My Epic journey.

Just a reminder I am now out of the office for a couple of weeks or so to try the delights of the Norwegian Epic together with a bit of Florida sunshine.

If you need to contact me about a booking please email my colleagues at contactus@cruise.co.uk and someone will get back to you.

In any event, come back here for a full review and some photo's in due course, unless the shark get me in Tulum! Thanks Alan you know how to scare a colleague!

All in a spin!

So you are off on your 14 night cruise and as usual limited to a meagre 23 kilo's of luggage. Part way through your holiday, you look at the clean clothes laid out neatly in your cabin and think '...not going to have enough to last the rest of the holiday!' So you start your trip round your ship to find the self service laundrette.

Well, if you are on most ships you will find one and on some ships there is one on each deck! Cunard, P&O and Fred Olsen come to mind here and if you go with some of the 6* lines, like Silversea or Crystal they even provide the liquids for free.

But what about the American Lines, Royal or NCL - well they don't have self service laundrettes and I am not too sure that they have ironing facilities neither, so you have to use their (paid for) laundry services!

Now I will check when on the Epic next week, but I worry about the odors that may come from my fellow guests!

Hurricane Season in the Caribbean

So as time has gone on my excitement is growing.......to spend a week or so in the Western Caribbean on board Norwegian Epic, but I have always had a little bit of trepidation about the cruise.

In the last week or so I have been checking the weather in that area and looking at the various hurricane tracking websites. Now, technically the Hurricane season in the Atlantic/Caribbean is from 1st June to 30th November, so a cruise on 30th October falls into the 'season'!

Storm 19, or Tropical Storm Richard to give it its full name, of the season is currently over the Yucatan Peninsular and moving slowly WNW, from the picture above it should have moved away before I get there, but Storm 20 is brewing in the Atlantic Basin - who will get there first?

Come back in a couple of weeks and I will let you know!

A dining and drinking Epic!

So it’s just about a week to go before I jet off to the sunshine, I hope, and join the Norwegian Epic for a 7 night Western Caribbean Adventure.


I was looking at the options for dining and entertainment whilst away and came across an information brochure from NCL for the Epic which I have copied below.

 

Now there are 11 options for Complimentary dining, including room service, 10 Speciality dining options with a cover charge and 20 Bars and Lounges!

Now I’m only going for 7 nights, how am I going to try them all!!

I’ve had my tips from my colleagues who did the launch, but any others will be gratefully appreciated, the only proviso is I have to get in my DJ at the end of November for our Christmas cruise so I can’t eat my way through them all!

So what happens when a cruise ship breaks down, do they call in the RAC?

So what happens when a cruise ship breaks down, do they call in the RAC?

That’s just what the passengers on the sailing of Celebrity Century asked late last week when their cruise was cut short because of ‘an unexpected problem with the rudders’.
The first we heard was when frantic customer called trying to arrange an alternative cruise so that they could enjoy their time, and to some extent before the wheels of Celebrity had turned to put in place alternative arrangements.

Now as far as I understand, and I have to say I am not mechanically minded, the rudders are key to ship keeping to a set course so I understand that Celebrity need to get the ship repaired quickly. So for safety reasons Celebrity cancelled the rest of the cruise so that the stricken ship could go to a dry dock in Marseilles for repairs and be ready for the next cruise 25th October.

So what about the passengers cruise, well all the passengers had to be off ship by 5pm on Saturday 16th so the ship could sail off for repairs, in the meantime Celebrity organised flights for those who had done a fly cruise package with them, or a coach transfer back to Barcelona if they wished to keep their existing flights and make other arrangements in Barcelona.

Those on cruise only must have been worried about what would happen to them, well Celebrity offered free phones and Internet services on ship so they could make alternative arrangements.

In addition all guests will get a full refund for the portion of the total fare for the sailing and a future cruise discount of 25% for sailings to 31st December 2011.

Although it must be disappointing, at least the cruise line has stood up to the plate here.

Thankfully things like this are few and far between, I have heard stories of a problem in the Baltic on Jewel of the Seas this summer and a P&O problem in the Adriatic, all of which were solved without cancelling the cruise fully just a small tweak to itinerary and perhaps a little on board credit from the cruise line.

So in difficult times the cruise line has proved that it can resolve the issue, its not nice to happen to you but they resolved it safely in the end.

If something like this has happened to you please let me know.

Queen Elizabeth - my first thoughts.

So after all the anticipation and press, on Saturday we got the chance to go and spend a night on Cunard's new ship, Queen Elizabeth. So did she blow me away or was I underwhelmed?

Now I am going to start this with a sanity note, I wrote about QM2 recently under I think I'm in love with a Queen and she was the last ship I sailed on. So am I going to compare like with like?

She certainly looks impressive as the picture shows and I do love the Art Deco theming of the ship, with the Grand Lobby being as impressive as I had expected, and as shown in my photo.

But on deeper inspection, I started to wonder about the fixtures and fittings and were they to the standard I expected of a new Cunarder?

So where are the Teak decks and quality sunbeds that I have seen before? If you look at the pool deck, could it not be any cruise ship not The Queen Elizabeth?

Stories about health and safety issues have been noted, but for me the traditional teak decking is far more opulent.



I will write again later in the week about cabins, but my first thoughts were I was a little underwhelmed about the ship, but the experience includes the White Star service, and to be honest as this was a travel agents day we did not experience the service to its fullest extent, so when she enters service I am sure she will live up to the name of a Cunard ship.

What happens when there are 2 or more ships in port?

So what does happen when there are 2 or more ships in port?

Yes you get it, I bet the Vicar in this church in Stavanger, Norway wished he had a congregation like this every week!

Seriously though, in some ports on some days there will be a number of cruise ships in port. On the day in June when this picture was taken there were 2 ships in port disembarking just over 5000 passengers!

So, I ask myself what would happen if these 2 cruise ships were in the same port on the same day. That's Norwegian Epic and Royal Caribbean's Oasis of the Seas, some 9200 passengers!

So the other day while I was searching for a website I had used last year to find cruise ship timetables to see which ships would be in each ports when I am on the Norwegian Epic at the end of the month. I found the following http://cruisett.com/ports.php, which I think is a great resource.

Well, they are both in Cozumel on 4th November 2010, together with Carnival Elation, that is some 12000 plus passengers in the port and doing the sights on that day. Now I like peace and quiet normally so that day could be quite an experience for me, I just hope that not everyone wants to go to the Mayan ruins I am visiting that day!

Now this is not even the top in number of visitors to a port in 1 day! Later in November in Nassau and St Thomas US VI there will be some 18000 passengers in port! and this may grow more as Royal awaits the delivery of the 2nd sister, Allure of the Seas.

I just hope that the ports can cope, and perhaps it might be time to move to smaller ships to get away from the crowds.