After the wild rush to get ready for Christmas and having worked pretty much through from the time I returned to work to Christmas Eve, I finally have some downtime and some time for an update here. I am bursting with excitement. I did not want to say anything until the leave was confirmed as I did not want to jinx us, but this got sorted out on Christmas Eve.
I think you probably realised by now that
Royal Caribbean was a huge success for us. We loved the ship, the service and just about everything else about this cruise. This has opened up a whole new world for us. With Royal Caribbean having a fleet of 25 or so ships and itineraries covering just about every desirable corner of the world, the world was suddenly our oyster.
There was one thing that caught our eye straightaway. When we were discussing our trips for 2016, we decided on the Panama Canal cruise on the Wonder for May, but we also decided we would do something completely different in the second half of the year. We essentially came up with three options: Seychellest, Mauritius or Far East. In all honesty, I believed this to be between the Seychelles or Mauritius and I started to gather information on those. However, we have now decided on the Far East.
I had noticed even before our cruise that Royal Caribbean had an itinerary from Shanghai to Singapore in October. Shanghai made my heart jump as Shanghai
Disneyland should be open by then and Graham lived in Singapore as a child and this has been on our to do list ever since I have known Graham. So I decided that if we liked Royal Caribbean, this may be worth looking into. Looking into it we did and I liked the itinerary. One of the main drawing points for me was an overnight stop in Hong Kong and more specifically the chance that this would present me to see something of the city, but also to go to Disneyland Hong Kong. We were not in the position to do something about this on the cruise as I did not know how leave would pan out and this turned out to be a blessing.
When I looked at this again at home, I noticed that the itinerary had changed from that in the brochure. Instead of 2 days in Hong Kong, it was now just a little over half a day. I also read some reviews about the ship operating this cruise and there was not a single positive one. So I went back to the drawing board. I did find something that ticked all the boxes. This cruise was actually two days longer, left just over a month later and from Beijing. The ports of call are Shanghai, Okinawa, Hong Kong (overnight) and Ho Chi Minh before ending in Singapore. So this ticks all the boxes. I am not sure if I can squeeze in Disneyland Shanghai during this visit, but I will definitely look if this is possible once the park is open and more information is available.
The big pull however is Beijing. I am getting really excited about being able to visit The Great Wall of China, the Ming tombs, the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven (a replica of which is at Epcot) and Tiananmen Square. I am sure we will find plenty more that will take our fancy. The idea is that we will fly out on Saturday morning, which gets us into Beijing at about 7:00 AM local time on the Sunday. The flight is only 10.5 hours, but Beijing is 8 hours ahead of the UK. So most of Sunday will probably be spent asleep and then we will have 4 full days to explore and enjoy before heading to the port on the Friday.
There is one element missing and that is the ship. This aspect is slight scary. We now have sailed on 4 different ships, but size-wise they were all very similar and this is a size we are comfortable with. It is big enough to have a good range of facilities, but small enough to feel quite intimate. This time we will be on the Ovation of the Seas. The Ovation of the Seas is currently being built at Meyer Werft in Germany and is due to enter service in spring. She is a Quantum class ship so she is not quite as big as the Oasis of the Seas, which is the largest cruise ship in the world, but in size and capacity she is twice as big as the ships we are used to. I have to admit that this scares me a little. It will also be a brave new world in terms of facilities. The Ovation of the Seas will have an observation capsule, ice rink, bumper cars, flowrider and skydiving simulator. The whole concept just blows my mind. Whichever way I look at it, it will be an experience.
Corinna
I hope you had a fabulous cruise!!!
