We took a non-Disney cruise - comparing DCL and Royal Caribbean

Other activities.

Towel animal demonstration - we sat in on this one, held in the Centrum, and watched from the deck above. It was interesting.

Later that same day we passed by as a line-dancing class was being held in the Centrum.

This is the movie screen on the pool deck. No movie showing when the photo was taken. We never saw a single movie while on board.

And I had to try to climb the rock wall. I didn't get very far, but in my defense, those hand-holds were not spaced for a very short person.

A lot of the activities involved cheesy game-show rip-offs that didn't interest us. While sitting in comfy chairs overlooking the Centrum on our deck, we heard parts of the Family Feud rip-off and the Who Wants To Be a Millionaire rip-off, called Who Wants To Feel Like a Millionaire. Exactly what the names of the games would suggest. We also saw televised (on the TV in our stateroom) the belly flop contest, exactly what the name implies, and the ship's take on the old Newlywed Game, involving couples who weren't necessarily newly wed. There were trivia games and such in the lounges during the day as well and late one evening, and adults only game called Quest in a lounge. Quest pitted teams of cruisers against one another doing all sorts of somewhat risque things. "Bring me six brassieres!" So all the women were slipping their bras off from under their shirts. "Four pairs of men's pants!" You guessed it, men stripped down to their tighty whiteys. Stuff like that.

We only participated in one shore excursion since we spent the first day in Bermuda visiting my cousins. This was a glass-bottom boat tour where we got to see coral (Bermuda has rather drab coral since it's not in the tropics) and the remains of a shipwreck. It was a good time, so I'll assume other excursions were also on a par with the excursions offered on the Wonder. However, Royal Caribbean's excursions weren't organized quite as well as Disney's. Instead of meeting somewhere on the ship and then leaving for the excursion, we were told to go to the end of the dock and find our excursion. We managed it, but the DCL way was much easier.

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A couple of shows. The rock and roll tribute show and the Centrum farewell show on the last night.

There were a couple of other musical-type shows in the theater, but we missed them both due to scheduling conflicts mostly involving dinner. As I've mentioned, the theatrical productions weren't bad, the performers were talented, but they just weren't Disney quality.

The Centrum holds acrobatics shows involving aerialists that zoom all around the five-deck space, but they weren't quite as good as I'd imagined. No photos since the space wasn't lit well enough. That Centrum farewell show on the last night also included an aerial bit.

In addition to theatrical productions, the theater hosted a few comics. I saw one, Etta May, kind of a female Larry the Cable Guy, and she was funny. She flirted with racial insensitivity a couple of times but didn't go so far as to make me get up and leave, and she also made poor white trash jokes so she was an equal opportunity offender. I'd gone to see this show just to compare the "adults only" shows on the Grandeur with those on the Wonder. On the Wonder, "adults only" just meant no kids allowed, a time for adults to enjoy themselves without the distraction of children. On the Grandeur, "adults only" frequently meant language and content that would earn a movie an R rating. Etta May wasn't out-and-out raunchy, but she liked her grown-up words and discussed body parts once or twice. At one point, Etta May was complaining about her teenage daughter (her kids were 17-year-old Bud, 16-year-old Corona, 12-year-old Miller, and little J.B.). She asked for a show of hands, who has a teenage daughter? Then asked one woman who had her hand up how old her daughter was. "Twenty." Etta had some fun with that. "Did YOU drive that Carnival ship to Baltimore? Is the short bus waiting to pick you up? Let me explain this - if she's a teenager, it has to end in T-E-E-E-N." Later she asked who was married, divorced, engaged. Asked an engaged guy what his name was. He said Nick, and she accidentally or deliberately misheard. "Dick?" They got the name squared away. "What's your fiancee's name?" "Kaylee." "And where's Kaylee?" "At home." "Gee, you really are a dick!" He was "Dick Nick" the rest of the time she talked to him.

All in all, the activities and entertainment on the Grandeur didn't measure up with those on the Wonder. However, while we were discussing this topic at lunch on our last sea day, a table companion mentioned that she had sailed on one of Royal Caribbean's larger ships and they'd had much better entertainment and activities. More shows, better shows, more stuff to do in general. Royal Caribbean's large ships are HUGE, much larger than the Disney Dream and Fantasy, so I don't know how they compare. But it would seem that on Royal Caribbean, if you want entertainment on a par with the small Disney Wonder, you've got to sail on a huge ship.

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This is something nice they have on the Grandeur, interactive directories on all decks. Makes it easy to get where you're going.

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A few photos.

1. Our towel animal. Just the one for the whole cruise, not a new one each day like on the Wonder.

2. The Centrum, taken from one deck above the main floor.

3, Another view of the Centrum:

4. And another.

The main pool deck. The adults-only pool was inside a solarium. I didn't much like that, got a bit too warm for my taste. No photos of the solarium pool.

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Nothing new here as of November 2016. I just spent hours resizing photos and replacing Photobucket photos because Photobucket is a PITA. When I got my first smartphone I got into the habit of posting directly instead of resizing photos on my computer before posting. Resizing has freed up tons of space so I won't have to deal with Photobucket.