tiggerrr

I was unable to work on my work laptop due to VPN on two cruises on Discovery Princess this past year and a half. One cruise was before starlink and one after. Also, didn’t work on Diamond this past January but it did work on Grand last September. When I went to see if the staff could help, they were clear each time I tried that VPNs are not supported and they would not try to help. So, it may work for you but if it’s critical that you be connected, you may be running a risk. Thankfully, we have a Citrix connection at work too, so my wife’s laptop worked for me to stay connected.

So I see we got a minor update in the app to deal with the timeout issues. Will be interesting to see if that works. Not sure what the update is around green lane consistency is. Didn’t help me. I’m green lane on the old app and blue lane on the new app still because the new app demands the credit card for shoreside and the old one doesn’t.

Same variation for us. In January, on Diamond Princess we had same table/time reservation and they gave us the same table and told us literally just to walk right in to the table without checkin each night. On Discovery in April, same type of reservation, we were moved all over based on next available table. Both cruises were full occupancy.

The midship cabanas on decks 10, 11, and 12 would be mostly covered. These are the ones that are part of the “sphere”. They most likely would be a bit exposed as the sphere curves inward going up. Deck 10 would be most covered but it would be immediately above the piazza. We chose a deck 11 cabana to try it out. Balcony portion might be a little smaller due to the sphere curve. We’ll see. These cabanas are not Reserve if that matters to anyone booking.

We’re booked into a cabana next October, so we did look into it a bit. Two ways show that the deck 9 Cabanas are exposed to higher decks. If you look at the deck plans on Princess for deck 9 you can see the fore and aft cabanas go right to the ship edge. Move to deck 10 and you can see the outline of deck 9 and that the deck 10 cabins don’t go that far out so they would see down. You can also see it on the ship renderings as well the deck 9 cabanas are the widest deck. Shown below.

Lol. Okay, that took a moment to unpack. Looking forward to your take on things. My wife and I are from Edmonton and are on this cruise too. Our second time on Discovery.

Someone on board in the roll call shared that the Royal class ships have to wait for low tide to be able to clear the Lions Gate Bridge. Edit: it may not always have to wait for low tide, but Sunday’s tides were on the high side of the tidal range.

We’re starting to wind down for the night as morning will come early and be busy. I thought I’d throw my thoughts in here as a way of getting it all straight in my head. This was an excellent cruise from start to finish. Very happy right now. So any critiques below are minor and did not affect our enjoyment. Highlights This is a beautiful ship. Absolutely now our favorite ship across any line for the decor. Enough that feels like Princess, but unique too. Sleek, modern and elegant all in one. Great artwork. Lots of places to use for different purposes. To have a drink, to read, to have fun, to listen to music. That may be a bit different when the ship is more than 60% capacity but the spaces are still there. The entertainment was excellent. From productions shows to smaller venues, we enjoyed everything we saw and heard. Food in the restaurants was also excellent. We ate MDR, Crown Grill and Sabatini’s and it was all good. The crew was amazingly friendly and helpful. We got more hellos and offers of help on the cruise than probably any other previous Princess cruise. And ordering drinks on the app and having them delivered to you worked really, really well for us. Probably too well. Misses This is probably the same for all Royal class ships, but I hate the layout of the buffet. (We’ve cruised on every non-Royal class Princess ship at least once but somehow never a Royal class ship). There were long lines from inefficient design. You were guessing which side to enter and hoping that was the side that was open to the lines and not roped off. Minorly irritating. The staff were significantly inexperienced on allergens compared to our previous experience. Including issues when tongs or utensils were missing, just grabbing utensils from other areas. E.g grabbing gluten free bread from under its cover with tongs from regular bread. To some extent that’s on us. We had grown used to staff having more experience and we didn’t want to bug the chef every time in the buffet. But I would recommend, you need to bug the chef every time. The chefs all knew what they were doing. The rest of the staff are learning. No actual issues occurred so we’re fine and happy. Just passing on the lesson learned. Nice Touches and Nitpicks For the completely ridiculous portion of the post. I like the USB charging ports in the lamps next to the beds. I hate the position of the toilet paper under the counter that always seems to cause you to rip off only one or two squares. I like that guest services is now out of the immediate piazza area which improves traffic at busy times. I hate that the Privacy notice has to be set on the panel outside (meaning being somewhat dressed in case someone walks by). I like the more limited space for the art and photo areas from a flow perspective. And I hate the app - even though it worked better for us than many others it has a long, long way to go. But those are all so small things that I needed to get off my chest. The bottom line is - find a reason to sail on this ship. The ship and the crew were amazing. No regrets. Great vacation. Wish we could stay on.

Just did a speed test. We are between Victoria and Vancouver on Discovery. It was 5mbps up and 5mbps down.

It was included on the form for selecting your disembarkation time. You also checked a box for whether you needed a pre-departure test or not for returning to the US

We decided we’ve been to San Francisco enough that we’re going to spend the day on the ship. Found a quiet corner of the Wake View Bar area to curl up with a book.

Sailing in this morning starting at about 5:45am

That’s what fixed it for me. It worked fine until I got onboard. Then nothing but spinning wheel of death. Sign out, sign in fixed it. But, like others, I’m not in love with this all or it’s design. But at least drink ordering has worked well.

We had a small hiccup this morning with food allergy handling. My wife is celiac, so must be gluten free. Day one was great in the buffet with a chef pointing out everything with confidence. MDR for dinner was the usual great handling by a head waiter. This morning at the breakfast buffet she had a minor issue with not being able to get gluten free bread because the person closest to it wasn’t allowed to handle it and the person who was able was located at the other end of the counter. A bit of a layout issue but no big deal. But the chef wasn’t confident in the answers about what she could have and then the person who was getting her fresh bacon (the bacon on the line sits on bread to soak up the grease) almost used the tongs from the line instead of fresh ones for the fresh bacon. Lunch was back to the normal great handling. So we’re not really fussed. She did get to eat without an actual issue. We’ve seen that with our recent travels in other places too. Where newer staff are not yet up to speed on some of those things. But it was unusual in our normal experience with Princess. Just post-pandemic growing pains.

IMG_4920.MOV The Love Boat theme played from the ship’s horn on sail away. (Hope it comes through on the video) And according to the captain, we are indeed going to back out of the channel to the breakwater.