Welcome to the Royal Caribbean Blog podcast, a weekly look into the world of Royal Caribbean cruising.

I'm your host Matt Hodgeberg, and this is episode number 158.

Royal Caribbean's fleet of 25 ships means there's lots of great choices to choose from,

and the newest ship in the fleet is actually its oldest.

Empress of the Seas is back in Royal Caribbean, and this week we're sharing a firsthand review of what Empress of the Seas offers.

What Empress may lack in size, she makes up for in unique experiences and great destinations.

Here we go.

They say what's old as new again, and while I'm not sure who they are, we're definitely talking about Royal Caribbean's newest ship in the fleet,

which also happens to be its oldest.

Empress of the Seas rejoined Royal Caribbean's fleet after eight years being transferred to a sister company,

and with a return, a lot of my listeners, have been wondering what the ship offers,

and we're lucky enough to have someone who just sailed on her to share what a cruise on Empress is all about. Michael Poole is a blogger at Royal CaribbeanBlog.com and also gets as very giddy when he spots a slight price difference in the drink package, enjoys long bike rides in summer heat and is barely older than the ship we're about to talk about.

Welcome to the show, Michael.

Oh, Matt. Thanks for having me.

I am so excited to share the Empress of the Seas with you guys.

This is going to be a great time, and she's a great ship. Absolutely. Now, many of you probably listening know that Michael actually did a live blog, fantastic live blog, in fact, about his adventures on Empress of the Seas.

And I will post a link to that in our show notes at realcriminal blog.com so you can go read it for yourself. It's really interesting. Michael did a great job of kind of documenting a lot of the ship. And Michael,

this was, just based on my reading of it, it kind of seemed like a new ship, even though it's

obviously the oldest ship in the fleet. Yeah, that was definitely my first impressions walking

on board, Matt. When I first walked on, I was just like, wow, because the decor

is very modern looking. It's not older chairs that they, you know, refinished. Everything is just

brand new. You know, even in the windjammer, the chairs are very sleek and thin. It definitely

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