Norway, Denmark, and the end of the Dream

Just returned from a seven-day cruise to Norway and Denmark.

Not the most glamorous destinations, I grant you, but we got a good deal and there was no risk of being engulfed by forest fires.

Last Saturday, having stayed overnight in Lymington in the New Forest, we drove the short distance to Southampton, boarded our ship, and set sail, entering the English Channel via the Solent.

The next day we crossed the North Sea, arriving in Kristiansand in Norway on Monday morning, followed by Copenhagen on Tuesday, and Oslo on Thursday.

A further stop, at Skagen on the northernmost point of Denmark, was cancelled because of high winds that, we were told, made it unsafe to dock. Instead the ship spent a second day in Copenhagen.

Most of the time however the weather was OK - sunny intervals and moderate temperatures.

It’s 16 years since we embarked on our first cruise, a 12-day trip to the Baltics that took us to Warnemunde in Germany (via the Kiel Canal), then Tallin, St Petersburg, Helsinki, Stockholm and Copenhagen.

Since then we’ve been on so many cruises I’ve almost lost count.

Top of the list is probably the transatlantic voyage to New York in 2017, followed by the cruise to Alaska (from Vancouver) in 2019, and a post-Covid no stop ‘sun voyage’ in 2021.

Over the last decade the majority have been with Cunard (Queen Victoria, twice, Queen Elizabeth, twice, and Queen Mary 2).

Last week however we were on Sky Princess, one of 15 ships owned by Princess Cruises, and I can’t help comparing it with our first ship, Norwegian Dream, owned (at the time) by Norwegian Cruise Lines (NCL).

Norwegian Dream was built in 1992 so it was already 15 years old when we embarked at Dover in August 2007.

What we didn’t know was that, in 1998, it had been cut in half with an additional section added to make it longer and therefore accommodate more passengers.

Our cabins were quite small and had a porthole or small ‘picture window’. Looking at photos of the ship, I don’t think a single cabin had a balcony.

Contrast that with modern cruise ships. Most if not all outside cabins have a balcony, with floor to ceiling windows and sliding doors that allow plenty of light to flood in.

The Sky Princess was built in 2019 and the central piazza has the decor of a small Arabian palace.

In place of key cards, passengers are given electronic ‘medallions’ so when you approach your cabin the door unlocks automatically.

(This is particularly useful when you have a drink in one hand and food in the other.)

The medallions work as security tags or ID when passengers get off and on the ship in port.

Matched with an app, they can also be used to navigate your way around the ship, or locate your ‘shipmates’.

In practice, it means that if you’ve taken refuge in one of several bars, your wife can find out exactly where you are.

The on board wi-fi, which used to be an unreliable add-on that cost hundreds of pounds, resulting in a medical condition known as ‘internet anxiety’, is now part of a pre-paid package and worked flawlessly.

Sometimes however the public areas on Sky Princess felt rather crowded, which I think may be due to the current trend for a higher ratio of cabins per ship, which in turn has resulted in more passengers in relation to the size of the ship.

I may be wrong but we’ll have an opportunity to test this hypothesis next year because we are booked on the Queen Anne, Cunard’s new ship whose maiden voyage is scheduled for May 2024.

Accommodating 3,000 passengers, more than any other Cunard ship (even though it’s smaller than QM2), it is nevertheless fewer than Sky Princess (4,610 passengers, 1,411 crew) and most other modern cruise ships, some of which carry in excess of 6,000 passengers, which is not my idea of fun.

As for Norwegian Dream (2,156 passengers), I have just discovered that it was sold by NCL in 2012 to new owners who re-registered it in Singapore and renamed it SuperStar Gemini before selling it for scrap in India last year.

To date, Norwegian Dream is the only ship we’ve been on that has been retired or scrapped. The others (still in active service, having undergone one or more refurbishments) are:

Crown Princess, launched 2006 (sailed 2010)
Grand Princess, 1997 (2012)
Queen Victoria, 2007 (2014 & 2016)
Queen Mary 2, 2003 (2017)
Celebrity Eclipse, 2010 (2019)
Queen Elizabeth, 2010 (2021 & 2022)

Finally, I’ve been asked many times whether I enjoy cruising. The evidence suggests I do, but it’s a bit more complicated than that.

Truth is, there are pros and cons, as I tried to explain following a tweet by broadcaster Iain Dale a few years ago - see ‘Bon voyage’.

As for our latest cruise, nothing against Kristiansand or Oslo, but I particularly liked Copenhagen. We saw a side to it we didn’t see when we visited the city (very briefly) during our Baltic cruise in 2007.

Lots of independent coffee shops, some great restaurants, and the ‘world’s best Metro’.

I’d definitely go back. A midwinter mini-break, perhaps.