Croptop

The Black & Blue Onion Soup at the Crown Grill.

Wow! I've never seen a trip report get started 3 months in advance. This ought to be epic and you can bet I'll be following along.

@gottagocit Thanks for posting your thoughts about your time on the Coral. I'll be sailing on the Coral in 2021 (Buenos Aires to Ft. Lauderdale) so I've started my year long devouring of any info about Coral that I can find.

As posted in a separate thread:
http://crew-center.com/diamond-princess-crew-get-two-months-paid-time

Princess appears to be taking care of their crew as well as their passengers.

Solid response, Princess. Bravo. I'm happy to read that the crew will be looked after and, indeed, rewarded for their work above and beyond the normal call of duty.

39 minutes ago, Kenswing said:

 

• Eight (8) new satellite TV channels
• More than 80 new video-on-demand releases, including movies in various languages, concerts and in-cabin fitness videos
• Cruise Director Show (The Wake Show) in English and Japanese
• Printed newspapers in 36 languages
• Pre-printed trivia, daily puzzles, games and arts and crafts
• Radio Taiso (popular calisthenics) videos
• Kids’ activity packs
• Food & beverage options offered via room service
• Outdoor time for guests in interior staterooms (under the guidance of Japanese Ministry of Health)

No Art Auction!? I thought those were mandatory every 2 days.

In all seriousness, having just finished a cruise on the Regal in an interior, I can't imagine how or where I'd have been able to do calisthenics in my stateroom.

But kudos to Princess and the crew of the Diamond for doing their utmost to provide for the passengers. 

The specialty restaurants don't serve lunch with the exception of Alfredo's. Alfredo's is open every day for lunch regardless of whether you are in port or at sea. Reservations aren't required and there's no cover charge.

Update as of 07:40: They just announced in the Platinum/Elite disembarkation lounge that *all* colours are cleared for disembarkation. I don't know if that applies to all passengers or just to the Platinum/Elite passengers that get priority disembarkation. But regardless, they are getting us off of the ship fast!

I'm going to drop offline now and get my fat arse off of the ship. Then I just have to figure out how to kill 14 hours before my flight home.

To everyone boarding the Regal today: have a great cruise. I'll be following your thread. Bon voyage.

For those of you planning to come to the port early, disembarkation appears to be going quite quickly. They just called some colour groups that, according to the schedule, are slated to disembark at around 08:00 and it's only 07:10.

6 minutes ago, CruiseVA said:

Glad to have you along, if at least for 1 day. Happy to hear that it was a great voyage.  What time is your disembarkation?  DO you remember when you boarded last week.

Safe travels home.

When I boarded on 19 January we got into the terminal around 10:00 and were onto the ship around 10:30 or so. However, the ship was just out of wet dock so they didn't have any departing passengers to get rid of first.

My disembarkation time is around 9:00 this morning. If things go as usual, though, I expect that they'll start calling us earlier than that though. I had a bunch of OBC left so I "splurged" on a Princess transfer to FLL -- overpaying with Princess' money is better than getting a deal on an Uber with my own money.  

So if you spot a sad looking dude in tan pants getting on the last bus out of the port, wave. That'll be me.

Off to the dining room for one last breakfast. On that note, if you're in the Anytime dining room, sit in Jeffrey C's section. He is a great waiter is quick to figure out what you like and don't like. I had breakfast (and most lunches) in his section and by the end of the cruise he was pretty much telling me what I was having. I'm going to miss the pampering.

I'm sitting in the Regal's piazza having a coffee from the IC on the last day of my two week cruise. I have a very late departure from FLL tonight so I'm scheduled to be one of the last ones off of this ship this morning. So I'm going to pretend that I'm on this sailing for just one day. 😞 

Everything on this cruise was fantastic. I don't want to go home now.

I didn't get an invite to the PES lounge on last week's cruise on the Regal but I did get one this week. Same cabin, same steward. Weird.

Glad I could help. Have a great cruise next week.

Just went through all of my Patters for last week's portion of my cruise and didn't find any mention of the Crab Shack whatsoever. I asked one of the managers up in the Horizon Court and she said it was on the night that we were in St. Maartin (which was Thursday).

In this week's patters, the Crab Shack is listed on Wednesday night (the night that we were in Jamaica).

Hope this helps.

Casino is midships, deck 6 on the Regal so you'd probably be OK meeting there. Another suggestion would be Club 6 (which is also midship on Deck 6). I've been hanging out in Club 6 quite a bit over the last two weeks and most of the time, it's empty. On days when you have to tender ashore, they sometimes use Club 6 as the place for Elite/Suite passengers to go get their priority tender tickets but even then, the club has remained largely empty.

Down on deck 5, the seating area by Vines (on the opposite side of the ship from the International Cafe) also tends to remain unoccupied.

If you want your group to meet in an area that's completely out of the way, you could have them meet in the Vista Lounge which is deck 7 aft. In the mornings, there's usually nothing going on in there.

Lastly, just a bit forward from the Vista lounge is a lounge area just outside of the Crown Grill. That might be a reasonable spot to meet as well (although there will be a steady flow of foot traffic walking past that lounge area -- especially during the hours that the masses are heading ashore.

When I boarded the Regal back on 19 January, I arrived at Terminal 2 in Port Everglades at around 09:15 and was able to leave my bags with a porter right away. However, we were the first passengers to board after the ship had been in wet dock for a week so there were no disembarking passengers from a prior cruise to deal with that day.

If you show up before 09:00, you'll almost certainly be contending with the tail end of the disembarking passengers. But you would likely have no issues showing up around 09:30 or 10:00 but you will definitely be spending some time standing in line.

I was on the Regal last week and this week (we're currently sitting in Cozumel along with 4 other ships). I don't recall seeing Crab Shack in the patters but I've got them all still sitting in my cabin. I'll dig them out and take a closer look when I get back to my cabin later today. I'll post what I find.

Depending on where your cruise is going, there's also the Sanctuary. Purchase a couple of chairs in there for the duration of your cruise (at $30/day per chair) and you can quickly consume a bunch of that credit. But you'll have your own guaranteed spot every day along with attendants who will take very good care of you.

We have arrived in Falmouth Jamaica and are just waiting for clearance to leave the ship. I can't see much from the deck of the ship but everything appears "normal" around the pier area.

I'm on the Regal now. Nothing official has been announced and it would appear that we are still heading to Jamaica. We're due to arrive tomorrow morning at 08:00hrs. Will let you know what we encounter.

22 minutes ago, Pstcrik said:

Not had a Medallion .  Do they send it to you prior to the cruise ? 

Currently, they do if you live in the United States. Travelers from other countries pick theirs up at the terminal on embarkation day. Rumour is that the mailing program is soon to be expanded to other countries but I read that here and haven't seen any official statements to that effect.

I was, indeed, speaking about the "new" coffee package and not the legacy cards. I just confirmed 5 minutes ago with a barista at the IC here on the Regal (along with a bar manager who was also present at the time): Once you have consumed 15 specialty coffees, you no longer get free brewed coffee. To continue getting free brewed coffee, you would have to purchase another coffee package (which would give you another 15 specialty coffees as well).

It's not that shocking to me as this is how the old coffee cards worked as well.

4 hours ago, casofilia said:

It has been known that when ATD is full and there is a long queue that they will take ATD people and put them in the TD room.   However it generally accepted that they will only be put at vacant tables.

Yes. They actually did that for me last week (when I was still on Anytime dining). I'd been regularly showing up at the ATD dining room and asking for my own table. One night, the head waiter handed me a little laminated card that read "Table for 2" and sent me back to the Traditional dining room where they seated me at a table that was going unused that night. That's actually what inspired me to try switching to Traditional dining for this week.

On a related note, I've got a reservation to dine at Sabatini's tonight so I mentioned it to my waiter last night as I was leaving dinner. He thanked me for mentioning it and stated that he already knew because they could see my reservation in the computer system. So I agree that it's courteous to mention when you're not going to show up and will continue to do so, they may already know. 🙂

They are $12

OK. I was just grabbing a refill from the IC so I took the opportunity to ask the barista where the room service coffee comes from. He told me that it does NOT come from the IC as room service "has its own kitchen and pantry". He did not know if the coffee that comes from there is brewed or from the syrup but I suspect that it would be the same coffee that is served in the dining rooms.