LIVE from Regal Princess, sailing November 3rd!

Loved every moment of your trip.

 

Question, looked at the patters, why does there seem to be two different Afternoon Teas. One in Concerto at 3:30 but also one in Piazza at 3:30 that charges $10 (with Champagne is $20). Seems confusing.

Hi - the afternoon tea in the Piazza is not offered every day. It is much more elegant and has far more offerings than the daily free tea in Concerto. If you Google "Princess Cruises" and "Royal Tea" you can get more information about the absolutely lovely tea in the Piazza.

This thread has info and photos:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2165401

I notice you have the patters on photobucket. Forgive me as I am technology challenged. I wanted to share a couple of them with my family.

If I get on Photo Bucket can I search your Cruise Critic screen name or do you have another name on Photo Bucket?

Thank you so much!! This is one of my favorite live from threads in a long time.

Chris, thank you so much for posting the patters for the last two days! That was me who asked because I am OCD about the schedule on a cruise and it helps me to plan. I will post the patters from the Dec 13, 2015 Regal Princess when I return to hopefully help future cruisers.

Excellent review Chris. Thanks so much for taking the time/effort to do it. Loved all the pics and comments.

Just wanted to add my thanks for an excellent job.....leaving in a few weeks and

your information/pics made the wait more enjoyable!

Very well done!!!!

Thanks again for a fantastic live review!!

We leave Sunday and can't wait to stop at Crooners and have Zivka make us a Milky Way martini!! :D

Thanks Chris for taking to time out of your great cruise to post!!!

Happy sailing!!!!

Thanks Chris for your awesome "live from the Regal ". I just finished reading the posts. I am glad you enjoyed the Regal cruises. We had a great group of cruisers sailing with us. Thank you for organizing and coordinating the activities. To the roll call members, thank you for all your posting and keeping our group excited and engaged. A special thank you to the Regal reunion group from the 2014 inaugural sailing. I am so glad we decided to sail together again. I will post more on our Nov. 8. roll call.

Sali

Thanks for a great review Chris. I do have to admit that I scrolled by the interior ship pictures as I like to be surprised when I sail a new ship and we are sailing Regal in February. Loved the menus and food pictures. Not sure if I missed the food review or not but how would you rate the food compared to Quantum? I really want to try the Crab Shack. Looked so good.

Surprised you didn't get to see all the shows after being on her for 12 nights. How will I manage in 7 nights?

I see you have booked Anthem. I've been thinking about it since I loved Quantum but that cruise just wouldn't be the same without the gang.

Alaska. A cruise on my bucket list.

Thank you again.

hey Chris,

loved the review and pictures. Everything was pretty good on Regal. I do have to say imho I wasn't too impressed with Alfredo's. my friend Lori and a couple others went for lunch after our excusion in St Thomas and it wasn't crowded at all but it took a while to get our orders (pizza for 3 of us) and the pizza came to the table luke warm at best. I enjoyed the pizza at prego more probably because it was hot! LOL of course everyone's experiences are different. Lori and I were very impressed with Sabatini's. I had received a complimentary reservation from our travel agent for Sat. night. We both got the salad which was good and the crepe manicotti as an entrée and it was the best meal we had all cruise... mostly our dinners in the Alegro dinning room were good. Joel was the waiter and he was great. It was his last cruise before going back home to see his family. We wish him well. The casino was small and I guess I misunderstood the info on Princesses web site that they were a non-smoking casino so I was very disappointed on that. We had a great time at the slot pull!! All in all I think I would go on Princess again if the price is right! LOL it is a beautiful ship.. see ya all next trip!!

Karen :cool:

Thanks for a great review Chris. I do have to admit that I scrolled by the interior ship pictures as I like to be surprised when I sail a new ship and we are sailing Regal in February. Loved the menus and food pictures. Not sure if I missed the food review or not but how would you rate the food compared to Quantum? I really want to try the Crab Shack. Looked so good.

Surprised you didn't get to see all the shows after being on her for 12 nights. How will I manage in 7 nights?

I see you have booked Anthem. I've been thinking about it since I loved Quantum but that cruise just wouldn't be the same without the gang.

Alaska. A cruise on my bucket list.

Thank you again.

Food is subjective but I would rate it up there with my experiences on Allure. Silhouette still ranks the highest for me as far as food but Regal and Allure are close behind.

I could have seen all the shows during my 12 nights aboard, I just chose not to go to some of them.

Thanks for the great pictures and review! I'm on the Regal for 25 days this Spring, looking forward to it! Biggest ship I've been on is the Emerald so I'm always looking for Regal info!

Enjoyed your review and photos, thanks for letting us follow along on you latest adventure. Looking forward to your cruise in May, question, are Emmy and the Pink Boa folks going along?

Enjoyed your review and photos, thanks for letting us follow along on you latest adventure. Looking forward to your cruise in May, question, are Emmy and the Pink Boa folks going along?

I wish they were joining me but unfortunately not this time around

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy Note 4 using Tapatalk

There are some negatives my friends...

 

The lack of a mid-ship staircase past deck 7 is a glaring design oops. Hopefully this will be addressed when these ships go into drydock.

 

AGREE - But knew I would feel this way before sailing. It was worst the first 5 nights as we had a mid-ship Inside on Deck 11. For the 7 nights, we were in a starboard Deluxe towards the aft on Deck 8, so we used the aft stairs a lot. If I wanted forward, I'd head down the hallway to the fwd stairs and rarely used the mid-ship elevators at all for the 7 nighter. LOTS of fellow cruisers commented on not having those stairs. A darn shame.

 

Main pool area is way too small for a ship of this size. It also didn't help that there were a lot of chair hogs. Some people told me in the Retreat area that people had put their towels on chairs at 6 am and 4 hours later still hadn't come back. Why do people need to keep acting this way? It's downright embarrassing. Also it didn't seem like anyone working in the pool areas would remove items that these people put on the chairs.

 

Oh my - the chair reservations was incredible. It was like the whole ship was staked out like Sanctuary (reserved chairs). I can verify Retreat situation as we considered it ourselves for the first 5 nighter, but realized it wasn't going to offer much shade. Now, while chairs were claimed early, it was a very busy and occupied section on sea days. We had Sanctuary for the three sea days of the 7-nighter (and then we ended up with four as Chris must have reported). Anyway, I was back and forth thru Retreat area several times each day and it was packed. You had to claim a chair very early to get choice of spot. We encamped on Deck 17 port or starboard side (aft of MUTS screen in the covered section) and noticed chairs with towels. Told people a couple of times to help themselves to chairs that no one had showed up to.

 

Yes, the main pool is small, but we don't use it. One good thing, is that there a tons of areas with loungers and other types of seating that one can find a place. But if you wanted to be right by Fountain or Retreat Pool, then the early risers staked claim and went to breakfast after I would say.

 

Casino also seems very small for a ship of this size but that's just me.

 

AGREE.

 

The Terrace pool at the aft of the ship is way too small. It's a nice thought to add one but on Emerald class it is WAY bigger. Plus this is also the smoking area so not a great place to relax if you're a non smoker.

 

Everyone says this. We were by there once or twice and saw it, but I don't care if I sit at a pool I'm not likely to use and the smoking would drive me away anyway.

 

A day pass to try out the Enclave in the spa would be nice instead of making people purchase a full week pass. With ports of call mixed I just don't see how it's worth the price.

Above in red.

Hello friends! I have my second load of laundry in so I thought I would reflect and grade a little more:

 

ENTERTAINMENT

 

Entertainment is great and I did not see every show. Princess Live is a great venue and has fun audience participation shows(The Marriage Match Game show is not to be missed). The main theater has plenty of seating but watch where you sit in the first few rows... some seats at the end do not have good views of the stage.

 

The comedians were great although I was rather disappointed by Phil Tag's late show on Friday in the Vista Lounge. It was rather tired and almost like he rehashed his stuff from the clean version and just made it sound a little dirtier.

 

The Piazza provides lots of great entertainment but use caution... if you book a cabin near the elevators(especially interior) and go to bed early the band that plays till midnight will be rather loud.

 

The fountain show is nice up on the pool deck but not very long. Maybe 25 minutes each night.

 

Believe it or not one of the most entertaining shows during the day is the juggling act the bartenders put on at the Sea View Bar. It is a lot of fun and not to be missed.

We were lucky to have the two great comedians on the 5-nighter. As for Phil Tag last week, we have seen him before. I did enjoy - and laughed - his first show in the main theater. However, almost every joke was familiar and we had heard them two years ago. I was disappointed that he did not have anything much at all in new material. In fact, a couple of his jokes depended on things that just don't exist anymore. He needs to step up his game, because there are a significant number of repeat cruisers and most of his jokes are just old.

Skipped the Vista show, but asked a couple of guys after what they thought and I got a similar reaction to what you posted - it wasn't worth it.

The Fountain show we went to (MJ) was only about five minutes and other folks there told us it is simply repeated three more times after a pause. So, it's not really a half hour show. We wanted to see the Bond one, but missed it twice. I assume it was also short. It was nice to see once, but really nothing to write about if one has experienced real water shows such as EPCOT.

That's disappointing. On our last cruise, with Carnival, they were putting stickers on any towels left on unattended chairs. You had 30 minutes to return and if you didn't they'd take your stuff and store it at the beach towel pickup area. They didn't mess around as we saw 3 or 4 unhappy people come back to their chair after an hour only to find someone else in the chair and their stuff gone. That seems perfectly fair to me.

!

Oh how I WISH Princess would do this!!! I am on the Regal in January and chair hogs make my blood boil.

 

The Fountain show we went to (MJ) was only about five minutes and other folks there told us it is simply repeated three more times after a pause. So, it's not really a half hour show. We wanted to see the Bond one, but missed it twice. I assume it was also short. It was nice to see once, but really nothing to write about if one has experienced real water shows such as EPCOT.

There are several different fountain shows, each of them short as you described.

On the last evening when we were on the Royal, they did all of the different shows in that half hour period.

hey talking about the chair hogs, we were up on deck 17 I think the first day at sea that was supposed to be Princess Cay, and there was quite an exchange of words by a couple of Latino ladies and two or three people in deck chairs that didn't speak Spanish. They looked like they could have been a mother and daughter and the "mother" was really mad! LOL they walked away after the people in the chairs kept saying they didn't understand Spanish but the older lady just kept on... Thought there was going to be a fight! I know we would go up early and get chairs then go get breakfast. I was worried about just being gone an hour, I guess if people never showed up my time frame wasn't too bad! I will keep my eye out for the 2017 reunion cruise. Hope I could make that one. Those are islands I haven't been to either. Sounds like fun!! later!

Karen :cool:

The the OP - my mother and step fatehr say thank you sooo much for the tip about joes crab shack, i think that was their biggest highlight. both super stuffed from the amount that was on offer.

We *just* got back from our Regal cruise and it was lovely. A first for me, but my mothers 8th and 4th with Princess. Very laidback and easy going, great mix of people of all ages and backgrounds.

Chair hogs: I was noticing the deck crew checking around, especially on the sea days, for these criminals. They appeared to be removing towels if people had not returned to them in at least an hour.

Happy Thanksgiving ! Safe journey for those of you who have to travel.

Sali

Royal Caribbean has the wow factor with their big ships. You have provided the WOW factor with your great review. Everything someone needs to know about Regal; you've provided. Pictures were right on and your explanation of food; entertainment, etc was perfect. I think anyone who sails Regal in the future will head to the Piazza; based on your review. Thank you again for the time invested with providing a wonderful review.

Cheers

Think I need to check out Fat Turtle in February. Looked online at there menu and looks like lots of good choices and reasonable prices.

Which date in February are you sailing? we are Brits living in Toronto going on our first cruise on 21st.

Sorry this is so late in coming!! Wrapping up from this last Regal Princess Cruise, and preparing to leave Saturday for our Celebrity Silhouette Cruise has me going 20 different directions!!

I want to give Chris a HUGE and HEARTFELT THANK YOU!!! Your review was fantastic!! Detailed, comprehensive and fascinating reading!! And gorgeous pictures!!! You made the last few days waiting to leave so exciting! And through this review, I found the one you did on Silhouette which has helped me tremendously!!

It was truly a pleasure meeting Chris, Ken and Darlene! Putting a face with the names is so much fun! Although, I am sorry I disappointed you Chris by being "pint size"!! It is never a good idea to form a picture in ones head!!

Again, THANK YOU CHRIS!!!