jbond

Just posted our photo albums from our Serenade Panama Canal cruise. You can find them at Serenade of the Seas 1 & 2

If it's not St John, it must be Antigua.

Really nice set of photos. I especially liked the mirror effect ones. Lokks as if you did a couple of trips that we did. Alaska is a really enjoyable and different place to cruise.

My Nikon has an 8X zoom and with the telephoto adapter it goes to 12X. It doesn't have stabilization. :cry: However, if I'm using that long a telephoto lens, I switch to shutter priority and shoot at a minimum 1/250th sec. I also don't use the LED viewfinder, I use the eye piece and find that much easier to control the camera. Elena, We just got back from a 15 day cruise, total 18 day vacation, and I used two 256 MB cards. I shot at 5 MP and normal quality, that gives me about 215 images per card and as scalpel says, you can delete unwanted photos.

Several times, it's a really pretty island and very well organized. If you like party boats, Barbados has one of the best, the Jolly Roger. If you like to sight see, get a taxi at the dock and go around the island. The Atlantic side is very different from the Caribbean side. Stop at Sam Lords Castle and have a drink on the beautiful patio overlooking the Atlantic surf. You can checkout Harrisons Caves. They have a tram system that takes you for a ride to see the stalactites ,stalagmites and the underground pools. Shopping is pretty good on High Street and the people are really friendly.

Thanks Jason. A lot of people criticize digital as not being as good as 35 mm. I disagree, and for me the great feature is the stitch/panorama. The St Thomas photo would be very difficult to take using a 35mm film camera, for me impossible. Even with a 28 mm WA lens you could only get just over a third of the photo from where I shot it. I used it quite a lot on our cruise, but I've got to start making notes of which ones are pans, as I'm getting confused by all the photos that look very similar. :huh:

I don't know if it's your first time in these ports, but ship excursions are usually a little more expensive than booking your own, but they are reliable. Unless you know what you want to see and do, I feel that first time in a port, a ship excursion is always a safe bet, price difference is usually negligible. There is a lot of experience out there as to what to do in the three ports you are visiting. Is it your first time in these three? If so you are in for a great time.

How about Progresso?

I prefer not to dine with the staff. Before you jump all over me for being a snob, it's a quote from Lady Astor when she was asked if she would care to dine with the captain on a Transatlantic sailing. We have cruised with RCI 15 times, we're Diamond C&A members and have dined with the captain only one time. It was a long time ago and we knew the Cruise Director from a previous cruise, and he set it up.

She'll learn. I used to take around 400 pics on a cruise and developing costs were always around $120-$160. I then spent several days scanning them into my computer. Since we got a computer, I've always made up our photo albums using Printshop and not used the original prints(other than scanning). Going digital saves quite a lot of money and time. I do print out postcard size photos to send to people we've met on the cruise, but that is just a low number of prints. We've used digital on four vacations and our cost savings is at least paying for memory cards, lens attachments and a few drinks of the day. :grin: My camera eats up batteries. I have two rechargeables and on our last cruise the battery charger died on me the first day in San Juan. Fortunately, our first port of call was St Thomas and I was able to buy a new charger. The regular lithium batteries for my camera are $13 each and they last about two days!!

We always try to follow the suggested dress code, as I'm sure most people do. One problem with the dress code is that it is widely open to interpretation, and the interpretation usually depends on where you live. For smart casual, a lot of people say, wear what you would wear for church or in a nice restaurant at home. OK. Where we live, about 75% of the people go to church in jeans, men and women. On Easter Sunday, I was one of about three or four men wearing a tie. We don't have a nice restaurant in town, but if we go to the big city, in the summer most people are in shorts, not my idea of smart casual. As for wearing jeans in the dining room, I don't see a problem. Not too many cruiselines request no jeans. Our favourite cruise line, RCI, even has a Country Western Theme night. The dress code will always be a hot point of discussion, some like to dress up, others don't. I personally don't care about the ones who don't want to dress, we like to dress up, we enjoy it and I would never cruise on a cruise line that didn't have formal evenings. I do wish the cruise line would "enforce" a dress code, but it would be very limited and very difficult to do. My pet dislike in the dining room, besides people who wear shorts and sweats to dinner, is sneakers. I hate seeing people in "casual/smart casual" attire wearing sneakers.

We just got back from RCI Serenade of the Seas. Three days before we were due to leave, our TA called and said that RCI called her and said that they had oversold their balcony rooms. We had a balcony room on the "bump" on deck 9, booked a long time ago. They wanted us to take an outside room with a window on deck 3. This is what they offered. Complete refund of the cruise ticket price, refund of the cost of shore excursions we had booked, refund of our cruise insurance and $200 per person on board credit. We already had a $250 on board credit, so that gave us a total of $650. We had booked our own air so they didn't give us that back. We decided to take them up on their offer. It was a 15 day cruise and so they actually paid us $42 a day to cruise with them!!! I missed the balcony, especially on a cruise with seven sea days, but the offer was too good to refuse. In your case would I accept a $200 on booard credit, it depends? How do you feel about being separated from the kids. It will buy about 40 frozen drinks. :grin: Only you can make that decision.

I would be very upset and raise all kinds of ####. Adjoining rooms with kids are important to us, and obviously to you. I would press the TA and Carnival to reverse the situation, and I would be very blunt about it.

Hi April, I have two 256MB, three 128 and the 16 MB that came with the camera. I shoot at max MP's, 5MP, and at "normal" quality. That gives me about 200 images for a 256 MB card. I have not used the camera for movie clips. I shot about 480 pictures on our last trip. Shooting at max MP and normal quality, I can make 36X24 prints that are undistinguishable from film. I have sent Jason a "stitch" as an example of the panoramas that you can take with digital. I hope that he will post it to share with everyone.

I use a Nikon 5700. It's 5MP and has an 8x optical zoom. I also have the telephoto lens attachment that takes it up to 12x. Like you, I would never go back to film. When you say it takes "panorama", do you mean that you take two or three photos and then stitch them together? We've just got back from a cruise and I used the stitch feature a lot, makes for great views.

We just got back from the Serenade repositioning cruise, San Juan to San Diego, April 24 to May 8. What a great experience. It was our 15th cruise with RCI and ranks as one of the best. We did a pre-cruise stay in San Juan at the El Convento Hotel. What a great experience, unlike any other hotel we’ve ever stayed at. In San Juan we had dinner at The Parrot Club, a definite 9+, and also at Jirabisco’s, about a 7. We took a full day tour out to El Junque with a local tour agency, Native Tours. Our driver was Manuel and he was a great guide, funny and informed. Embarkation was a breeze. We hardly stopped walking after getting out of the taxi handing off our luggage. The ship was beautiful, our third cruise on a Radiance class ship. Service. The service on board was absolutely phenomenal. I’ve never met so many pleasant people in my life. Everyone was upbeat, smiling and just downright nice. We had read complaints on CC that RCI service was slipping, don’t believe it. Our room was always made up and ready by 9:00 am, at least on sea days. Rodney, our steward was always around and we saw him every single day, no exceptions. Dining room service was also top class. Michael and Esky were kept busy, but were very efficient and never missed a beat. We had 14 bottles of wine over the course of the two weeks. We always had at least two bottles open and we never had to wait for service. Kerstin, the Head Waiter, was the busiest, most active and personable Head Waiter we have had, she was an absolute 10. Windjammer and bar service were equally as good. Food. The food varied, some nights were very good, others were not as good. I believe food is very subjective and so this is just my personal viewpoint. The osso bucco was very good, as was the tenderloin and prime rib. The rib eye steak was not that appetizing. Still for 14 days we ate very well and very varied. One thing was consistently good was the presentation, always so well done. We enjoyed the Windjammer food and we were pleasantly surprised by the variation and choice available. We dined at Chops and Portofinos and would give both of them a definite 10. Dress Code. This was a very well dressed cruise. Almost all the people we saw followed or even exceeded the suggested dress code. There were three formal nights and at second seating the vast majority of men were in either a tux or suit. We had three “smart casual” nights and again there were a lot of men in suits or jackets, lots of ties. We saw only one person wearing shorts in the dining room in the evening. Ports of Call. We visited St Thomas, Aruba, Puntarenas, Huatulco, Acapulco and Cabo. In St Thomas, we shopped in the morning and took a round the island tour with a guy we found down town. $20 pp for a three hour tour. We bought some perfume, but the prices were the same as at home. In Aruba, we rented a Jeep for $85 between four of us. We had a really fun day, got lost once but made it to all the sights, lighthouse, Natural Bridge, Natural Pool (we couldn’t get down because of a breakdown on the “road”), the gold mine etc, and spent some time on Baby Beach. Ended up in Carlos and Charlie’s, after we had returned the Jeep. In Puntarenas, we took a ship’s excursion, the Aerial Tram. It was well organized and a very interesting experience. It was our first visit to Huatulco and we got a local taxi to drive us around and see the sights. Not a lot to see outside the city except lots of landscaping and construction for the hotels being built. In the city the shopping was low key, the cathedral beautiful and the beer really cold. Huatulco was very clean, no trash anywhere. In Acapulco we had arranged a private tour for four of us, through Roberto of the ACA. Check him out on the CC Ports of Call Board, he’s very good. He arranged for a Suburban for us and we had a great tour around Acapulco with Oscar as our driver and guide. It was the most enjoyable Acapulco tour that we have ever done. In Cabo we walked around town, finished our shopping and had lunch at the Shrimp Factory. The passage through the Canal was as interesting as ever, Gatun Lake was beautiful and it was a very relaxing day. Debarkation was a breeze. We basically just walked off the ship. We filled out our Customs forms and handed them in at Guest Relations. When we were ready to leave the ship, we walked down to the luggage area, picked up our luggage and walked out of the terminal. No Customs and no Immigration!!! That was a definite first. All in all, it was a great cruise. We had great table mates and we met some really great people.

Got back yesterday from our Panama Canal cruise. We had a great time, the weather was perfect, the cruise even better. I'm posting a review in the review section. It will be some time before I get my photo album done.

Have a great cruise. We leave tomorrow morning. See you all in three weeks time.

It looks as if you are sailing Princess and RCI. All you will need is your Sail & Sign Card. Don't take your passport ashore unless you have to. The only place we had to take our passport with us was St Petersburg, Russia.

We were on an Alaskan cruise the end of June and they were offering the dog sled excursion. This is from the RCI excursion page, as you can see it's quite expensive. Glacier Dogsled Adventure via Helicopter Approximate Duration: 3 Hours 15 Minutes Adult: 419.00 (USD) | Child: 419.00 (USD) The webpage is RCI Then choose "reserve shore excursions" at the bottom of the page. You don't need a reservation to access it.

Thanks guys, we leave early Monday morning, so I'll probably post through Sunday night. We'll be back May 9th. Got to start packing.

That's a Dos XX's for John G. The big cat is one of the Fury Cats, one of our favourite Caribbean excursions. :grin:

On a 15 day repositioning cruise I wouldn't expect too many children, especially at that time of year. For excursions , it depends on ports. Some ports you can explore by yourself, others I would take a ship excursion. For instance, St Thomas, Aruba, Acapulco, go by yourself. Puntarenas, take a ships tour. We did a Princess LA to FLL through the Canal and really had a great time. Next week we leave on Serenade of the Seas, San Juan to San Diego. I would not rent a tux, but would recommend buying one. After two to three cruises it's paid for. Also a repositioning cruise tends to be a little more dressy than a regular 7 nighter, an older clientel. Is Paradise still "Non Smoking"? I thought I read somewhere that it had reverted back to a conventional staus.

It's definitely Caribbean, and I'm sure that most of you have been there.

Sounds as if that takes away all the fun of hunting for your own photos.