Tag: family

Hello MSC Divina, We’re Back!!

It’s been almost a year since our last sailing on the Divina, and being that this has proven to be one of our favorite ships, I’m glad we’re getting a chance to check it out again and see how things compare to our past 3 experiences. It also gives me a chance to see how my “is the MSC Divina right for you post” has aged.

Kicking things off, embarkation. Generally, this is supposed to be a non-eventful part of the trip, just something you have to deal with in order to get to the fun, but checking in to the Divina for this sailing, I have to say was pretty frustrating. We decided to arrive later than our normal 11am-12pm time that we shoot for in the hopes of a crowd-free stroll on to the ship, this time arriving at the port around 2pm. Didn’t quite work out that way. After breezing through security, we arrived in the lobby to find one of the longest check-in lines I recall seeing for any cruise (if you follow us on social media, you may have seen my pictures of it). Upon entering the line, you’re split off into one of two separate lanes by someone working there, and we definitely ended up in the worst one. After about an hour, we got close enough to see what was going on. For some reason, the line next to us had roughly 12 people serving the check in counter, while we had 4. The girl working the front of our line saw the issue and on several occasions walked over to (what appeared to be) supervisors behind the counter to get things sorted, but each time I saw, her concerns were just met with shrugs. At one point they did open a couple more stations on our side, but usually only to relieve someone else leaving. By the time we got up there (almost an hour an a half after we got in line), there were only 2 people actively working our line. We actually tracked a couple of people who arrived an hour after us that ended up in the other line, and they made it to the check-in counter 10 minutes before we did. Ouch. Score one for the Yacht Club embarkation experience.

Once on, we dropped our carry-ons in one of our rooms and headed for a late lunch. Thankfully the pizza station had plenty of the four cheese variety that I love of theirs, so I grabbed a couple of pieces and found a table for us at the back of the ship. We wished we’d also grabbed some dessert at that point, as we arrived at that station a while later to find most of it (the things we wanted, anyway) had been cleaned up already. I guess the lesson here is to go back to our early boarding time so we don’t miss out on buffet items in the event of slow check-in!

After the required safety drill, we headed to guest services to change out our room cards. There are four of us in two separate rooms this trip, and we decided that morning to change up who was staying where, so after a short wait in line, the woman working the desk got us set up with the appropriate keys. As far as the rooms go, we’re happy with what we have. We booked inside rooms through the travel agent program, but early on logged in to find out we’d been upgraded to balcony rooms. They’re at opposite ends of the ship, but that’s perfectly fine, I’m very happy to have a balcony 😊. Bayley and I are in a forward cove balcony, cabin 9054, while Jen and her mom are in an aft balcony, 10275. While the aft balcony is very roomy (really deep) and has my favorite view on a ship, the one downside seems to be lack of airflow. It’s been pretty hot and humid out on theirs, so I like that I’ve got the cove to come back to, as it has plenty of airflow. My only issue with cove balconies is the lack of view, with the bottom half being steel instead of glass. No complaints here though, it’s a balcony we weren’t expecting, and it’s comfortable! I do have 360 shots of both rooms and will post them after I get back, as I’m currently having issues with the Ricoh Theta software preventing me from uploading full 360 shots.

For dinner, we’ve got late seating in Villa Rosa at the back of the ship. This is a welcome change of venue, since we had Black Crab on our first Divina sailing in 2015, and felt it was too crowded. We do prefer early seating, but decided to stick with this, as we also have a dining package that allows us to eat in three of the specialty restaurants, so we won’t be eating at 8:30 every night. After last night’s dinner in the MDR, however, I’m pleased to say that so far our dinner experience is vastly improved over our 2015 sailing. Our waiters were great last night, and the full meal took just over an hour, far better than the 2+ hours we averaged on that 2015 sailing. Last night’s food was pretty good too, but then again, I went with the pasta for my first two courses, and as we know, being an Italian line, they definitely know how to do pasta!

The evening saw us head to the Black and White Lounge for the entertainment staff intro. Pretty sure they used to do a game here, so a little disappointed it wasn’t something like that, but still fun, and there were plenty of people out on the floor dancing, so a good time was had by all!

Our first full day aboard also happens to be a sea day, one that we used to relax and let go of some of the line stress from the past couple of days (we visited Animal Kingdom the day before we boarded). We started off with breakfast in the buffet, and every time I eat at the buffet on board, I’m reminded of another reason I love Yacht Club. Eating breakfast up at The One Pool is so much more relaxing, as you’re not subject to the standard buffet crowds. The passenger behavior at the breakfast buffet this morning, complete with people using their hands to put food back on the buffet, made our lunch decision easy, skip the buffet and head to the MDR! Come on people, there’s a certain etiquette around food that just makes things better for everyone.

Our activities today were pretty standard; lost a couple rounds of trivia, Bayley played in the foosball tournament, we wandered the ship a bit, and of course attended tonight’s show, The Mask. It seemed like they’ve changed up the show quite a bit, which is a good thing. As I’ve mentioned in the past, we do enjoy their shows, and tonight’s performance was just as entertaining as part ones. Oh, I almost forgot, we also attended bingo this afternoon, and were happy to see the bingo boys are still around! I always worry that someone’s going to decide that it’s too juvenile and cut it, but frankly things like this are a big part of the allure of MSC for us. It’s nice to see an entertainment team that’s trying to have fun, and not just going through the motions.

One other change for us on this trip, we’re actually eating at some of the specialty restaurants! With the dining packages they have, it just seemed like too good of a deal to pass up. We’d talked about it on past trips, but enjoyed the food and service so much in Yacht Club on the last two that we never got around to it. Tonight, with nothing on the MDR menu that we were all excited about, we hit Eataly Steakhouse. With the dining package you get one appetizer, one entrée, and one dessert per person. As you can see in the picture, I went with the beef carpaccio, filet mignon (ordered medium rare and cooked perfectly), and for dessert, the bomboloni, which is three donuts with vanilla ice cream. It was all excellent, well worth the price of admission. The cannoli was Jen’s and it too was delicious!

We closed out the evening in the Black and White Lounge once again, this time for the Stardust dance competition. As with our last sailing, Bayley ended up being a judge for this, as knowing a member or two of the entertainment team has its advantages 😊. Good stuff, I always love watching events like this, and have nothing but respect for anyone willing to get up in front of a crowd like this and have fun on the dance floor. There are things I’ll participate in during the week, but this just isn’t one. Partly due to a foot injury I’m dealing with, but mostly because I just flat out can’t dance.

That about does it for our opening day and a half. We’ve got three ports on tap, starting with Jamaica! We’re spending the day on the beach at Sandals, so I expect to be completely wiped out by the time we board tomorrow afternoon. Stay tuned, there’s more fun to come from the MSC Divina! Be sure to follow us on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter to check out the ship and activities!

Sailing with Disney – A Day at Sea

A look back at our final day aboard the Disney Dream. Sea days are the best!

The final day of our sailing on the Disney Dream was also a sea day, something we always look forward to. On a normal ship, that means the occasional activity mixed in with some resting out on deck, all things we love. On the Dream, the only sea day of the sailing brought a full schedule of fun!

First up was our reservation for brunch at Palo. We’d heard good things, so much so that spending the $30/pp on this was a no-brainer. We got up there a few minutes early, and were led over to the Meridian Lounge to relax while we waited. It didn’t take long, within a couple of minutes, they came to take us to our table. That’s where the awesome really began.

We were led to a nice table right by the window. Nothing beats good food with an ocean view! Our server came over, introduced herself, and took us on a tour of the buffet. This part is definitely a nice touch, as there are a wide variety of items on the tables, but it also kinda gets in the way when you’re up trying to get food and another group is on their buffet tour. Anyway, after our tour, she also covered the menu we could order various items from in addition to what was available at the buffet. The Disney Cruise Line Blog has a picture of it here.

In addition to enjoying the buffet items, we ordered a few things off of the printed menu. I had the buttermilk pancakes, which were some of the best I’ve ever had, along with the lasagna, which was delicious as well. Jen and Bayley tried what turned out to be an excellent flatbread that was half Italian sausage and half margherita, and both of them also had the Parmesan crusted chicken breast. The latter was so good that Bayley skipped finishing her meal off with dessert to have a second one. How often does a kid skip dessert for chicken?

We absolutely loved our meal and felt it was easily worth the cost. I have to say, if you only spend money on one specialty meal aboard the Dream, do it for brunch at Palo. I say that totally biased and without anything to compare it to, since it’s the only specialty meal we did, so keep that in mind :). Also remember that brunch at Palo is adults only.

After brunch, we had some time on our hands and decided to just walk around and see what was going on. While doing so, we managed to again run across whatever thing they were filming while we were out on deck:

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I’d still love to know what they were shooting! Shortly after, we made our way inside for baby racing. I can honestly say I’ve never seen this on a cruise ship before, and it was exactly what it sounds like. The only thing missing was people throwing money on the ground around the mat placing bets on the racers. I kid :), this was actually pretty entertaining to watch.

Shortly after a winning baby was crowned, we got what we came for, the character dance party! All of the main characters take turns in the spotlight on the stairs, while the others rotate to various positions in the lobby atrium area. It was pretty packed in there, and everyone seemed to be having a fun time. Definitely an activity I’d recommend for Disney fans young and old!

We had some time to kill after this, so we did a little more walking, thins time checking out the shops on board. Jen’s got a Pandora bracelet with a few Disney charms, so we wanted to check out the exclusives they had on board, and ended up adding one to her bracelet. This was also the only time we encountered service on the ship that didn’t live up to Disney standards, as the woman working the counter really wasn’t all that helpful or friendly. This is really the only staff encounter during our time on board that was sub-par. We made up for it shortly after, however, as the captain was signing autographs and posing for pics, so once the line cleared, we decided to jump in for a picture with him.

Bayley had been waiting for our next activity all week. As mentioned in a previous post, she loves the animation classes Disney does, and had been looking forward to drawing Stitch, which was the final animation class of the sailing. They obviously know this one is popular, because it was held in Animator’s Palate, and there were a lot of people there for it. We got a seat with a pretty good view of the instructor, but if you happen to be far away, don’t worry, they show what she’s doing on the screens around the restaurant. While drawing, Stitch even comes in to see what’s going on!

After finishing up the animation class, the next couple of hours were filled with a combination of character pictures, walking the ship, and attending one of the arts and crafts events. This one was held in Pub 687, which ended up being a poor choice of location. I was happy, as I finally got to have a beer in here, but it’s way too small of a venue for something like this, and resulted in an overcrowded pub. I saw more than one family come in for this, only to turn around and leave after seeing the lack of tables and line for supplies. That’s not to say it wasn’t a good time, just that a larger room would have been better.

I should note that the two character meet and greets we did during this time were with Stitch and Donald Duck, both of whom Bayley and Jen learned to draw in the on-board animation classes, so Bayley brought her pictures for them to sign. Both characters were excited to see pictures of themselves, and responded in various ways. Donald grabbed the one she did of him and held it up for the lobby to see, while Stitch couldn’t believe shed brought a picture of him, and proceeded to slide onto his belly on the floor to sign it. Definitely a nice touch 🙂

Our next major event after all of this was the final stage show of the cruise, Disney’s Believe. It’s a fun show with some fun acting and excellent singing. Once again, happy to oblige the ‘no photos or video’ rule, all I have is a shot from our seats, which gave us a full view of the action:

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After dinner was one of the coolest events of the cruise, if you’re in to Disney’s pin trading culture: Officer pin trading night! It’s exactly what it sounds like, an opportunity to trade pins with various officers of the ship! It was a lot of fun, and for anyone sailing on Disney that’s never done this, here are a few recommendations:

  1. Bring a lot of pins you want to trade with you. They’re not picky, they’ll take any cheap pin in trade for anything they’ve got!
  2. There’s a mobile box out there where you can also buy pins. The person running it has lanyards full of trading pins behind that, and they will occasionally swap out with officers participating in the event who may have traded away all the good stuff, which gives them fresh good pins to trade. Keep an eye out for the swaps, as the fresh lanyards generally have some good stuff. Bayley got a number of excellent pins this way!
  3. Have fun!

It’s really an awesome event, and wasn’t super packed, at least not as much as I expected. It’s held in the little rotunda outside the shops, which seemed to be a perfect fit size-wise.

Dinner was next on the schedule, moving us to Royal Palace this time around. I love the venue, and service was a bit quicker tonight. The food itself was pretty good, as I had a double serving of the breaded and deep-fried Brie (sooooo good), the Chateaubriand roasted filet steak, and the Grand Marnier souffle for dessert, always a favorite of mine.

After dinner, we finally got around to our night-time ride aboard the AquaDuck. As mentioned before, this is easily the best waterslide at sea we’ve been on, and taking a run or two down it at night is an absolute must!

Following our Aquaduck rides, we weren’t done yet! We decided to catch the magician’s show in Evolution. John Cassidy’s show is definitely worth catching, he’s both a good magician and funny to boot! For one of his tricks, Bayley ended up on stage helping out, too!

We also hung out for the ’80’s music challenge, which was an absolute blast. No pictures or video of this, as we were participating. The room is divided up into two teams, and you take turns guessing what the song name and artist are for a given clip. Additionally, both teams then hit the floor to dance for bonus points, and the more creative, the more bonus points you get. At one point, we were crowd-surfing Bayley around the room. Fun times, and our host Chris was great!

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Well, that’s about all for our final day on the ship, and proved to be an excellent way to wrap up an incredible sailing aboard the Disney Dream! Next up, our debark experience and final thoughts on this cruise!

Sailing with Disney – Pirate Night!

Pirate night is one of the busiest nights on a Disney Cruise. What’s it like? Read on!

After a little rest following our fun on Castaway Cay, it was time for pirate night aboard the Disney Dream! This is another part of the cruise we’d been looking forward to, as we’d even picked up some Disney-themed pirate shirts for this night while we were at Downtown Disney a couple weeks earlier. Disney also leaves you Mickey-themed ‘Pirates in the Caribbean’ bandannas to wear as well, as we found out when we got back to our room!

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First on the night’s agenda, pictures with Captain Hook and Mr Smee! These took place down in the little rotunda outside the shops, and there really wasn’t too bad of a line:

We walked the shops a little during that time, and one little tip for those who want to participate but didn’t have a chance to pick up pirate shirts or gear prior to sailing: There’s plenty on-board. Disney knows it’s worth stocking the stores on pirate night, and they had a pretty good selection of shirts, hats, and other pirate garb.

At this point, it should have been show time for us, but based on the schedule, we decided to skip it. It wasn’t a Disney show, it was one with the on-board magician, and while I’m sure we’d have enjoyed the show, we wanted to partake in as much pirate goodness we could. As such, we also decided to skip eating in our assigned dining room (a repeat of Enchanted Garden) and instead headed for the buffet to try and save time. On arriving, we encountered a twist we’d never seen with any other ship’s buffet before: it was table service, and pirate themed at that. The service was outstanding, and while the food was good, I’d have preferred to have had a full buffet selection vs a smaller table service menu. We went to the buffet for a reason, to shorten our dinner time, and table service doesn’t really accomplish that.

After dinner it was time for the first pirate show, so we headed up to deck 12 to get a good spot overlooking the stage. Having decided on a faster dinner, we got a pretty solid spot that gave us a clear view of the entire deck below, and even allowed us to participate in the pre-show fun. They have various cast members dressed in pirate garb walking around  deck 11 playing various games with the guests. In our case, Bayley played ring toss with one of the girls. In addition, there was some pirate ship basketball going on a little farther aft on 11:

The first show, named Mickey’s Pirate Academy, was more targeted at the younger kids, and was a musical show that taught them the necessary steps to be pirates in Mickey’s crew. As you can see from the video, it’s a typical high-energy show Disney that the kids seemed to be enjoying!

Once over, we had a bit of time on our hands before the show that opens the fireworks, so we headed inside and walked around a little before getting in line for pictures with Pirate Stitch. Bayley’s always been a huge Stitch fan, and waiting for this was a no-brainer for her. We got there early enough to only be 78 people back in line, but this line did get and stay pretty long, so if you have plans to get pictures with pirate Stitch, get there early! Right below Stitch was Pirate Minnie, so we ended up getting pictures at both places! Those lower lines had been pretty long at one point as well, so we were happy to at least get shots with Minnie!

Shortly after, we ran in to the cruise director, who in my opinion had the best costume of the night. I’ll add that there were a number of guests in some pretty good costumes, but living on the ship, especially in an entertainment role has its benefits, one of those being that you have a reason to go all out for your theme costumes :).

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After all of our pictures, the time had finally come for the fireworks! We headed outside and found ourselves a spot a little over halfway back in the pool area on deck 11 (which they cover for these shows). In hindsight we probably should have gotten there earlier to get a little closer, or even aimed for the starboard side of deck 12 to keep the water slides out of our view. No matter, the spot still wasn’t bad, and we were able to sit down for the show and fireworks and still see all of it. Note that deck 13 aft was closed for this show, so don’t assume that area will be open if you want to see fireworks from there.

The pre-fireworks show was a Pirates of the Caribbean themed show where Jack battles for possession of some, for lack of a better work, magical wrist guard, which is billed as the ultimate weapon. The show is fine, but went on a little too long in my opinion. Most of it was made up of the bracelet going back and forth between Jack and those trying to get it. A long game of keep-away, basically. We really just wanted to get to the fireworks, so we were happy when they finally began. As you can see, even sitting in the back half of the open area on deck 11, we were able to have a pretty clean view of the show:

Not a bad show, especially on a moving ship at sea! Once again, Disney does not disappoint! That wasn’t the end of the night, either, we still had a couple of things going on, starting with the 10:45 pirate themed buffet! As soon as the fireworks ended, we headed up and grabbed some food, eager to get to our final event of the night. One thing I might not have mentioned yet is that Disney has a pretty large movie theater on-board, equipped with a solid snack bar. They do charge for items on the snack bar, but they also allow you to bring in other food, including stuff from the buffet, so all three of us had loaded buffet plates, including some dessert crepes, tacos, and other goodness.

The nice thing about the theater is that it plays some popular movies from the Disney catalog along with a first-run movie or two, so on pirate night, our goal was to see the new Pirates of the Caribbean while sailing in the Caribbean on pirate night, and by the time we got there, we realized we weren’t the only ones! The theater was pretty full, but we managed to find 3 seats down low and spent a couple of hours enjoying a movie that had only released days earlier while eating our buffet food. All in all, not a bad night!

A successful pirate night behind us, we headed back to the room to get some rest for our last day on the ship, which just happened to be a sea day! Next up, all the fun we had on that final day aboard the Disney Dream!

 

A Short Sailing on Hurtigruten’s MS Nordnorge

After finishing up our stay at the Snowhotel, it was time to board Hurtigruten’s MS Nordnorge for the cruise portion of our trip. As you may have read in an earlier post, things didn’t quite go as planned, and we ended up getting off of the ship after only 36 hours. Nothing’s changed with my feelings on what went down both onboard the ship and since then, but we’ll get to that later. For now, I wanted to offer up what I feel is a fair review of our time onboard.

Getting from the Snowhotel to the ship was a breeze. Hurtigruten has excursions that allow you to tour the hotel when they’re in port in Kirkenes, so we were just able to hop on one of the tour buses when it returned to the ship around noon, and do so without charge, which was nice. Upon arriving at the ship, we wren’t quite sure where to go to check in, assuming we needed to find a building outside of the ship to head into. Wrong! We were told to take our luggage and board the ship, checking in once we got up the ramp. Check-in was an absolute breeze, too. We handed over our passports, she looked up our reservations, and handed us our stateroom keys. No real line, just get your stateroom key, set up your on-board account, and head to your room with your luggage. All in all it may have taken 20 minutes, counting the time we spent waiting on the people in front of us complaining about various things.

Once we checked in, we immediately headed to our cabins to drop our stuff. We had two cabins in two different categories, with Bayley having her own room on deck 3, a Polar Outside room, and Jen and I on deck 5 in an Arctic Superior. Both rooms were fine. Well appointed, comfortable, but a little small compared to your average cruise ship room, and quite lacking in storage space.

As for how a sailing on Hurtigruten compares to other cruises we’ve been on, well, it doesn’t. We knew going in that it wouldn’t, we selected this specifically because it wasn’t your average cruise. They bill it more of an adventure/exploration sailing, as your journey takes you through a number of ports between Kirkenes and Bergen. Some of the stops are short stays of 30min or less, designed to deliver supplies and/or ferry people/cars, so in those ports you’re not getting off the ship, but at the longer stops, you can walk around town, join an excursion if one’s available in that port, or even join the expedition team on an adventure in the area. That last one depends on whether or not your ship has an expedition team, which ours did. We actually put in a lot of time planning the whole trip around ensuring that we were on a refurbished ship that also had an expedition team. Well, that really didn’t end up paying off, did it? 🙂

After boarding and grabbing some lunch in the buffet, we checked out the various decks on-board. The ship itself was really nice. There are 7 decks, with deck 1 being the crew’s deck, and not available for passengers to visit. Half of deck 2 is where the cars are stored while in transit, also not open to guests. That leaves 5.5 passenger decks, with most of your time as a passenger likely spent on deck 4 (restaurant, guest services/excursion desk, shops), deck 5 (outside deck where you can walk around the entire ship), or deck 7 (panoramic lounge, bakery, sun deck). I would have thrown deck 6 in there for the outdoor jacuzzis, but they weren’t operational. Local law requires video surveillance in place, which they had yet to install.

Around 4pm, those of us who boarded in Kirkenes (around 40 people, maybe) met in the conference room on deck 4 for the required safety briefing. That mainly consisted of a video showing us what to do in the event of an emergency, including how to put on the cold water survival suits, yet another reminder you’re not in the Caribbean! During this meeting, the expedition team also gave us a little talk on what their purpose was on-board, and what sort of talks they’d be giving over the course of this sailing. Because of the change in itinerary, they were also responsible for giving us information on what had changed, what the compensation for the change was, and also hosted a Q&A on the changes. Frankly, this is where things started to go off the rails. During the Q&A, one of the other groups onboard expressed serious displeasure at the reason for the change, which was met with a very non-empathetic “well, you get to see the scenery”. Considering we chose this to be able to stop at a number of towns along the way, most of which were now cancelled, that response just made things more tense. If you take a look at the southbound map, you’ll understand. After Tromso, all stops until Bergen were cancelled. At this point, we didn’t realize we’d also be missing key stops before Tromso, too. Yikes.

After the meeting broke, we headed to the excursions desk to see about signing up for the midnight snowmobile excursion, something we were really looking forward to. That’s when we found out that we were getting close to some heavy wind, and that as a result we’d likely be missing the ports involved, as you get off in one port and rejoin in the next one after finishing up the excursion. While it was extremely disappointing, bad weather happens, regardless of where you’re sailing. That meant the only excursion we still had a shot at on the entire sailing was the midnight concert in the arctic cathedral once we got to Tromso the next day. I’m pretty sure that’s when all 3 of us started considering our options for leaving the ship.

After the disappointment at the excursions desk, we headed to our rooms to unpack before dinner. At some point during that time, we did head up to the sun deck for the first expedition team talk during our time on-board. This ended up being somewhat disappointing, as it was almost impossible to hear her unless you were right up front near her. We saw several people around us walk away indicating the same issue. I did catch some of it, with information on the area and birds that you might see if you were looking. I think it lasted 20-30 minutes max. Honestly, I found the idea of an on-board expedition team more exciting than the reality of it. I pictured a small team that in addition to giving the talks, could, at any minute, throw you into a zodiac and head to land for some snowshoeing up a mountain, vs a team that basically was on board to give short talks and walk around towns giving local history. Not saying that’s bad, just not what I think I was expecting. We didn’t sit in on any other talks during our short time on-board, and didn’t follow them around at either of our stops, so I can’t speak to anything beyond that initial meeting and talk.

At some point in here (it may have happened before the talk, I don’t quite remember), we had our first stop in Vardo. This was a short one, about 45 minutes, so we took the short walk over to Vardøhus Fortress, about the only scenery available in that amount of time. It was a pretty icy walk, so we were glad we had our ice grips with us! The expedition team also led a walk over there for anyone who wanted to go, giving a history of the place along the way, but we did it on our own.

Dinner was up next, and was delicious. I was expecting fish to be served every night, but our first night on the ship actually brought us some more reindeer, this time a filet. While I’m here, I should cover eating on board overall, too. All meals are in the restaurant at the back of deck 4. Breakfast and lunch are buffets, and are seafood heavy, which we completely expected. Dinner is a typical 3 course meal, and is the only time you have an assigned seat in here. When entering the restaurant, you are supposed to use provided antibiotic gel, similar to other lines, and you also have to scan your room card, so that the kitchen knows how much food to prepare. This is true for every meal, as they’re trying to avoid a lot of food waste. There’s no special dress code for dinner, just wear what you had on during the day, and no formal nights. It was nice not having to take a second set of clothes for dinner! No way could we have pulled that off having only taken one suitcase each.

We’d entered the windy portion of the cruise prior to dinner, so Jen and Bayley were already feeling pretty uneasy. After dinner, we headed back to the room so they could rest a bit. It was at that point when we decided staying on the boat really wasn’t an option. After discussing where we would want to spend our time after getting off in Tromso, I spent an hour or so looking at flights and hotels for that intended itinerary before approaching the guest services desk to ask about the possibility of getting off the ship. Frankly, we could have done so without asking, all we had to do was close out our on-board account and check out right before debarking, so upon learning that, I spent another 2-3 hours Sunday night getting everything booked while the girls attempted to rest and feel better. I briefly covered the new itinerary in the vacation reset post, and will be covering each stop in upcoming posts, too. Honestly, I don’t remember doing much else that night, other than dealing with booking stuff and trying to get answers out of guests services on a refund of our cruise fare. Frankly, I found dealing with the on-board guest services manager to be a pretty frustrating experience.

The next morning, after a little breakfast in the main dining room, we continued on our quest to get our refund sorted out, and figure out if they were going to cover our hotel stay in Tromso. It had been offered the day before, and if they were going to offer, we were going to take them up on it. Unfortunately, that didn’t quite come to pass as expected. Knowing Tromso was a popular town, and seeing that there weren’t many rooms left when I searched the night before, I’d already held one, as our existing experiences with their customer service left me feeling like they weren’t going to come through, and I was right.

The wind was still pretty bad, with us hitting gale force conditions overnight, and continuing on into the morning, so the girls spent part of the morning resting in the room while I explored the ship a little, trying to stay upright in the process. At some point, we also had our final stop we could get off the ship at before Tromso, in Hammerfest. We were here for about 90 minutes, if I recall, long enough to check out the area around the port, so we took advantage of it. We just walked around, checking out a few stores, and stopping in a delicious little cafe for some hot chocolate. Bayley and I agreed that they had some of the best (if not the best) hot chocolate we’ve ever had. If you’re in Hammerfest, stop in and give Cafe Cozy a try!

The rest of our day onboard was pretty uneventful. It pretty much consisted of packing, resting, walking the ship, trying to get an answer on our hotel out of guest services, and eating. Dinner was some fish none of us were really interested in trying, so we actually paid to eat at the little cafe mid-ship on deck 4. Jen and I had pizza, while Bayley got a burger. Not bad, to be honest. After dinner, I headed over to guest services one last time to settle our on-board account. It was “fun” having that handled by the same guest services manager who had promised more than once that day to get back to us on the hotel issue, only to have her not even acknowledge she recognized us as I checked out. Personally, all I ever wanted was a full refund, so I was ready to move on with life and enjoy the rest of the trip.

Around 11:30pm, we pulled into Tromso as scheduled, with the 3 of us hanging out on deck 4 with our backpacks, ready to debark. They do have a luggage room on deck 3 near reception, so after vacating our room around 8:30pm, we’d stashed our suitcases there. After waiting for the crowd to debark, we gathered our suitcases and debarked the ship one last time. Our hotel was around a quarter mile away, so we bid farewell to the ship, and headed out into the snowy center of town, excited about what was in store!

I’m sure a sailing on a Hurtigruten ship under normal circumstances is a cool experience, but in this case, it was 36 hours we were all happy to forget. In an odd twist of fate, we actually ran in to a large group of remaining passengers on Friday while walking around Bergen, so Jen decided to walk over and talk to one of them. Sounds like we made the right call in getting off, as they had at least one more rough day, and the last couple of days weren’t all that fun in general. None of them looked all that happy, and I’m sure it didn’t help that they were all standing in the rain outside the Neptune hotel Hurtigruten had put them up at waiting on a bus to the airport, also provided by the line.

One piece of advice I’d like to add to anyone thinking of sailing Hurtigruten: do your homework, and know what you’re getting in to. That’s not a knock on them at all, that’s a statement based on one family we ran into several times. They’d brought their 3 kids, all under 12ish, and seemed really miserable. When we first checked in, we were behind them in line at reception listening to them complain about the lack of kids activities on the ship and affordable excursions on land. It was quite obvious that either they didn’t research this, or if they used a travel agent, he/she didn’t do it for them. This isn’t a traditional cruise line, and really isn’t meant for young kids in my opinion. Based on our research and what we saw on-board, these are things that should absolutely infuence your decision if you plan on bringing a family:

  • There is no kids club, and there aren’t any kids activities.
  • There aren’t a lot of crew-led activities in general, outside a small number of expedition talks each day (if your ship has an expedition team)
  • Some excursions do tend to cost more than what you’d see on most US-based cruises
  • The average passenger age is probably over 50
  • There are a lot of potential add-on charges, including the water package for meals, WiFi (which was reasonable, and pretty fast), among other things. Work with your travel agent or Hurtigruten rep to be sure you understand them all ahead of time.

This is all stuff we knew and expected going in, but we also spent a lot of time researching what to expect. I’m sure I missed a few things here, too. Regardless, I went in thinking this would be a life-changing, bucket list type of thing, so the way it turned out was a huge disappointment to me. The idea of getting off of any cruise ship early had never crossed my mind, and to have to do it here was crushing, but led to some incredible memories that will be discussed in upcoming posts. Additionally, it’s taken a ton of time and effort after we got home to finally get someone in customer service to actually respond to us (copying a couple of key executives on an email tends to do that), but it looks like we have agreement from them for a full refund of the original fare, which was all I ever wanted in the first place, and we all felt was more than warranted given the reason for the changes.

I’ve probably gone on long enough here, so if you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments, and enjoy a few more pictures from our time aboard!

A Night in the Kirkenes Snow Hotel – Part 2

Ever wonder what it’s like to sleep in an igloo? Read on!

After finishing up with the dog sledding covered in my last post, we walked around the facilities a little more, stopping to see all of the dogs and resting a bit before the actual Snowhotel program started. An important thing to note here is that there are two sides to this place:

  • The Gamme cabins, which are heated and I’m sure provide amazing views via their panoramic windows
  • The actual Snowhotel, comprised of ~20 rooms carved out of snow/ice connected by a long walkway, which ends at the ice bar.

We chose the colder option and booked a room in the Snowhotel. If we were going to make the trip up there, we were definitely going to make it worthwhile! This isn’t like checking in to a regular hotel, as the program is specific and has set times when you can be in your room. You also don’t drop your luggage off in your room on arrival, it’s shuttled from the small building at the entrance to the luggage room, located in the main building at the far end of the snowhotel and held there throughout your stay, but more on that later.

So how does this work? Well, at around 5pm, everyone staying in the Snowhotel met in Gabba restaurant near the dog sledding area to find that out! Upon arrival, we took a seat and were given a brief history of the facility, along with a basic timeline of events for the evening. Snowhotel guests pretty much do everything together, including eating dinner and breakfast, so we were all on the same schedule. While in Gabba, we also had the chance to cook more reindeer sausage for ourselves as a little pre-dinner snack. Yummy!

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After finishing up in Gabba, we headed over to feed the reindeer. On arriving at the platform, we were all given some food and were able to reach over the fence to feed any that came our way. The reindeer knew what was coming, and were more than happy to take the food off our hands.

After the feeding, we had some time to walk through all the Snowhotel rooms, but having done this earlier in the day when no one else was in there, we used it as a little downtime before dinner, and just walked around outside a little more. Here are a few of the other rooms that I’d shot earlier in the day:

At dinner time, everyone met in the first floor dining room for the group dinner. We had a set table where the 20 or so of us staying in the Snowhotel sat. Now, one thing I’ve never mentioned here is that I’m not a seafood guy. Like at all. Before this trip, the last time I’d really eaten fish was well over 20 years ago. I knew going in to this trip that I’d likely be stuck eating seafood at least one, if not most nights on the trip, it’s the nature of being in a coastal country known for it. This was one of those night. On the menu:

  • Reindeer carpaccio
  • Arctic Char with potatoes
  • Ice cream with caramel sauce
  • Northern Light (hot cocoa with peppermint liquer – we ordered this as an extra)

It was all really good, including the fish. While I didn’t eat all of the char, I ate quite a bit of it, and was surprised at how good it tasted. Congrats to the Snowhotel on getting me to like a seafood dish!

After dinner we had a bit of free time before bed, so we walked around the complex a bit, followed by a visit to the ice bar. It’s exactly what it sounds like, a bar made entirely out of ice. Only being open for an hour, we got there pretty early, and found our bartender all set up and ready to serve. With Bayley having just turned 21, she partook in a few drinks with me. We opted for a 4-shot package, where he poured Bayley and I each 4 different shots, telling a story with each. I really wish I could remember those stories, but no such luck. I can say that it was pretty fun, and included 5th shot at no charge, with him also giving Bayley a 6th “birthday” shot for free. Drinking at an ice bar was an awesome experience, one we all enjoyed and won’t soon forget. Our excellent bartender made it that much better 🙂

I almost forgot, when you’re done with each drink, you have to clean up after yourself, which consists of smashing your shot glass (also made solely of ice) on the bar. Nice touch :). Here’s a little Boomerang of Bayley “cleaning up” after one of her shots!

When it came time for bed, the real fun began. First, you head in to the luggage room and grab what you want to change in to. One key thing here is that you do not want to overdo it with what you wear. My dog sledding guide had warned me that when she stayed in the hotel, she overdressed and was hot most of the night, so I just grabbed a short sleeved t-shirt, and my flannel pajama pants. After changing, we each grabbed a sleeping kit, which consisted of a thermal sleeping bag, sheets (basically a bag made out of sheets that you put yourself in), a balaclava, and some heavy wool socks. Here are a couple of shots of the area where the kit items are, the sleeping bags, and the showers:

At that point, everything else you have goes back in to your luggage, and you head to your room with your sleeping kit and boots to get ready for bed. Once you arrive at your room, it’s a matter of getting into the sheet “bag” (felt like I was getting ready for a potato sack race), and then into the sleeping bag. This part was harder than I expected. After laying down in the sleeping bag, it took a lot of effort to get into the sleeping bag properly to ensure you could get it zipped up and cinched around your head properly. Once complete, however, we were ready for bed. Here’s a 360 degree look around the room with us all bundled up and laying down:

I slept pretty good most of the night, and that sleeping bag definitely keeps you warm, even though you’re laying on a bed carved from ice! The most common question we’ve been asked is: what happens if you need to get up during the night to go to the bathroom? Well, you get out of your bags, put your shoes on, and walk the hall (inside, but still in the snowhotel) to the main building. Sure, you may get a little cold in the hall, but once you’re back, it’s into the warmth of the sleeping bag once again.

The next morning, if you’re still asleep at 7:30, a woman comes in ringing a bell to wake you up, as you still have a schedule to keep. This is where I can see it getting pretty busy, too. Once awake, you grab your sleeping kit and make your way back to the main building. At this point you’re basically getting ready for breakfast, and yes, there are showers with warm water as shown in a previous picture, but when the hotel is full, it could easily feel crowded in here, as the luggage area and bathrooms are really only sized for 4-7 people max in my opinion. It wasn’t really bad for us, as some people had gotten up earlier, and some were still making their way up the hall.

After getting dressed, it was time for breakfast. We all headed to the same little restaurant we’d eaten dinner at, just that this time with the sun up we could see the amazing view out the panoramic window. Breakfast itself was pretty good, with a selection of breads, meats, cheeses, and some eggs and bacon. All delicious!

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Once breakfast is over, that’s pretty much it for a single night program in the Snowhotel. You’re still welcome to make use of the facilities until departure, and with some time before we had to head to the ship in Kirkenes, we made use of it. Another nice thing at the Snowhotel is the use of the snow equipment. You can take out snowshoes and/or cross-country skis at no additional cost, so after walking around and petting the dogs again, complete with a visit to see the 3-4 week old puppy, we went snowshoeing! We put some of their cold weather gear on, grabbed the snowshoes, and stopped at the entrance building to see where the trail was. I admit we didn’t stay out long, but we got quite the workout. It’s a hilly trail, and not being used to walking in these things, we were all exhausted after about 45 minutes or so.

After we got back and returned the gear, we relaxed in Gabba for a few minutes before it was time to head out on our bus. Looking back on our time at the Snowhotel, it couldn’t have provided a better start to the trip. We loved every second of it, and if you’re headed to Norway during the winter, I highly recommend a trip up here, it’s well worth the money and will provide memories that last a lifetime!

In my next post, I’ll be covering our (very) brief time on Hurtigruten’s MS Nordnorge, so stay tuned. In the meantime, enjoy a few more pics of the Snowhotel!