A bucket list trip through the Panama Canal... worthy of my 700th review. My late partner, and I…read moreloved to cruise a lot, and we have always been "loyal to royal."
This trip was 13 days, from San Diego to Miami. The serenade is one of Royal Caribbean's smaller ships, and while I do like the bigger ships with all of their bells and whistles, these size ships are my favorite. Small, but with enough to do, this is how cruising used to be. Only 2000 or so passengers on the ship, plus the crew of a around 1000. There was a good ratio...
The meals were excellent. In addition to smaller venues, like snack bars, they have the buffet, the main dining room, as well as an Italian restaurant, steakhouse, and Japanese place. You pay for the premium restaurants, but if you book them before your cruise, you can get very decent prices on the premium places.
The activities were great. There was a gym, a rock, climbing wall, a mini golf course, a single waterslide, and activities for the kids, although this cruise, the passengers skewed older. There were only about 30 kids on our cruise. If you cruise on the bigger ships, especially when school is out, you will experience quite a few more kids. That's another advantage of being on one of the smaller ships.
There were also activities ranging from enrichment, talks, trivia, karaoke, game shows, a bellyflop contest in the pool, etc. Again, the great thing is, you can do as much or as little as you want. The staff was very good at setting up the activities . The shows in the ship's showroom were great, from comedians to variety shows. My favorite had to be the Motown review My favorite gameshow, , and the favorite of a lot of people, is Royal's adult themed game show, "the crazy quest." it's 18 and above, and while some people call it "X-rated", I wouldn't go that far, I would just say it can get a bit bawdy. Check it out on YouTube.
All of the ports were great, but The star of the cruise was definitely the Panama Canal! It's amazing. You enter the canal at sea level, and head into a lock, which is basically a "water elevator". The ship is raised up to the level of the lake in the middle of the canal, you go through the lake, then when you get to the other end, you go back into another set of locks that lower you back down to sea level. It's an amazing feet of engineering.
I did have to go to the medical facility, because I broke a crown, and it developed into an abscess. The medical facility took extremely good care of me. They put me on an antibiotic IV, and had me come in the next two days for another IV each day, and for follow up. They sent me to a doctor and a dentist once we got to our first port of Puerto Vallarta. It's not cheap. Three days worth of care cost me roughly $1000, plus the cost of the doctor and the dentist in Mexico. My personal insurance didn't cover it, as most won't, but that's why I always get travel insurance, which did cover it. My travel insurance company. (Generali) had my claim approved and paid before the cruise was even over.
There was also a norovirus outbreak on the ship, but it only affected 100 out of 3000 people, passengers and crew. The medical department gave them free medical care, and while they were quarantined, they got free room service Also, the ship immediately went into deep cleaning, including bringing in people like lifeguards and people from the engine room to serve in the buffet, so people didn't have to get their own food. Even the people that got sick said that Royal handled it very well.
The only reason I'm taking off of a star, was baggage claim was very disorganized, I believe it was because of the outbreak. Usually, baggage claim with is a piece of cake. I will give them a break this time, because this is the very first time, I had a problem.
Overall, it was an amazing cruise.
