This year, I mostly went out of curiosity for the new boat, but the cruise ended up great with some major hiccups.
- I finally got to meet some forumites (after almost 5 years) and either I was late or not a lot of people showed up
- almost all the shows I went to were awesome, except for the first Apocalyptica show: waited 40 minutes to start, almost fell asleep twice during waiting and when they finally started playing all i could hear were drums (was sitting top left when viewing the stage)
If I rate Majesty 10/10 after 3 cruises, I can't give more than 4 to Liberty and here's why:
- on Majesty, I would go up to Viking Crown whenever (even 9 am) and I would get a drink, on Liberty, I went to Viking crown at 1pm, asked for a coctail menu and the bartender said:"no menu, don't know when we open." And that was during meet & greet when people were bound to drink. I went up to Viking crown that day twice and all I saw was people sitting behind empty tables and no bartender in sight
- on the first day, I waited 20 minutes in Sorrento's, just to have some "manager" cut in front of me and tell the staff there to "close it up, we can't handle it". Luckily, some other guy who outranked this "manager" said they should stay open no matter what
- bars were closing so early, I couldn't grasp that fact. It felt like RC didn't want my money. I ended up spending $200 less than I expected because of this
- food in Windjammer wasn't bad, but compared to Majesty it was terribad. No diversity (anyone remembers thematic lunches and dinners on Majesty, from different parts of the world?). One day there was actually same food for dinner than it was for lunch (ribs)
- there were no people running around, trying to get an order from me like on Majesty. Hell, there was even less people with carts filled with alcohol
- some bartenders acted like metal heads shouldn't be on their boat. Snappy and rude.
- Martha in Boleros (coctail mixer) was almost as good and kind as Leonora in Majesty's Viking Crown
As far as UMC goes:
- I felt sorry for the people who waited hours in line for merch. This year I went as late as possible and got all the shirts I wanted (was positively surprised to see Refuge merch and negatively surprised to not see (yet again) Annihilator merch)
- please, please, please, announce all the bands no later than December, so people can get familiar with all the bands and maybe buy themselves some new CDs for X-mas
- great running order, no conflicts for me except I missed bot Divided Multitude show, but I'll see them at MetalDays so no biggie there
Too all the cruises:
- in the future, remember not to have your SeaPass near your phone. At one time, when I was leaving my room, a girl brought a guy to her room for what could only be some sexy tiems just to cry out in despair when she couldn't open the door with her seapass, because it got demagnetized by her phone for the third time in two days