Serenade World Tour

[Curt From Canada]

This may be a little early, and may be in the wrong discussion group, but ...

We Are Going on A World Tour!!! ... (Not really, just one of the "small" segments). 

We were looking for some details from anyone who is booked and for information from the cruisers as they head out from Miami in DEC 2023.

This will be a very different experience, and since it is a first, many people might be interested on what the experience is like.

I will post some questions if there is interest.

 

Curt from Canada

[WAAAYTOOO]

WOOHOO !  Very exciting.

[asquared17]

i am so curious about this entire sailing!! and serenade is such a beautiful ship.

can’t wait to read more!!

[Ampurp85]

I Want to know how you fare being on the ship that long.

[deButler]

We are booked for the final 22 Night segment from Amsterdam to Miami through Iceland & Greenland. VERY excited to be part of this amazing trip and hope we have some amazing celebrations at the end of this segment. After doing 2 Eastbound Trans-Atlantics this Spring we’re also looking forward to doing a Westbound TA.

[Curt From Canada]

I am certain my "Canadian" is showing. @twangster has said, in the past, that Canadian humour is sometimes hard to get.

We are booked on the Antarctic portion of the World Cruise (18 days Buenos Aires to Valparaiso).  It was "dirt" cheap when it came out, so we booked a refundable fare.  The airfare is almost the same price as the cruise.  We are "World Cruisers" for only 18 days.  Still, is sounds nice ...

We always plan cruises like it is an Apollo Moon Landing, and Antarctica will be our biggest challenge.  We hope this thread will contain some valuable information and inspire others to jump on this first attempt by Royal.

The dynamic of 18 day cruisers vs 274 day cruisers could be an "interesting" Netflix series called:

"Beachfront Bargain Hunt meets Selling Sunset".

@deButler ... there were too many smaller legs of this cruise that were of interest to us.  Some of the itineraries are on our wish list.  We are on the second leg and will try to keep people in the loop on how it goes.  I would not be surprised if we booked another leg while on the cruise (although the prices are skyrocketing at the moment).

Curt from Canada

[Curt From Canada]

Good News ... Bad News:

GOOD NEWS:

Air2Sea has never worked for us in the past (not real difference in price).  This time it is perfect for a Refundable Rate (signifiant savings and maximum flexibility).  Flights out of Canada are extremely pricey these days.  Air2Sea saved $950 CAD ($17.52 USD  ... actually $712 USD) and we do not need to lock in until the fall.

BAD NEWS:

The Cruise price has risen almost $5,000 USD since our booking (just under double what we paid).  OK for us, but the small segments on the Ultimate World Cruise may be selling out quickly.

The information on Air2Sea experiences is mixed, so fingers are crossed.

Curt from Canada

[Bruin Steve]

We are booked on two of the segments--Southampton-Copenhagen and Copenhagen-Amsterdam...so our total 24 nights will look like this:

Fri., 26 July    Southampton, England    Departs  5:00 PM
Sat., 27 July    Bruges/Zeebrugge, Belgium    8:00 AM - 6:00 PM
Sun., 28 July    at sea
Mon., 29 July    Skagen, Denmark      7:00 AM - 3:00 PM
Tues., 30 July    Warnemunde, Germany     8:00 AM - 10:00 PM
Wed., 31 July    at sea
Thurs.,1 August    Riga, Latvia    7:00 AM - 4:00 PM
Fri., 2 August    Tallinn, Estonia     9:00 AM - 6:00 PM
Sat., 3 August    Helsinki, Finland     8:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Sun., 4 August    Stockholm, Sweden     Arrives  9:00 AM
Mon., 5 August    Stockholm, Sweden     Departs  6:00 PM
Tues., 6 August    Visby, Sweden     8:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Wed., 7 August    Klaipeda, Lithuania     8:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Thurs., 8 August    Ronne, Denmark     8:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Fri., 9 August    Kiel, Germany     8:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Sat., 10 August    Copenhagen, Denmark     6:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Sun., 11 August    Aarhus, Denmark    7:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Mon., 12 August    Oslo, Norway    10:30 AM - 8:00 PM
Tues., 13 August    Kristiansand, Norway    8:00 AM - 6:00 PM
Wed., 14 August    Haugesund, Norway    8:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Thurs., 15 August    Olden, Norway    8:00 AM - 7:00 PM
Fri., 16 August    Alesund, Norway    8:00 AM - 7:00 PM
Sat., 17 August    Bergen, Norway    8:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Sun., 18 August    At Sea        
Mon., 19 August    Amsterdam, Netherlands    Arrives 6:00 AM    

We never considered the full 9-month cruise because:

1)  9 months is just too long for us to be on one continual cruise.

2) It's a whole lot of money

3) We have too many other activities and commitments schedued at home (Season Football tickets, season Basketball tickets, theater tickets, family commitments, etc.).  We, generally, schedule our cruises around these other things and cannot see missing 9 months of everything else.  We can cruise enough and still have an otherwise well-rounded life.

4) We already had some other wonderful cruises scheduled during the same time period that we woud never back out of for this (like our back-to-back 24 total night Japan cruise on Celebrity Millennium--coincidentally in the same March/April 2024 time frame the Serenade will be there).

5) We've recently done a lot of the regions this cruise is visiting--in the last year or so alone, we've done two Mexican Rivieras, two Western Mediterraneans, a Reykjavik-Boston via Greenland Transatlantic and a Rio de Janeiro to Lisbon Transatlantic...and have an Alaska and that Japan/South Korea trip coming up.

That said looking forward to these segments as they have a lot of smaller ports we haven't visited before even though we've done several prior cruises to the area.

As to Air2Sea, we've used it (and Celebrity Air--which is the same thing) several times on recent trips and it has, largely, worked out well.  Always double-check the fares against Kayak, Expedia and/or airline websites.  Prices, mostly, have been good as have flight choices.  It's great to have it be freely cancelable--or changeable--until final payment.  A few interesting issues with seat assignments, depending on airline.  And we had one issue (which may have been as much the fault of the airlines) with a stated Iberia flight really being on no-frills Level Airlines.

[Curt From Canada]

43 minutes ago, Bruin Steve said:

We are booked on two of the segments--Southampton-Copenhagen and Copenhagen-Amsterdam...so our total 24 nights will look like this:

 

Wow ... that is an excellent itinerary.  We just got back from Norway, but only two cities overlap with your itinerary:

1). Alesund:  This city has a really nice Viking "Museum".  It is really only one large set of garages with Viking boats in it and an outside grouping of buildings (55) representative of architecture through various time periods.  If you like boats (hmmmmmm ... how many cruisers don't like boats? ) and/or architecture it is worth the visit.  We did not have time to see the indoor part of the museum so we can not comment.  Sunnmoere Museum link below.

https://www.vitimusea.no/en/musea/sunnmoere-museum-en

2). Olden: There is very little to do in this town (maybe it is really a village).  However two great things (not related to Olden) to do:

• The sail in is spectacular.  This is why Norwegian cruises are fantastic.  We spent over 2 hours on our balcony (over breakfast and a drink later).  If you do not have a balcony, camp out in the lounges on deck 13 or in one of the many spaces with tons of windows (the Radiance class of ships was built for this itinerary).
• Loen (which is a 5 minute bus ride away) has a "Skylift" that takes you from "sea to summit" in about 5 minutes.  It is worth it to travel well up the mountain.  There they have extensive trails to walk and/or a nice restaurant that cantilevers over the cliff (I had Finnbiff there ... which is basically reindeer stew [my daughter was not impressed that I called it Rudolph Stew]).  The food was basic, but good.  The price was high, but that is what the entire country is ... "high priced".

Two pictures from Olden (Jewel of the Seas is the small little white "ant" in the dead centre of the second picture ... taken from the Hover Restaurant):

 

Curt from Canada