paul32

Thanks Paul,

Do they know if you spend it all in the casino? I was planning to only gamble 1/2 of the cash we get from the cage.

Bulldog is exactly correct. You can do what you please with the money. ;)

In my experience, our pre-paid casino cash was available for us to pick up in the Golden when we boarded. In our stateroom were notifications in $100 increments that we could redeem at the cashier's cage for cash.

I choose this option because of the benefit of not having to carry cash from home to the airport and to the pier. There is also added benefit of getting the 2X Princess Rewards on my Barclays Visa by using it as the funding source.

any dessert Souffle

This! I don't know how they do it, but Princess makes such great souffles. To date, I have never been disappointed.

Unfortunately, on the Dec 18th Grand (SF to HI) - there was no souffle dessert offering I can remember. Although we did go to the Crown Grill twice and skipped the MDR two other nights so I might have missed it.

If there is a dessert souffle, I will order two of them. :D

I just got off the Grand 15-day to Hawaii from SF. Princess said there were 360 passengers between the ages of 4 and 17. One passenger said in 2009, there were over 600 on the same Holiday cruise.

 

On board, it did feel as though there were far fewer kids on this cruise than we had expected.

 

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We were on the same cruise. I was surprised by how many 20-somethings were on board.

The One5 nightclub was packed every night. We met friends with various-aged children onboard with them in the late teens and early 20s. There were several cliques and groups of like-aged young people that formed. For the mid-teens, there was a group of about 10-15 young people that would hang out all morning near the coffee bar in the piazza. There were also younger teens and pre-teens that would gather in various stairwells and were always having a good time...often at the expense of older passengers. For example, they would push all of the elevator buttons on the Grand's Forward/Aft lifts and then run away. They also would run up and down the stairs pushing both the up/down call buttons for every floor. For an already frustrating elevator service, these actions didn't exactly sit well with other passengers. :)

Having already taken two Princess cruises to Hawaii before (both on the Golden) I was absolutely shocked and pleased to see the diversity in passenger ages on the Grand Princess Christmas Cruise from SF. Although the nightclub was a very exciting place every evening, it was also with its fair share of drama. A completely different Hawaiian cruise experience for us then on previous voyages.

A very sad situation. We just got off this very ship days before and it is sobering.

I hope the best for everyone involved, especially the crew member's family and all those on board. I met many crew members on the Grand during the 12/18-1/4 sailing and will keep them in my thoughts and prayers.

I just got off the Grand yesterday, some cabins had mats and some did not, ours on Dolphin did, a friend on E did not. The eleveators were the worste I have ever seen, I got stuck twice, one time the elevator opened a foot above the floor. There were dripping leaks in several areas and the smell of sewage in several other areas. While I will sail with princess again I would not do so on the grand.

I was on the Christmas cruise with you and took a photo of the messed up elevator a foot off the floor. It stayed open that way for over 2 hours! I believe it was between 6 :30 and 8:30 AM based on my memory.

The Grand wasn't the greatest Princess ship. But the crew was amazing (Branco and Gary = best bartenders ever) and it was a super fun trip. If only all voyages could be so festive and fun! I'll rebook again on the Grand if needed, although I miss the 24 hour horizon court service and occasional int'l buffet offerings outside on the Lido... both of which were not part of the Grand.

Here's the menu:

I just took the Christmas cruise from SF to Hawaii on the Grand (Dec 18-Jan 4) and the menu was slightly different... see photo below.

From the reviews given to me from fellow passengers, it was decent. Nobody absolutely loved it but nobody hated it either. We tried to get reservations but waited too long. I guess it fills up very fast.