Cruise ship Vision of the Seas: profile, photo tour, interviews, menus

I was a little apprehensive before sailing on Vision of the Seas. In researching her beforehand, I read that the ship had never had a major refurbishment since entering service in 1998. This sounded unusual to say the least and I wondered if I would find some worn out and outdated ship upon boarding.

My concern turned out to be entirely unwarranted. The ship was in marvelous shape. In fact, I found her in better condition than her sisters in the Vision class that I have sailed. I saw no signs of wear. She does not have all the features of Allure of the Seas but then you can't really expect a smaller ship to offer such a panoply of features.

What Vision does offer instead is a cruise experience on a personal scale. Her size is conducive to interaction both with your fellow guests and with the officers and crew.

Vision has a good senior team as well. Captain Srecko Ban is a dynamic young officer who likes to interact with the passengers and to lead by example.

I met Joao Mendonca when he was Food and Beverage Manager on Allure of the Seas. There he played a key role in developing that ship's innovative dining operation. Now that he has been promoted to Hotel Director, his talents are being used to create memorable cruise experiences for Vision's passengers.

Vision is scheduled for her first major refurbishment in September 2013. This is part of a fleetwide program to roll out some of the features of Oasis of the Seas and Allure of the Seas to the rest of the Royal Caribbean fleet. The plans are ambitious and when completed will give guests on Vision more dining and entertainment options.

The transformers will have to be careful, however, to ensure that Vision does not lose the character and ambiance that she has today. Those are more valuable than physical features.

The home page for our profile of Vision of the Seas is at: http://beyondships.com/RCI-VOS-Profile.html

The photo tour and commentary about the ship begins at http://beyondships.com/RCI-VOS-tour-1.html

We also have a menus page with the new Royal Caribbean menus being used on Vision. http://www.beyondships2.com/vision-of-the-seas-menus.html

Our conversation with Captain Ban is at http://www.beyondships2.com/vision-of-the-seas-captain-interview.html

Mr. Mendonca talks about Vision today and outlines the changes that will be made during the refurbishment. http://www.beyondships2.com/vision-of-the-seas-interview-hotel-director.html

Talking with the Captain of Liberty of the Seas; Review of Chops Grille

For Liberty of the Seas, 2011 is a transformational year. The ship has already undergone a multi-million dollar refit that saw the addition of a number of new features to the ship. Her entertainment offerings have also been transformed with the addition of the Dreamworks Experience, 3-D movies and a full-length musical stage production of Saturday Night Fever. Finally, Liberty of the Seas’ itinerary has been transformed so that she is no longer a Caribbean cruise ship but a ship that has entered the more cosmopolitan atmosphere of the European cruise market.




The man in charge of guiding Liberty through this transformation is Captain Charles Teige. Captain Charles has been with Royal Caribbean for nearly 20 years. However, his approach to command is not rooted in the past. Rather, he is one of a growing number of cruise ship captain who view themselves as team leaders rather than as all powerful sovereigns. Captain Charles is personable and one who enjoys interacting with people, both his crew and the guests on Liberty of the Seas.



I recently had an opportunity to sit down with Captain Charles and talk about how Royal Caribbean has changed over the years, his style of command and the transformation of Liberty of the Seas. That interview is posted at http://www.beyondships.com/RCI-LOS-Captain.html



When I was onboard Liberty, I also tried out its specialty restaurant the Chops Grille. This is a relaxed steakhouse offering high quality meals. My review of the Chops Grille is at http://www.beyondships.com/RCI-LOS-Review-Chops.html

Talking with the Captain and Hotel Director of Jewel of the Seas

Captain James MacDonald was Jewel of the Seas first captain and has spent most of the last five years with the ship. Hotel Director Robert Taggart has only been with the ship for more than a year. Still, talking to both men one quickly sees that they regard Jewel as a special ship.

As a master mariner, Captain MacDonald’s focus was naturally on what makes Jewel special from a nautical perspective. Amongst other things, he pointed out her unique environmentally-friendly power plant and talked about her state-of-the-art propulsion that gives the ship the ability to obtain speeds rare for a cruise ship.

Mr. Taggart started his career on the Canadian Pacific liner Princess Patricia, which ship buffs will recall was the first ship sailed by Princess Cruises. His prior experience also includes time with Carnival and on the big Royal Caribbean ships including Adventure of the Seas. Thus, he has seen a great deal of the cruise industry. Yet, he sees Jewel’s spacious and elegant style as something unusual.

My interview with Captain McDonald appears at http://beyondships.com/RCI-JOS-MacDonald.html while my talk with Mr. Taggart is at http://beyondships.com/RCI-JOS-Taggart.html

Some items in the news that caught my eye which I thought I would pass on:

Star Princess and Sun Princess delivered relief supplies to tsunami victims in Apia, Samoa and Pago Pago, American Samoa. Princess Cruises Community Foundation is also donating $10,000 to the Red Cross for relief efforts in Samoa and American Samoa. Captain Edward Perrin, who I interviewed when he was on Grand Princess http://beyondships.com/GrandPrincess-Perrin.html , was in command of the Star Princess’ efforts.

NCL has announced that Captain Trygve Vorren, currently of Norwegian Jade, and Captain Hakan Svedung, currently of Norwegian Dawn, will be the captains of the forthcoming 4,200 passenger Norwegian Epic. In addition, the Hotel Directors will be Klaus Lugmaier and Sean Wurmhoeringer. The ship is currently under construction in France and will be undergoing sea trials in January. Her inaugural cruises are scheduled for June and July.

NCL also took the opportunity to highlight some features of the new ship. Among these will be performances by the Blue Man group and a restaurant where cirque acrobats will perform during dinner. There will also be an ice bar where guests will don faux fur coats and drink at a bar made of ice. Outside, the Aqua Park will feature a giant water slide in which guests will slide down a tube into a basin, whirl around and then drop through another tube. It is a long way from the days when shuffleboard was the main outdoor entertainment on ships.

Speaking of innovation, Celebrity Cruises hosted an event this week to highlight its new Celebrity Life program. Traditionally, onboard activities have been an array of offerings each of which bore only a slight relation to the other. Under Celebrity Life, the onboard activities are grouped into unified concepts. In addition, there are members of the activities staff with specific responsibilities for the discovery (i.e. enrichment) activities, savor (culinary-related) activities and renew (spa and health-related) activities. Activities relating to each program are indicated by icons on the daily program and guests can choose to participate in as many or as few as they want. I’ll be having more on this in November, when Beyondships presents an interview with Celebrity Senior VP for Hotel Operations Lisa Lutoff-Perlo along with an update of the Celebrity Constellation section of the site.

Costa Cruises was in New York showcasing its new Canada-New England cruises with Costa Atlantica. We’ll be adding a section to Beyondships dedicated to Costa Atlantica soon.

Also in New York recently was Cunard’s Queen Victoria. The ship was doing a New York-New England-Canada cruise from the U.K. and did an overnight in New York. This gave me the opportunity to do an interview with my old friend Captain Ian McNaught while the ship was here. Cunard used Queen Victoria’s calls in the U.S. and Canada to emphasize how important it regards this market. QV will return in 2011 with a series of U.S. cruises, mostly on the west coast.