So I just got on the Sky Princess today, having previously been on the Royal and Regal Princess, with a similar design, I must say this one feels much more… like a lot of spaces were an afterthought. Like they copied the layout of the other ships for the decks, and then decided what to actually put in the spaces. Especially the extra dining areas around the plaza space on decks 5-7. It seems like they took what was otherwise a sort of lounge space and squished a restaurant in. Multiple times. It feels a little disappointing honestly, just because it seems like the design wasn’t thought out all the way, like they got lazy and copied the deck plans, but wanted to fit in more places for people to spend money so they put more restaurants in to places that aren’t designed for restaurants.
also,it’s been several years (since pre-COVID) since my last cruise. But I swear the full digital photo set was like $150 or something before, now it’s $170 for 10 photos… what if I have more? Seems I could get unlimited photos before for less, and that was when a human had to scan them, and put them on a flash drive, now it’s all automated with facial recognition and I download them in the app, no paid humans involved, should be cheaper now in my opinion since it’s more automated, isn’t that the general idea behind automating things? Cheaper for them, so cheaper for me too?
Also, I seem to recall I used to have access to Apple services without paying for internet, so I could use iMessage to communicate among my group, also access the App Store, Apple Music, email, iCloud, etc… none of that works now, although weirdly I can still go to Apple’s website without paying. I always thought that a nice perk of the “MedallionNet” service.
I had always intended on paying for one device, and obviously I did since I’m posting here, but was hoping to not pay for everyone in my 5 member group, especially since that’s one device past the 4 device package… it sits in that weird middle area of “I don’t need this enough to pay for it” but also “not having this is highly inconvenient” so it honestly degrades the experience somewhat since there’s no way for the 5 of us to communicate. the Princess app’s “chat” feature is basically useless since you have to manually open the app and navigate through the app to the conversations list to see if there are unread messages, no notifications or even anything on the front “home” page of the app, so… that’s not useful, being able to locate everyone seems to work well, much better than the last cruise if I remember correctly, but it’s not a substitute for actually chatting. Maybe it wouldn’t matter if I hadn’t been assuming it would be the same as before, but going in to the cruise, I was expecting we would all be able to chat from anywhere on the ship without an issue.
also some people are having issues with the app, which I was able to resolve once by reinstalling the app, but now I can’t do that since we left port, unless I want to pay for internet access, because the App Store seems unavailable. I’m also not sure how I could register a device for access without the app on that device, but I assume there’s some way to do that…
also, as someone who doesn’t use it, I was a bit pleased to see the casino on the Royal and Regal Princess was smaller, not an enormous section of the deck like the older ships, but this ship it’s bigger… not as big as before, but still bigger.
Also, I’m thinking this ship was originally designed for a European market primarily, I seem to recall the Regal and Royal Princess each had more US standard power outlets in the room, this ship has 2, plus one in the bathroom, for a standard interior room anyways. I could be mistaken about the other ships, and luckily someone else in the group thought to bring a power strip, so that’s helpful. And I guess I can’t fault them for this, because most hotels still do this too, but the lamps have USB-A ports, and literally all of my Apple products, all the things they make for a couple years now, come with USB-C chargers, so the USB-A ports on the lamps are not helpful, I don’t keep up with it that well, but I imagine non-Apple products mostly come with USB-C chargers too. Feels like it’s time for an upgrade, but also they probably sell USB-A charging cables in one of the shops, so… revenue source… luckily I brought one USB-A cable to use in a rental car on an earlier portion of this trip, so it’s not entirely wasted, just the same, it’s disappointing to see, same as any new cars I see with it, like, new car, but literally none of my devices for a few years now can plug into it, so it’s brand new and also outdated.
all that in mind, I acknowledge the ship launched in 2019 so some of my issues with the USB ports were not really a thing back then, especially if we figure they probably bought the tables with the lamps earlier in the construction phase, but the overall design seems more focused on squeezing money out of people and generally not as nicely designed with the layout seeming a bit like an afterthought, or just someone got lazy and couldn’t be bothered to redo the actual deck plan and just repurposed some spaces from the last couple of ships.
I do like that the design isn’t an exact replica, the Regal Princess and the Royal Princess did feel like clones, even the artwork in the stairs and the hallways was identical and in identical positions, which disappointed me a bit because that means they’re also not original art pieces, at least they can’t both be since they had identical artwork. The Sky Princess here has new artwork at least, and my brief looking today I do like the way the shops are layed out, and so far I’m liking the Princess Live space being more of an open lounge area, rather than the closed in actual television theater space it was on the other two ships, mostly because it’s more accommodating for our 6 person group, one of whom is a child just over a year old.
so, mixed feelings about the cruise so far, I’ll admit I was very into cruising before and was going regularly once or twice a year for 9 or 10 days at a time, while this cruise doesn’t turn me away from it, it isn’t impressing me enough to make me want to get back into it that regularly. Noting I stopped going regularly partially because of COVID but also because I moved to Iowa from South Carolina, so now I have to fly to the cruise not just drive 8 hours, so that makes it somewhat more expensive to go.