to Day 3.

Day 4 - La Spezia I got tied up with work this morning and as it was forecast to rain in the morning we decided to push back getting off the boat for Cinque Terre until around 12 pm. Lots of shuttle buses were waiting just outside the ship when we left. It only took about 5 mins to fill up and leave for a very quick ride to the cruise ship terminals. We saw one taxi but someone was getting in it. Instead we walked 2 blocks north to a bus station and took a local bus to the train station. We bought tickets on the DropTicket app (which I had downloaded ahead of time in case we didn’t see any taxis) for €1.50 each (children free). You could not buy tickets on the bus. You have to board in the middle doors of the bus, not at the front by the driver. The 3 bus takes you directly to the station but the 1 and 12 drop a short walk away. We took the 12 since it came first. At the train station the ticket machines had long lines that moved slowly. If you walked past these into the area near platform 1 there were several additional machines that no one was using. If you aren’t familiar with bus and train travel in Europe I really recommend this self-made excursion as a way to practice in a pretty low risk scenario. There are lots of trains and buses so if you miss one (or two) because you get confused (e.g. me on the return trip) you should still make okay time. We started at Manarola and had lunch there at a tapas style restaurant (bruschetta, meats, cheese and fruit but no pizza or pasta) called Nessun Dorma which had great views over the harbour. The restaurant has an app where you make same day bookings by getting a spot in a virtual queue that’s starts at 12:30 pm each day. I entered the queue at 12:35 pm and got 79th in line. We were sat around 2:20 pm. We thought the food and cocktails were good and while it was a well oiled machine the quality was better than your typical tourist trap. The day was super hot and sunny so we felt kind of miserable and M was whining continuously. With that plus our late start, we abandoned our plans to visit Riomaggiore and instead heading back to the ship after lunch. We again took the train back and were able to get seats together. Once in La Spezia we again took the bus. I wasn’t paying intention and accidentally got on the 3 bus heading in the opposite direction from the port. But no harm no foul. After a couple stopsI notice the mistake and we got off the bus and crossed the street to the stop with buses headed in the right direction, and within 15 mins we were back at the port. We were exhausted so stayed in the room until almost time for dinner. We had dinner in the MDR. After dinner my oldest again went to kids club and we took Moster with us to watch Ice 365. He was pretty intrigued at the start but got a little scared at points. Her eventually fell asleep. We thought it was really good especially for show small the rink is.

A few photos from Day 2

Some may call it being super mom, others headstrong and foolish. We are making it work but I do fantasise about how nice it would be to just be my husband and me. We have a long cruise planned for next year with my MIL watching the kids at home so I’ hopeful everything will come together for us to get away then.

Some photos from the hotel and Day 1

Day 2 On Day 2 we docked at Palma and took an RC excursion to Palmanova beach. The excursion time was listed as 9:20 am to 1:20 pm. Our tickets said to meet at the Royal Theater at 8:50. When we arrived we were able to get 2 free cans of water per deluxe beverage package which was good because we forgot to get any water ahead of time to bring with us. We left around 9:00 and walked a short distance through the port building to a double decker bus, which they packed completely full. The bus ride time was listed as 30 mins in the cruise planner but it seemed like much less. We were dropped off right in front of the Hotel Tropicana and told to meet back there at 1 pm. The drop off point was right across the street from the beach. This is where we set up camp. It cost €13.50 (cash only) for 2 loungers and an umbrella for an unlimited time, and they were readily available. However, this part of the beach did not have a life guard. We realised later that if you walked about 5 minutes along the boardwalk, you would get to a part of the beach with a life guard, public toilets (€ 0.50, change only) and public showers. There were several places along the beach to get snacks and drinks if you wanted. We got ice cream for the kids at a cost of €2 per cone at a little gelato stand. Almost everyone was timely in reboarding the bus and it took off at 1:05 pm. Okay, everyone was timely but us. We were the last ones to board. Sorry! Once back at the shop we went to the Windjammer for a late lunch, which was heaving. We realised that buffets, despite our love for them, don’t work so well for families with multiple young children. Since and adult has to stay behind, it takes four trips to get us all plates. We may look for easier options going forward. We grabbed some drinks from Boleros and at that point the family went comatose while I caught up on work. We again went to the MDR and again found the food and service good. We are MDR people. We had booked Voices for after dinner and planned to drop Monster at nursery and big M at Kids Club. Unfortunately Monster became distraught when we tried to leave him. I was a little annoyed that the staff member did almost nothing to try to comfort or distract him. She just sat him down and stared at him while he cried and said softly “it’s okay, it’s okay.” He always cries for babysitters but they’ve always been able to calm him down enough for us to leave and then he’s perfectly happy about 15 mins later. As it was, we were forced to abandon the nursery. We walked him around in his stroller to try to put him to sleep, but by the time he finally fell asleep (close to 10) we decided it was too late to bother leaving him. We tried to catch a game show at Spotlight Karaoke but the venue was small and we couldn’t hear at all from the back so we left. I had a few more hours of work to do late into the night and then it was time to rise and shine to grab our casita for our self-improvised sea day! If I had written this post 2 days ago I’m sure I’d have had something to add about the milk situation late at night again, but at this point I haven’t the slightest recollection of how we sorted milk that night.