rbtan

Can't seem to do review in review section so will do it here Overall an excellent trip with a few niggles. The Ship) Vista is really luxurious compared to Riviera our usual ship. Grand Dining room is really nice. Though we think the central dining section is gorgeous we prefer to not dine inside it, as it can get noisy. The glass sculptures in the grand lounge are very nice & took some talented people to make them. The similarities to these locations & Martinis bar on Marina/Riviera are tweaked a bit.Saw the obvious issues about chair hogging. We just moved in when pax were gone & had no issues.We also spent a lot of time on Aqua Terrace due to Concierge accommodations & enjoyed the location very much. Entertainment) Vista Lounge is more elegant than Riviera. Some pax have complained there is not enough room between aisles. We did not find any reason for this. Shows were pretty standard. Cancers & singers are quite talented, but it is still small compared to large ships. Then again most large ships don't have the food quality, either. Saw Linda Gentille twice this time. Pleased she remembered us from 2 years back She spoke to me in Mandarin(I'm Chinese) She loves to mingle with guests & is always a riot. The String quartet was down to 2 as two of them missed the boarding. Martinis is similar to Riviera & has a very good piano player. The show band is really talented & did an excellent job overall. Restaurants) GDR has already been mentioned. Ember replaced Jacques on this ship. Though many have disliked this, do remember food costs! Jacques has very high overall food costs & this is a way to balance that fact. This is dining 101 to anyone in the food industry like us. You have to find balance. Overall the food was fine. The Fish & Chips(with Chilean Sea bass, by the way) The rest. is larger than Jacques dut to the fact that the "hallway" to the back of the ship is eliminated. It was amusing to watch pax pile up outside the rest. looking for the now nonexistent hallway. Red Ginger on the other side of the boutiques was our favorite. A few tweaks to the menu were nice additions, such as Soft Shelled Crab were excellent. Polo Grill will not disappoint with the high quality seafood & Steaks. Toscana still is excellent .I prefer the Filet Mignon here as opposed to Polo. Waves Grill is about the same as Riviera/Marina.A nice addition is Aqua dining, which took the place of La Reserves, which has moved to smaller areas in the Tuscana/Polo Privee dining areas. Baristas has a nice bakery which took the place of Connections(now called Link along side Horizons) Baristas does not offer the splendid Illy coffee that was on Riviera. Cutbacks) this is in the food areas. Maine Lobster was supposed to be served in GDR, but has been replaced with Caribbean Lobster( It still states Maine in the ads) Seeing the big Sysco truck shows that some item ares now being outsourced some Pastries are now prepped off ship(no matter what chefs may tell you) French Fries are obviously Sysco fries. We in fact use these in some of our venues. Horizones has too many repetitions of their once fine pastries. The Slogan "Finest Cuisine at Sea" is starting to show a little rust. Still compared to the mass market lines the food is still much better. The port stops)Costa Maya, sorry folks rained out & skipped. Roatan Island Did a beach excursion. Snorkeled & saw true coral reefs. with loads of colorful fish. Colon,Panama. Very hot!! Did a tour of the new locks on the Canal.Saw a few cruise ships in Gatun Lake waiting to pass through. A good tour. Santo Tomas Guatemala. This is a food export port. Some tours but they are far out & require long excursions. Port Limon, Costa Rica.Nice port with a lot to take in. Lots of excursions of wildlife. Again we did a city & country tour. Managed to see some baby Sloths in the trees in the park just outside to port. The taxi driver explained about the earthquakes in 1991 that raised a few miles coast line about 2 meters out of the sea. The evidence is still visible. Belize City we did a city tour & saw many of the local landmarks. There are far off tours. Some of which delayed our departure by 2 hours. Since it was a ship based excursion, they have to wait.Next up was to be Cozumel, but due to strong wind it was skipped. I'm finding the more frequent occurrences of Oceania skipping tour disheartening, As I feel they can still do them/ Thirty min. after we skipped Costa Maya the sun was fully out. This seems to be an increasing trend in the past few years. For a score I'd rate a total of about 4 & one half stars.

Ok first: do it early! It is amazing how fast Suites & Concierge fill up early. You put down $500. You can use some of it on your current cruise or transfer it to your future on(what we did) On Concierge you should go for the cabin of your choice with the extended balcony. I tried this with the 2 rear PH suites. Unfortunately, they book fast(very large wrap around balcony) We lost out on those but booked one below our Concierge(with extended balcony) Balcony extends quite a bit further than the other PH suites.You also save at least $200 over waiting till you get home.

They said no.No big deal.

How do you know they ARE premium? Compared to some local flavors here in New England or Tillamook from the west coast, we find Slocumbe good but not better than what I mentioned. The names, however are generally better than the product. Oh,by the way personal taste is indeed an option. Slocumbe is good, but I've had better.

Ok. We got off our Vista trip this Wed. & did a few days in Key West & one day back in Miami.Got home a couple of hours ago. What we saw for 12 days was typical. Lots of chair hogs(to the point the CD did a rather terse reminder about it) We solved it 2 ways.Pax usually hog chairs & go eat lunch. We just removed their belongings to the tops of the pool towel bins & took our spots.Not one person said anything(how lucky for them LOL) The other thing was we were Concierge & generally stayed in Aqua Terrace. Next year my spouse booked a suite & we'll likely enjoy our loungers on our deck at times.

It's what we do.

We've had that problem as well. We just tell them go around us.

"Her" chair? If you have an issue either tell them where to go or tell the you'll get security after them.

I wonder if staff remove them as the cruise director might think they look tacky.

I heard they removed them, but perhaps a little $$ might persuade?

Considering Princess uses Select grade beef & not Choice or Prime, I doubt we'll pay the premium for Crown Grill. We're in Reserve Dining room, so hopefully it will be good as it should be for the cost of the Reserve class up charge.Deck 6 & 7 are likely The Suite & Reserve level dining rooms.

It's basically the same with us. My spouse has no problem moving a hogger's item & turning it over to the staff. I got into it with some poster a time back. Pretty much was a chair hog.Being in higher accommodations this time, we'll probably just stay up in Aqua Mar & enjoy ourselves.Looking down on a video recently( a really good one on Youtube), it is pretty obvious that loungers are lower in numbers.

We'll be on board next week. My spouse says he won't hesitate to move stuff. He'll ask pax in the area & if no one responds it's theirs, he'll look for drinks with ice melted & make the move. We have an extended balcony in Concierge, but I hear they will not provide a lounge chair.

How true.

Proof is in the puddin'

Whether O is making the errors or not, If you don't bring your documentation, it just compounds it.

Remember that luxury brands sell far less than mainstream brands.Jaguar sells a few hundred thousand vehicles compared to Ford & GM seling millions. You should have included Range Rover which has the most dismal reliability record in the industry.

Whenever we do a B2B, we always make sure there is NO room change. We make the reservations well in advance. Obviously if one does it some months in advance, one may not get the desired results.

It should be standard knowledge that if you have an issue in ANY of the restaurants, always seek out the Maitre D.This is their area. Let them handle it. Overcharge? Sounds like an issue with drinks, as the rest. is included in the cost of your trip.

We had it on our first OI trip several years back. We were at a large table in Jacques. No one at the table had ever had it before(surprising since a lot of pax cruise the line for the food. We gave small samples to our tablemates.8 orders were delivered almost immediately. Including the portions we had given to our tablemates..We usually have it the same as here. Pate' is nice, but prefer the "real" thing. We usually ask for a little Damson Plum preserves to put on it as well.

Princess is NOT known for really good food. This is why we do mostly Oceania & have met a lot of former pax from Princess & Celebrity. I do love the staff. In my opinion the most friendly we've met on any line.We are giving Princess another try in 2025 on the new Sun. We booked a Cabana Reserve cabin.Those in the suites & Reserve have their own dedicated restaurants. I'm hoping that with the extra fee for this accommodation that the food will be better than we've seen on Princess. We did the Regal in 2016 the food was very good to excellent. On our last trip to Hawaii it was awful. the head waiter in Club Class(now Reserve) made a "special" dinner. It was Spaghetti & Meatballs. Yuck! We ordered off the Crown Grill menu more times than I wanted to admit.

Sounds like you might be in reserve or suites. They will move you into the correct checkin line.Be sure you let them know your accommodations. If not you might be in the "general" boarding lines, which can be quite long depending on ship size.

You'll be able to get them done at the terminal.

We found they list sample menus in the dining section online. I'm sure they are not always right up to date, but found them to have pretty good examples.

Our arrival time was picked at 12noon. We plan on arriving a little earlier than that.