Mini review: Alaska on Sapphire Princess

We had a great cruise to Alaska on the Sapphire Princess and I would like to give some feedback on what I thought about this cruise compared to my first cruise that I took last November aboard the Celebrity Summit.

We flew into Anchorage from LAX and spent a day in Anchorage. We drove up to Chugach State park to hike Flattop mountain but there was way too much snow and we didn't have the right gear so we aborted the climb 1/4 way through. After that we went bicycling on the Tony Knowles coastal trail which I highly recommend - it was a lot of fun. We rented bikes from Downtown Bicycle center which I also recommend.

Our transfer to Whittier was with Alaska Cruise Transfer bus service which was excellent. They picked us up from the airport without any delays and stopped en route at some scenic vistas.

Boarding the Sapphire princess was very easy and organization was good.

Review of the cruise itself (I will mainly contrast this with my experience on Celebrity):

Food - was decent but markedly inferior to Celebrity. The food on Celebrity was very good. On the first day I had a fajita in the Santa Fe dining room which was downright aweful (inedible). The variety was also limited and the captains dinner was rather underwhelming (On the summit it was spectacular!). In general a bit disappointing, I expected more.

Service - Again, good but inconsistent. Whereas on the Celebrity Summit all the staff were exceptional on Princess there were a few who were actually rude which was quite a shock to us. My GF's room key malfunctioned thrice not due to her fault but due to some glitch in the system. They would say it was de-magnetized but that was incorrect since the card worked everywhere else including the statement printing machine but would not work to open the room. The counter staff "accused" her of not knowing how to use a key card - c'mon give me a break! :rolleyes: she has traveled all over using hundreds of room keys - I think she knows how to store one, what a stupid insensitive thing to say... my GF was pretty upset about this and I was thinking of complaining higher up but I just let it go.

In another incident another person at the counter was rude to me as well, I waited in line for 20 mins to have my statement printed out since both machines were broken :rolleyes: and then the girl gives me the correct first page but the subsequent pages are from someone else's account! I go back and tell her that she has made a mistake and without listening or looking up at me she retorts "you need to get in line!" after which I firmly upped my voice and said "YOU made a mistake you screwed up" after which she apologized profusely and corrected her error...geez! what is wrong with these people? Princess needs to train them better!

Yet another incident was in the dining room where the guy at front who is supposed to welcome us just said "why are you here you are supposed to be in Vivaldi". This is not the way to address guests, we were quite shocked! Again, Princess needs to teach etiquette and manners to their staff.

We NEVER EVER had even one incident of this sort on Celebrity, the staff on the Celebrity Summit were some of the friendliest and most polished I have seen.

Now I do want to clarify that MOST of the staff were very friendly but as I said there were a few but I think in this industry even a "few" is too many and sours the experience.

Entertainment - Again, FAIR but below expectations. The shows were too short unlike Celebrity which were ample. The other entertainment like "Princess pop star" were not particularly interesting and sometimes in the late evening I was bored and could not even find anything on the ship that I liked. On Celebrity the entertainment was fabulous and every night there were multiple shows going on until very late in the night. Movies under the stars was quite a flop - I think there were about 10 people there who looked like they'd rather not be there because it was freezing. I think on a Alaska cruise with more sea days and the weather being so cold Princess should have made an extra effort to have more entertainment, not less. Disappointing!

Problems with the ship - There was a lot of engine vibration throughout the ship and also a lot of rocking. Even when we were dining the entire table would vibrate which was annoying. No such thing was experienced on the Celebrity Summit which I think is a more modern ship with stabilizers. Another drawback was not being able to check account status in your room, we could do this on Celebrity. Perhaps it is just an old ship.

Overall I would rate my cruise fair, perhaps if Celebrity had not set the standard so incredibly high I would've rated it excellent :D In all, we had a great time but we will be sailing next time with CELEBRITY :p

Thank you for the review. It was interesting because my experience on the Summit was quite different from yours. Tiny cabin, overcooked food, some of which was mystery meat, etc. It's nice we have choices.

Yes Pam, it's good to have choices... and it was good to try Princess and realize that we greatly prefer the way Celebrity does things :)

Thanks for taking the time to post your thoughts. Different strokes for different folks I guess.....:):):)

Thanks for the comments

Thank you for taking the time to write this review and to share your experience.

Keith

Problems with the ship - There was a lot of engine vibration throughout the ship and also a lot of rocking. Even when we were dining the entire table would vibrate which was annoying.

We were on last week...and felt the vibration at dinner one time as well. The last night we sat at a table of 8 (instead of waiting for table of 2), and one of the persons was telling us about The Ultimate Ship Tour. She was explaining the neat stuff she saw...and one of those was the ship washing machines (how huge they are etc.). She said that vibration we felt was from the huge washers...

John in NC

Thanks for the review.

Our 14 day Sapphire experience was much different. Yes, I did have to get a new room key, and wait in a line to get one.

I have a special diet, and dining staff was outstanding in helping me every day for the 14 day cruise.

Didn't go to shows. IMO they are always too crowded and we aren't really interested in singing and dancing.

We didn't hear any noise anywhere--we were in an aft Baja balcony.

I'm glad you have a cruise line that fits you. For us, PCL is fine.

Pat

Just back from our June 1 N/B sailing of the Sapphire and I have to agree about the aft vibration, esp. in the Vivaldi dining room. It was so bad that we asked to be moved, the silverware was dancing. We ate in the dining rooms on Deck Six after that(glad we did - we found a GREAT waiter, Ignacio, in the Santa Fe). We too found the entertainment to be lacking.

And yeah, my girlfriend is a card killer too. At least once per cruise we have to get her a new card...and this has happened on RCL, HAL, and Celebrity too. And she wears hers around her neck. I don't know, maybe too much iron in her diet....

Besides these issues, our overall cruise experience was quite different from the OP's as we were very impressed with the food and especially the service all over the ship. So much so that we have the Sapphire booked for Thanksgiving.

We ate in the dining rooms on Deck Six after that(glad we did - we found a GREAT waiter, Ignacio, in the Santa Fe). We too found the entertainment to be lacking.

 

Besides these issues, our overall cruise experience was quite different from the OP's as we were very impressed with the food and especially the service all over the ship. So much so that we have the Sapphire booked for Thanksgiving.

Is Ignacio from Chile but sounds Italian? If so he was great--very loud and personable...and fun.

I too was impressed with the food...wish I could have tried every dish every night! Awesome that you are sailing again in November - envious!

thanks

John

We were on last week...and felt the vibration at dinner one time as well. The last night we sat at a table of 8 (instead of waiting for table of 2), and one of the persons was telling us about The Ultimate Ship Tour. She was explaining the neat stuff she saw...and one of those was the ship washing machines (how huge they are etc.). She said that vibration we felt was from the huge washers...

 

John in NC

We were on last week and noticed only the first night in the Pacific Moon.

We had a great cruise to Alaska on the Sapphire Princess and I would like to give some feedback on what I thought about this cruise compared to my first cruise that I took last November aboard the Celebrity Summit.

 

We flew into Anchorage from LAX and spent a day in Anchorage. We drove up to Chugach State park to hike Flattop mountain but there was way too much snow and we didn't have the right gear so we aborted the climb 1/4 way through. After that we went bicycling on the Tony Knowles coastal trail which I highly recommend - it was a lot of fun. We rented bikes from Downtown Bicycle center which I also recommend.

 

Our transfer to Whittier was with Alaska Cruise Transfer bus service which was excellent. They picked us up from the airport without any delays and stopped en route at some scenic vistas.

 

Boarding the Sapphire princess was very easy and organization was good.

 

Review of the cruise itself (I will mainly contrast this with my experience on Celebrity):

 

Food - was decent but markedly inferior to Celebrity. The food on Celebrity was very good. On the first day I had a fajita in the Santa Fe dining room which was downright aweful (inedible). The variety was also limited and the captains dinner was rather underwhelming (On the summit it was spectacular!). In general a bit disappointing, I expected more.

 

Service - Again, good but inconsistent. Whereas on the Celebrity Summit all the staff were exceptional on Princess there were a few who were actually rude which was quite a shock to us. My GF's room key malfunctioned thrice not due to her fault but due to some glitch in the system. They would say it was de-magnetized but that was incorrect since the card worked everywhere else including the statement printing machine but would not work to open the room. The counter staff "accused" her of not knowing how to use a key card - c'mon give me a break! :rolleyes: she has traveled all over using hundreds of room keys - I think she knows how to store one, what a stupid insensitive thing to say... my GF was pretty upset about this and I was thinking of complaining higher up but I just let it go.

 

In another incident another person at the counter was rude to me as well, I waited in line for 20 mins to have my statement printed out since both machines were broken :rolleyes: and then the girl gives me the correct first page but the subsequent pages are from someone else's account! I go back and tell her that she has made a mistake and without listening or looking up at me she retorts "you need to get in line!" after which I firmly upped my voice and said "YOU made a mistake you screwed up" after which she apologized profusely and corrected her error...geez! what is wrong with these people? Princess needs to train them better!

 

Yet another incident was in the dining room where the guy at front who is supposed to welcome us just said "why are you here you are supposed to be in Vivaldi". This is not the way to address guests, we were quite shocked! Again, Princess needs to teach etiquette and manners to their staff.

 

We NEVER EVER had even one incident of this sort on Celebrity, the staff on the Celebrity Summit were some of the friendliest and most polished I have seen.

 

Now I do want to clarify that MOST of the staff were very friendly but as I said there were a few but I think in this industry even a "few" is too many and sours the experience.

 

Entertainment - Again, FAIR but below expectations. The shows were too short unlike Celebrity which were ample. The other entertainment like "Princess pop star" were not particularly interesting and sometimes in the late evening I was bored and could not even find anything on the ship that I liked. On Celebrity the entertainment was fabulous and every night there were multiple shows going on until very late in the night. Movies under the stars was quite a flop - I think there were about 10 people there who looked like they'd rather not be there because it was freezing. I think on a Alaska cruise with more sea days and the weather being so cold Princess should have made an extra effort to have more entertainment, not less. Disappointing!

 

Problems with the ship - There was a lot of engine vibration throughout the ship and also a lot of rocking. Even when we were dining the entire table would vibrate which was annoying. No such thing was experienced on the Celebrity Summit which I think is a more modern ship with stabilizers. Another drawback was not being able to check account status in your room, we could do this on Celebrity. Perhaps it is just an old ship.

 

Overall I would rate my cruise fair, perhaps if Celebrity had not set the standard so incredibly high I would've rated it excellent :D In all, we had a great time but we will be sailing next time with CELEBRITY :p

I have NEVER EVER experienced the rudeness you describe on any of my 12 Princess cruises.

I have NEVER EVER experienced the rudeness you describe on any of my 12 Princess cruises.

We would have to agree with that. We have, on occasion, had less than the best service, but, nothing that affected our desire to cruise again and nothing we would consider to be rudeness. As for customer service, we have had at least one or two occasions to deal with customer service (the "front desk" people) on every cruise that we have taken and the thing that we notice is that the people are very "dry" in their demeanor. I think it is just the fact that they seem to all be British and have a different mannerism than what we are use to in America.:confused:

I have NEVER EVER experienced the rudeness you describe on any of my 12 Princess cruises.

We just got off the ship today and did not experience any rudeness from any staff. A couple of other passengers, yes, but not the staff.

Is Ignacio from Chile but sounds Italian? If so he was great--very loud and personable...and fun.john

Yeah, that's him. One of the best waiters we've ever had.

Wow, we had an outstanding experience on the Sapphire last September Whittier to Vancouver. The food was outstanding, the passenger services crew friendly and helpful, no vibration and on our first day the seas were running at 20+ feet. Interesting how different cruises get different feedback. We are on the Island Princes next January for 15 days Ft Lauderdale to Los Angeles and we would be very disappointed if we experienced with has been described here.

Thanks for the info ..

We have been on 2 Princess and 2 RC cruises; we're cruising Coral in mid-July (yay!). We have met 2 rude employees that we can recall: We were chatting with our room steward and he said he was tired and felt like slapping some passengers! This did make us feel a little uncomfortable about making any requests. Also, I sent back a prime rib I didn't like and asked for a steak. When the waiter brought it out, he literally dropped the plate on the table and walked off. Clearly, these 2 incidents haven't kept us from cruising Princess again. Everyone has a bad day :)

I was recently on Celebrity Summit and found the food and service top notch. That being said, I have always preferred Princess over Celebrity so it will be interesting to sail with the line again. On my last cruise with Princess, which was over a year ago I had top notch service (my cabin steward was amazing), food (I used My Time and had the same wait team every night who did a great job and always had excellent suggestions), and entertainment (except for 1 comedian who was horrible and behaved badly because I didn't respond to him when he decided to pick on me).