CruisingWalter

That may very well depend on how many ships are in port that determines which of the two piers they tie up at. When we visited last week on Sky Princess, the other two ships in port were at the Punta Langosta pier, not the International Cruise Terminal which sat empty for the day.

To my knowledge, the menus do not change. Have you spoken to the dining staff for additional alternatives for your partner? There are additional vegetarian and vegan options for all the dining venues. The Galley is lean in the evening because most folks head to the restaurants.

Thanks for sharing, that menu looks perfectly fine. I mean it's a 'main dining room' it's not one of the specialty restaurants. There is so much food waste on ships, everyone is cutting back. Yes they can use the pandemic and the 2 years of bleeding money as an excuse too, but it's a very good excuse. I know I'm not going to starve on Sky Princess and as I recall, there's a very good buffet with even more choices a few decks up if you don't like the choices in the MDR. 🙂

Or sail Virgin Voyages. We've sailed 8 cruise lines now. VV has the best food of the mainstream cruise lines, hands down. And every restaurant, every meal is included. Even the ice cream. 🙂 If you have not tried them yet, you should. Very similar vibe to Celebrity Cruises.

it is rather interesting to see how Princess has taken the Excel ship design and really made it their own. Although they have not really shown us the aft yet, which is the section that really makes the Carnival, P&O and AIDA Excel ships look the same. But you can see in the profiles how Princess made the bow area more sleek, they may have added an extra deck in the aft and it appears the aft angles outward as it goes up, rather than in like it does on the others. The Iona/Arvia and Mardi Gras/Celebration are essentially identical from outward appearance. I'm sure there are other threads on here going well in depth on the design, but I'm really curious to see what Princess has done with the Deck 8 area and the overall design of the aft and aft cabins. I loved the Deck 8 patio and pool area on Mardi Gras, but would not want an aft balcony on that ship design because it feels like you're on display. Curious to see how the aft on Sun has been reconfigured.

OR, as @Torfamm has mentioned several times, order your omelet, take your time getting the rest of the breakfast and then circle back to pick up your omelet. Much the same as a waiter circling back to grab your omelet and bring it to you. I 1000% agree with Torfamm's method and it's the one I use on most ships because since the restart you have a 50/50 chance of the omelet being delivered to you and if it is delivered, it may or may not be hot. You're welcome to sit and enjoy your coffee and wait. Some of the rest of us have a different method that works brilliantly for us. When you've done this one or 100 times, you develop a sixth sense to know when to head back to the omelet station and then you have all of your food at the same time to enjoy. With my coffee. 🙂

Try a different browser. Try clearing your cache. Try an incognito window. Hopefully one of those three works for you.

After seeing the Ben and David episode from Carnival Celebration, I really want to try one. I noticed them when we were exiting Mardi Gras at the first port and was very intrigued at staying so close to the water. Now I definitely want to try one out, that will be a different experience for sure. 🙂

I think you hit it squarely on the head. Though I will say I think the MDR on Celebrity ships is above average, about the same as Princess. The Blu dining room that comes with Aqua Class is definitely a step up and worth the price of admission to that class of cabin. We've never done suites so I can't speak to Luminae. But I will say, having sailed Virgin Voyages, the lack of a 'class system' on that ship, other than the one sun deck and the free bar in your cabin, and having basically everything included really makes you take notice when you sail any other cruise line. Especially not having to pay more money for 'better food' or even just soft drinks and WiFi. You do feel more 'nickel and dimed' when you step back onto other cruise lines. That being said, I'm really looking forward to meeting Sky Princess tomorrow and seeing what the Royal class ships are all about. 🙂

It's the balconies on Deck 3 (or 2) that are called "cove" because they are sheltered port hole style balconies. You can still step outside but your view is more like a big porthole looking out. Ben and David had a Cove Balcony on the Carnival Celebration which is a sister ship to the Sun Princess. Jump to about 11:50 in the video to go straight to their Cove Balcony cabin tour. You can find similar tours on the P&O Iona and Arvia and the Carnival Mardi Gras which are also sister ships to the Sun Princess. https://youtu.be/BSwelflm5YQ

Bookings have been taking much longer to show up these past few weeks. Used to be instant but now can take an hour or more. Could be a sign of them being very busy or the system is going wonky. 🙂

Always has to be one in every crowd.

We're not on WiFi in port, we're on the cellular network so honestly not sure. I've never used WhatsApp via cellular and not sure if we can to be honest.

I don't understand the conspiracy theories. The moment you step onto that cruise ship you are under the control of the cruise lines. Their sandbox, their rules, their security, their surveillance. Any thoughts of 'privacy' are gone when you step onto that ship. They know where you are all all times with or without that medallion / wristband. Perhaps a secluded mountain cabin or some remote island with no access to cell towers or internet would be better suited for those folks? 😆

Primarily for the ordering system. You can order a drink or other items via the app and they bring it right to you. They locate you via the Medallion. Virgin Voyages does the same thing. It's awesome. I'm going to be using that quite often during our cruise on the Sky Princess. Additionally it's a great safety feature so if the rest of your party can't find you and there's concern that you're still in port or could have possibly gone overboard, they can see where your medallion is.

That could be that they have not fully determined how many 'mini suites' will be on the Sun's first round of deck plans. But the Guarantee Mini Suites shows up on many sailings. I personally don't book a guarantee for any cabin, I want to know exactly where I'm going to be. That's why I don't bid on upgrades either. It might be a 'better' cabin class but the location may be worse. 🙂

The Carnival Mardi Gras, same ship design, did a very good job of dispersing people throughout the ship, even at night with 5500-5900 on our sailing. And they did not take advantage of that massive open space in the middle like Princess and P&O have. They created a completely different version of that based on Royal Caribbean's 270 theater, but didn't execute the seating very well. The way Princess has laid out the venues on this ship appears to space out the guests even more. Embarkation and Debarkation is when you'll notice how many folks are really on the ship. But I think the rest of the sailing the ship will really disperse the folks very nicely.

I personally am flat out loving the new ship. We have been on the Carnival Mardi Gras and it's very interesting to see how Princess is adapting that ship design to something that I think is even more grand than the P&O Iona. First off, all that glass on both sides in the center similar to Iona, but it does not appear they are making the same mistake of an 'airport lounge' that P&O did. The space is much more in line with the traditional Piazza only much more so. Princess Theater - Love. This design is in use on other cruise lines very successfully and I'm intrigued to see how Princess Entertainment adapts their live shows to the new venue. Crown Grill and Sabatini's refresh - Beautiful. Taking what has been done on the Royal class and elevating the design even further. Sea View & Wake View Terrace - stunning. The Dome - Much improved version over what P&O did with the dome in the middle of the ship. Just incredibly beautiful both in the day and evening. The Sanctuary appears to have lost some shade vs. the other ships. That will be interesting to see how that plays out when it's done. Missing deck names? Non-issue. We sail so many different cruise lines I never pay attention if a cruise line uses names for their decks. I just need to know the deck number I'm looking for. The beauty of cruising is there are well over 300 ships out there right now and 75 more coming in the next 4 to 5 years. If Sun Princess is not your cup of tea, so many other ships out there to enjoy. Personally I'm really looking forward to Princess' take on this ship design.

That's pretty standard across all Princess bookings as the capacity dwindles. I've even seen full suites as Guarantee now. I don't understand why people would buy into a guaranteed mini or even full suite, but apparently people do.

I've found the WiFi calling on a ship to be very hit or miss. Some cruise lines seem to block it altogether. But using services like WhatsApp, Google Meet audio and the like do seem to work when the internet is strong enough. For cell use in the port check your carrier. We have T-Mobile with free data in over 150 countries so we can use our data plan most anywhere. For calls it's 25 cents per minute.

You're tracked on every ship at all times whether you have the Ocean Medallion or not thanks to upwards of 1000+ cameras on every cruise ship. And if you use the Princess App onboard, they know exactly where you are. 🙂 The convenience of the wearable Medallion (and the Virgin Voyages sea bands) is so much easier than having a card. But as others have noted, if you really need one, just go to Guest Services and have one made.

It's hard to beat the first one. For us it was 2006 on Caribbean Princess. 14-day back to back 'welcome to cruising' experience. We booked our second cruise while onboard and have never looked back. 🙂 Since then we have sailed 8 different cruise lines (it'll be 9 or 10 by the end of 2023) and have found we really really love cruising. We have never had a bad cruise or such a bad experience we would not go back to any of the cruise lines. We enjoy all of them for different reasons. But if we're really are picking the most memorable cruise it would be the Hurricane Irma cruise. 10 nights on the Celebrity Equinox that left Miami just 3 days before Irma hit St. Thomas. That was our originally planned first stop and we would have been there that day. Instead we went straight south to Curacao and essentially followed the hurricane back to Miami. Amazingly we only missed two of our original stops because the hurricane completely hammered St. Thomas and St. Maarten along with others. The most memorable thing about that cruise was how incredibly calm and beautiful the weather was the entire week. Possibly some of the best weather we've ever had on a cruise. It was such a juxtaposition to what we were seeing on the news. We have three more currently planned for this year with Sky Princess this coming Saturday as our first time on Princess since the Crown in 2018. Looking forward to sailing the Royal Class for the first time. 🙂

It's also a premium drinks package, you can get higher level drinks with the Princess Premiere Package. Nobody gets "bumped up" without paying for the Premier package It's $60/pp per day for Plus and $80/pp per day for Premiere. The fact that you have to pay extra for the Premier package is correct. In the future use a TA so you don't have to spend any time on the phone and they would have seen that $500 extra payment long before Princess called you.

1- Dinner Dining: If not pre-assigned time/table, how is this managed? Wait times for restaurants? Exactly the same as any restaurant. You have a reservation, you're seated and well cared for by the servers. We had no wait with our reservations for any of the dinners. 2- Is the atmosphere “Party Cruise”? Hubby doesn’t drink so having party scene in his space/face all over the ship might not be fun. Only if you want it to be. The Manor is your party spot every night and the DJ will do sets at the main pool each day, but otherwise, the ship is quite chill. I compare it to Celebrity honestly, very casual lux vibe. Scarlet Night is an insanely awesome party but that's just one night and even on that night, you can find plenty of quiet spaces around the ship. 3- Pool Areas: Looking at the ships floor plans, it seems like the available pools and outdoor areas on the upper decks aren't adequate for 2700 guests? Am I misinterpreting what I see? Hubby loves a good hot tub soak. As long as he doesn’t have to sit on another’s lap. They are VERY small lounge pools and that's it. Honestly for us they are the worst part of the entire ship, along with the net in the back. But if you want 'pool time' go out early in the morning, later in the afternoon / early evening or on a port day. Every other cruise has better pools, especially Celebrity and Princess, but even with the weak pools, we're still booked on VV cruises 2 and 3 this year because the cruise line is so good. 4- Feedback In summary, we’d like to try something new with cruising. But we don’t want to find ourselves in an environment that feels uncomfortable for all involved. If you enjoy cruising, you enjoy good food and good cocktails, this is the cruise line for you. It truly is 'come as you are' and as long as you're ok with that, you'll have a great time. Nobody has the food quality of VV, even some of the specialty restaurants on other cruise lines can't touch what's included on VV. They are very unique ships that all about catering to you and your needs, not trying to be something you're not. We've been on 8 cruise lines and at the moment, VV is our fave. We're back on Scarlet in April and Valiant in November. 🙂 I have a 14 part Scarlet Lady vlog and I honestly thought we were going to be 'one and done' before we sailed. So some of our episodes may help you with insight. Our Food Tour: https://youtu.be/pBolzKvXjMU My overall Review: https://youtu.be/-R0imB73ajg And our Cheeky Corner Suite: https://youtu.be/Dy04dQH5abI

It's a $300 Bar Tab that is added to your account after you check out. Booking through a TA will also allow you to select your cabin vs. the website automatically assigning one to you. 🙂