Ship Life

Howdy folks. Thanks for coming back for more. We really appreciate your interest in our adventures, as well as all of your kind feedback.

Today, I thought I would shift gears and talk about the ship and related topics.

As you know, we are traveling on Royal Caribbean’s Serenade of the Seas (a.k.a. “Home”). Their Web site is a little dated, but has many photos and info about the various ship amenities. Below I have summarized a bit of info.

Built in 2003, our little  ~950 ship has 13 decks, hold’s ~2,500 passengers and ~900 crew. More importantly, it has eight restaurants and ten watering holes. There are 2 formal dining rooms, a beauty salon, barber shop, spa and a hospital.

I especially like the pool tables, which have gyroscopes and automatically level (on the fly) as you are playing. They’re especially cool when the waves are causing the ship to really rock. The levelers seem to have about 2 feet of play in them, so watching someone trying to play while the table is moving is funky.

They also have frequent events such as archery, golf (driving range simulator), crafts, dance classes, language classes, trivia, and so many other things too numerous to list…

Pretty much at every port, they rotate the onboard entertainers, so we have stayed very busy. For example, the other day we enjoyed an Enrichment Lecture on maximizing one memory capabilities. This was super informative, and presented by Olympic Athlete Lance Ringnald (who also provided also starred in gymnastics show several night ago). The musician tonight was one of the top shows so far. Check out Salvatore Hasards’s cover of Billie Jean. Awesome!

So, speaking of memory capacities, it has been fun to meet our fellow travelers, but remembering names has been a bit of a challenge. (I’ve heard that the best way to remember someone’s name is to lend them money, but that is not helping in this particular situation!)
🙂

There are ~650 World Travelers on board, as well as ~150 other (shorter-term) travelers. While a majority of the travelers are from the US, we are enjoying building friendships with the many Canadian and Australian travelers, as well as other folks from literally all over the world. This includes fellow travelers as well as the staff. Just to name a few, in the formal dining room, Julia and Francis our two servers are from Kenya are the nicest two folks you ever met. The same goes for Aria, our cabin steward from Indonesia , and the countless servers and bartenders in the various lounges. I especially like the energetic young lady at the entrance to the buffet as you enter. She always has a big ol’ smile and is dancing to reggae. As she squirts sanitizer into your hands, she says”Washy Washy. Happy Happy!”  I feel that we are building many lifelong friendships.

This ship was specifically chosen for the Ultimate World Cruise. Although it is a bit older, “she had personality”! Folks love her for her abundance of glass windows throughout the venues. Also, it is the optimal size for the rough seas and to get into ports that won’t support the newer, larger ships.  She was remodeled twice, including last year, when it underwent a major upgrade to support guest living aboard “long term”.  Unlike most ships, our rooms have memory-foam mattresses, refrigerators, bedside electrical outlets and motion lighting. They have even added self-service laundry facilities and turned the volumes down on all of the music at the venues across the ship. Home sweet home.

They modified a lot of rules too. For example, we are allowed to bring bottles of wine and such onboard as we visit the various ports, and we can get off at one port, and get back on elsewhere down the road whenever we want. And they have surprise us several times with free excursions!

The captain is a hoot too. Captain Stig (Nilsen) is so humble. Every day, he gets on the PA systems and tells us sea story’s and the like. (Unfortunately, Fe and several other folks got off recently, and will not be rejoining us for a few months while they vacation with their families.)

A sport folks on cruise ships frequently participate in is hiding little rubber ducks. Karen and others hide them all over the ship. Sometimes they have little notes attached to them, and when you find one, you can either keep it or re-hide it. It’s a cruising trying I guess. Before we left, I bought Karen a bucket of different ducks to bring along. We have already hidden most of them (usually where we know the kids will be playing at) but we still have a few on standby.

Although things seem to be leveling off, it turns out that we had quite the TikTok following there for the first few months. A lot of what was being published was rubbish, but it was good for a laugh. There was some magazine or something that even hired a professional TikTok Content Creator to  travel with us for a few weeks. He was not a nice fella though, and I think our fellow cruiser were pretty rough on him.  He got off in South America. Au revoir amigo…

We have been getting our steps in pretty good. The ship has a “Walk Around The World” thing, where you record your steps every day, and they stamp your log book and give you a. certificate at the end of the trip. We haven’t participated, but we are averaging in the 10,000 steps a day neighborhood.

Although we have not seen them, the ship is rumored to have both a jail and a morgue. Also, we have observed that some folks have been asked to leave the ship due to medical concerns, and (unfortunately) we did have a fellow traveler pass away onboard a few months ago. (An older passenger died of natural causes in her sleep.)
🙁

They have many venues for entertainment, and put out a daily newspaper (an update their app) so folks can plan their day. While most days, we have excursions in the various ports, these entertainment options are a welcomed distractions in the evening and on Sea Days.

Oh, by the way. Thank goodness for Sea Days. Often, excursions can begin early in the morning, and last until later in the evening. (Eating off-ship is always a nice change of pace.) So on the days that we are able to stay on the ship, sleep in, and relax at the pool, we take full advantage. Once in a while, when we are feeling wild and cray, we even sneak in a massage. Heaven!

The many specialty restaurants are super nice. Unlike pretty much everything else on the ship, there is an additional charge for these, but they are half price for world travelers, and are half price at lunch. So you can get an unbelievable meal for two at lunchtime  for about $25. (A quarter of the normal price, tip included…) Our favorite is the Giovanni’s (the Italian place) but the streak house and the sushi restaurant are equally good.

We generally get Starbucks in the morning, and we enjoy the Windjammer (cafeteria) quite a bit. The little snack bars are also good for sandwiches, snack, pizza, salad, etc. (We do go to the formal dining room from time to time, but we are kind of over their menu options.) All-in-all, there is so much to eat we have to pace ourselves.

I also wanted to tell you about how they make their own drinking water onboard. They have these giant evaporator tanks. They fill them with ocean water, then boil the water and capture the steam, which is separated and condenses into drinking water. They dispose of the salty sludge that remains. Lather, rinse, repeat, and you got enough drinking water for the entire ship. (This is the same water that is used for showers, etc.) Cool!

The ship has a top speed of 24 nautical miles per hour. Its engines are made up of two GE LM2500+ gas turbine-generator sets in a COmbined Gas turbine and steam turbine integrated Electric drive system (COGES). It has these two cool side stabilizers that they can deploy to make the ship sail smoother at high speeds. (Think of snow skying, and you ski poles have little skies that stabilize you side-to-side as you pick up spread.)

So, there is an overview of the ship that many of you have asked about. I hope it was helpful.

Have a great day, and thanks for checking in.

– Mike

““Sail on, sail away
May all your dreams come true one day
Sail on, sail away” 
— Dickey Betts, 1943 – April 18, 2024. Ramble on Brother.