beg3yrs

There are lots of existing and recent threads on the Sun Princess. There's even a current "Live From" thread. You are likely to get a lot more information from what's already written. Take a look.

3 hours ago, Drdarkknight said:

...

 

there are a surprising amount of people that boarded in Barcelona last week, at least from what I heard at some of the entertainment venues 

We're two of those people who boarded in Barcelona last week. I heard the CD say it was about 2,000 who boarded there so almost a 50% turnover. What I was surprised at was how many of those were only on board for seven days. We'll be with you until Barcelona.

Once we got more familiar with the ship's layout, we're definitely enjoying it. I will say that after a week, it was only last night we saw the Dome and the performance by the acrobatic team. It was great. A word to the wise though, seating can be limited so arrive a little early as we didn't do that the first week and were turned away.

We're loving the new elevator system where you simply select your desired floor in the elevator lobby and the indicator lets you know which car to take. It was quite odd not to board the car and have to quickly turn and select your floor. Last week there was no ability to change your mind and select a different floor but as of yesterday it seems there was a software upgrade and now there are "buttons" on the display panel so you can now do this.

Staff on board is top notch. They were all hand-picked for this assignment and it shows. Captain Paolo Arrigo is a hoot, an Italian that makes announcements with a British accent that according to some Brits we've met, is from nowhere. CD JaYson (yes that's how he spells it) is really out there but does a great job along with his staff.

The passenger mix is wildly all over the map. Lots of families with kids ranging from infants to teens. Lots of young couples too and of course us older boomers. The cabin next to us has now been occupied by a family with young children. Seems the parents left them in the cabin last night and I suspect with jet lag the night time here was their morning so the noises coming through the wall made us think they were jumping from the beds onto the floor. DW had a nice word with them at 11PM and they quieted down.

It's warming up quite a bit now and I think this will be a test for the AC systems on board. Our cabin is far aft and so far we've been ok but while the full cool setting is nice, it's barely cool enough. We'll see how that goes as the outside temperatures rise into the mid-to-high 90s F this coming week. I notice coming down the halls the temperature can vary wildly so there's definitely some rebalancing that needs to happen. I'm hope as this new ship encounters more varying weather this will eventually be worked out.

Park 19 is still non-operational. We were walking the track up there yesterday and saw lots of young disappointed faces checking things out.

Princess' focus on getting younger families on board seems to be working but with Park 19 out of the picture for now they'll have to overcome some bad PR I'm sure will come from this. Conversely as a Boomer, we're disappointed there's no sports court with basketball or pickle ball.

We love the outside dining on the promenade deck! It's wonderful!

OK, since nobody has answered the question, I'll give it a go.

We were on the Island late in 2022. Got an unexpected upgrade to a suite in the back of the ship. It was on Baja deck. We did notice a little bit of vibration now and then but nothing like has been discussed previously. It certainly wasn't 100% of the time and it may have been only at higher speeds. Of course all this is subjective but ... it was nowhere near what previous posts made us think it would be.

So, we're now booked down low in a rear suite Plaza deck for a 54 day cruise on the Island in 2026. You could say we're OK with what we experienced in 2022.

Just like paying taxes, at the end of the cruise I'd rather owe them a little bit rather than have them owe me.

43 minutes ago, tinkerbelluk said:

This is for the arena shows only and not the dome. There were I would guess a good 50+ seats reserved and we got there 30 mins before and had our pick of most of them. They allow anyone to use them 5 mins before the show starts.

I understand that Premier reservations are only for production shows in the arena. Is this correct?

4 hours ago, bnickle said:

Two for the entire booking.

Not what I wanted to hear but thank you.

1 hour ago, wcook said:

Or just call it the Jones Act for simplicity 🙂

Sometimes simple is incorrect. They are two different acts.

Question for those of you who have a single booking on a multi-week sailing (multiple segments) and also have the Premier Package.

Do you get two specialty dinners for each segment or is it just two for the entire booking?

1 hour ago, SCX22 said:

 

Not only that, the park rangers that board for the few hours at the beginning and end that do the enrichment/narration would be stuck on the ship, if it were to break down.

I thought the park rangers arrived on the ship by their own boat from their local ranger station. Seems they could leave anytime by their boat.

We experienced all the good things others have said on our connoisseur tour two years ago. Like the European guide mentioned, ours did give us lots of information on the upcoming stops to prepare us for the on-your-own but of course didn't accompany us as he couldn't split himself up. Found out later that he spent much of his "away" time ensuring the dinner plans were correct, taking care of guest's anniversaries and birthdays and preparing for the next stop.

1 hour ago, levonfan said:

Anyone have an update on Park 19 opening? My 11 year old is gonna be mad if it’s not open June 1

Follow this link for more information: https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/3007522-live-ish-from-our-sun-princess-21-day-round-trip-barcelona-adventure/?do=getNewComment

I use an app called PocketEarth which holds maps in the phone's memory.

In past years I always downloaded them before leaving home because the ship's Internet access was so poor. With the advent of Princess using Starlink to access the Internet, I've easily been able to download maps on board. It's no problem at all.

Just made Sun Princess MDR reservations for June 1 through 21 using the app. Now we'll see if they stick.

34 minutes ago, Steelers36 said:

It would have helped to provide us with the error message.  As mentioned, is your credit card properly entered and are all other pre-cruise steps completed?

 

A workaround for may folks has been to access DMW via the web version of the App.  IDK your error message, but it could be that the App thinks you are not Ocean Ready or you have a bad data element.  Depending on what the issue is, you may be blocked in the web version as well.

 

You can call into Princess and use the phone tree selections to get to DMW help and see what they can do.

I've got the same issue and we're 34 days from boarding.

We're all good with check-in. Paid in full for months now, medallion will be shipped and in the green lane.

On the Sun Princess June 1. Have been able to make a Spellbound reservation but nothing else.

The web-based version of the App won't even get into DMW so that's a no-go.

I suspect on May 1 or soon thereafter reservations will be available.

We had a cabin under the seawalk once on the Royal. The overhang is awful as it limits your view of the sky and any high mountains near the ship. At that time there was also a terrible purple light shining up from below that illuminated the cabin at night. I'm sure it makes the ship look nice but ...

9 hours ago, Ombud said:

Carnival Corp lines:

Aida - German

Costa - Italian / English

CSSC - Mandarin 

All others (Carnival, Cunard, Princess, PO, POAU, Seabourn) - English everywhere in the world

On our Costa cruises English was the third or fourth language used for announcements. For us it was, in no particular order; Italian, Spanish, English, French and German.

DW is a native speaker for English and is fluent in Spanish and can understand some French and Italian. I can understand some Spanish. It was fun for us to listen carefully to all the announcements and decided if they were substantially the same in each language.

5 hours ago, LME70 said:

I'm booked on the Sun at start of July and was really looking forward to Kotor. I'm wondering whether anyone who has missed one of these ports already has claimed on their insurance (especially if they were only informed once on the ship)?

 

I'm still excited by the upcoming cruise but a little annoyed if Bar is boring.

According to a Celebrity web page on Bar, it seems quite interesting, especially Stari Bar which is the Old Town.

I'm seeing Spellbound open for reservations in early June, but not every night. Don't know if those unavailable nights are already sold out or if they're dark those nights. Anybody know?

IMHO and in agreement with engineers on two different ships, the tap water on board is cleaner and better tasting than many bottled waters. No funny taste for me. This of course is for the water generated on board. Sometimes the ship takes on shoreside water and while I'm sure the water is clean, it may have a funny taste although I've never encountered that.

As far as the plastic bottles go, Princess has an extensive program to sort waste into recyclables, burnables, non-recyclables and finally grind-it-up fish food. Your bottles will almost certainly be recycled. In some ports you can see pallets of various kinds of refuse being unloaded for appropriate disposition.

Regarding the cutoff time, for the Discovery sailing on April 3, we had driven from Tucson in two legs, staying overnight in Cathedral City near Palm Springs. Originally had planned to drive all the way to San Pedro but DW doesn't tolerate that long of a drive anymore and I have to admit once reaching Cathedral City, I was pretty much done as well. But I digress...

It's supposed to be only about two hours from Cathedral City to the port. We intended to miss the initial rush and arrive around noon, leaving Cathedral City at 10AM. Figured with LA traffic we'd still have a buffer. Turns out we needed it! There were no accidents fortunately but with the inevitable high traffic slowdowns we arrived a little after 1PM and were starting to sweat the 90 or 60 minute deadline (sailing was at 3PM) as we couldn't remember which really mattered. Thought to ourselves that since we had "checked in" on the app we should be good to go. Anyway, the port staff told us we had plenty of time still and there was no worry. What we couldn't get from them was what the actual deadline was. They simply said that word comes down from on high and they close down.

All in all, it was really nice to just show up, drop bags, park and then show passports and medallions and be waved onto the ship. Nice!

2 hours ago, HaveDogWillTravel said:

....

 

@beg3yrs We saw you at the Marriage show!  You two were adorable!  I will not tell your secrets. 😇We didn’t stay for the second half so I don’t know if you won or not.  

Thanks for that. Old age and cunning will overcome youth and skill every day and we got lucky on a couple of the questions as we'd discussed similar subjects recently. We did win but like Little League these days, everyone gets the same prize. ShiP champagne and a bunch of Effy trinkets. The champagne we gave away and the trinkets will become stocking stuffers for very young granddaughters and great-nieces in the extended family.

I have to agree with everyone that this cruise was amazing. The crew was fantastic but I've got to say this time it was the passengers! Everyone was so excited and in lock-step to see the eclipse that there was a real sense of camaraderie from the minute we boarded. It was also very special as so many of the best posting Cruise Critic members were on board. At the M&G we finally got to put faces and voices to the cream of the Cruise Critic community.

We did have two not so great experiences.

• Our cabin steward constantly complained about being overworked which was kind of a downer. We know they have probably too much work but the good ones never complain.
• The Catch by Rudy: excellent food and we'll go again. But ... DW really wanted to see the Marriage Match game show at 8:30 and even though our res at TC was 6:40, we had only finished our mains by 7:50. Our server didn't want to take no for a dessert order so we reluctantly ordered the berries at 7:50 thinking that would be an easy and quick selection to serve. By 8:15 no sign of dessert or our server so we just left for the show (DW ended up signing us up as the vintage couple and we ended up on stage - quite fun). Afterwards we saw our MDR adjacent tablemates at Bellini's, next to The Catch and we stopped to chat. We were then accosted by our server and her supervisor saying the chef was disappointed and demanding to know why we left. This escalated to the point where DW finally told them to walk away. She turned back to our new friends and refused to speak to those two any more. Another downer.

Regardless though, overall we had an amazing trip, one of the best shorter cruises we've ever been on!

3 hours ago, Poohbear5701 said:

Beg3yrs, where is the aft smoking area on the Sun Princess.  Is it very big?

I can't say firsthand as I am not sailing on the Sun Princess until June 1.

That said, I've read a report on CC the smoking area is located on the Wake View Terrace.

2 hours ago, MacMadame said:

How did you do this? When I booked excursions, I was not given the choice to add a gift card, only to pay by credit card. 😞 

It is possible to pay for excursions with gift cards. However you must call Princess and pray for a competent CS person. If they don't seem to know what they're doing, HUACA (hang up and call again).

40 minutes ago, MsSoCalCruiser said:

Unfortunately, I have to have margarine due to a dairy allergy, so would you please tell me what color the tasteless crap was? 😂

It was pale white.