Quick thoughts: Crown Princess Southern Caribbean 1/28-2/4/2012

[Vexorg]

Just got off the Crown Princess yesterday, and although I plan to do a more thorough review later on, I thought I'd do a few quick thoughts on the trip for now:

 

Room: I was in room P315 on the Plaza deck. I frequently book these Plaza deck OV cabins, and generally find this to be a pretty good location. For the most part, these rooms are pretty quiet, but in rough seas (see below) I found that there can be a lot of noise from water hitting the bow of the ship. I had no issues with any of the fixtures in the cabin, although other people I was traveling with had some trouble with the toilet. The bed was reasonably comfortable, and I'm guessing it was fairly new.

 

Service: To be honest, I don't quite feel that the service on the Crown Princess quite matched the excellent service I have gotten on my previous Sapphire and Ruby cruises earlier this year. My cabin steward was friendly enough, but occasionally forgot things (not collecting dirty dishes, leaving towels unfolded on the rack, etc.) By the same token, our MDR waiters did their job and were friendly enough, but nothing really stood out. Normally I'll leave extra tips for the waiters and cabin stewards at the end of a cruise if I feel it's warranted, but on this one, I felt that just sticking with the automatic gratuities was sufficient. That said, we did have an excellent bar stewardess (Olga, if I recall correctly) in the Piazza area.

 

Rough seas: For most of the first and second sea days on the trip on the way to and from the islands, we were in some pretty rough seas, with 35-40 knot winds and 10-foot seas. Having been on a number of cruises now, I didn't really have any problems with the motion of the ship, but as noted above, I found that there was a lot of noise in the Plaza deck cabins from the waves hitting the bow, which made it a bit tough to sleep on these nights. I suspect it's also the type of thing that could possibly freak out a less experienced cruiser though.

 

Itinerary: I hadn't expected to like this itinerary as much as I did, but I actually found that the extra sea day was nice to have, and Curacao and Aruba were pretty nice stops. Between the two islands, I think I liked Curacao a little bit better, but that might because it seems to be a lot more overtly Dutch than Aruba, and I come from Dutch ancestry. The weather at Princess Cays was just about perfect the day we were there, and the captain described this as a "brochure day" that they get there about once a year.

 

CC Meet-and-greet: Captain Nash attended our meet-and-greet for about a half hour or so, and most of that ended up being a Q-and-A session. Perhaps the most interesting part of this was some discussion about the Concordia disaster, about which he cautioned us that we shouldn't jump to conclusions until the full reports on this come out. He also talked about the command-and-control system that Princess ships use (basically, this requires confirmation of command decisions between the two officers of the watch so that there isn't a single person controlling things) and about his work as a training captain and the simulators that CCL has in Amsterdam for training. I didn't stay too long after that, but Cruise Director Lisa Ball was also in attendance, and a couple other people I don't recall offhand.

 

Norovirus: As has been well discussed elsewhere on the board, the ship went into code red for a number of Norovirus cases on the last sea day (A news report I saw after getting off the ship put the number at 141 passengers and 12 crew, I suspect the actual number might have been higher.) There hadn't been any signs of this before the last day of the cruise, so I suspect it got picked up from passengers in Aruba. Aside from precautions being taken in food areas and a few activity cancellations, the ship was operating mostly as normal during this time.

 

All in all, for a number of reasons (some related to the ship and crew and some personal) I didn't enjoy this cruise quite as much as I did the previous Sapphire and Ruby cruises I have been on in the past year, but it was still a nice trip, and I would definitely consider sailing this itinerary again if the opportunity arose. There's already talk of possibly doing a Panama Canal trip next year, although it's far too soon to tell what will come from that. I'm still looking at the Sapphire Princess southbound repo in September as my next one though. And as soon as I get things back in order here, I'll try to post in more detail on this particular trip later.

[Host Caroline]

We did this itinerary on Jan 14 and also had the rough seas as we did 2 yrs ago same week.. then we were also on Plaza and had waves to the window almost.. this year a balcony due to all sea days and ride wasn't too bad considering seas.

 

Have not been on Princess for 18 months and didn't notice that much of a decline in service save one night in Anytime when it was awful.. there were 6 of us. Other three nights (one just DH and I) and other the 6 of us the service was very good although a bit slow.

 

We enjoyed evening activities (jeopardized trivia, comedian) etc. .. main thing I was sorely disappointed in was the cheating at trivia:( .. please, folks.. it's a fun cruise.. no need to use Kindle Fire to get answers to win the fountain pens... :eek:

 

Internet very slow, much slower than other cruises it seemed and now that DH has gone "platinum" and I am Elite it didn't matter as much but.... also I wish Princess would get U.S. CNN/NBC etc... other lines do and you just can't keep up with things with only international coverage.. HLN was on some of the time.. not a new junky but...

 

I too loved itinerary.. will definitely put Curacao on another itinerary so we can spend more time at Boca Tabla and walking trails there and in Willemstad. We did private tours in Aruba and Curacao and both were great overviews!

 

We missed noro thankfully.. two weeks before us and now last week.... hope everyone is on the mend!

[cruzinchris]

DH (GoBlueCruiser) and I posted a LIVE! thread during this voyage of the Crown Princess. I will eventually write a review (probably long :D ) but will take it easy today, unpack, do laundry, etc.

 

Our otherwise enjoyable, relaxing cruise was marred by the outbreak of Noro on the last day, and we are glad to be home. Following most of our winter get-aways, we return to cold and snow in metro-Detroit, but it has been unseasonably warm with very little snow.

 

Bon Voyage!

Chris

[Vexorg]

One thing I should note on the dining was that I did have an issue with dining on my reservation. I booked the trip later than the other people I was traveling with (mostly family, my parents, a couple of aunts, uncles and cousins and a couple of others) Apparently when I called the TA I booked through to link my reservation to my parents for dining it showed up in their system, but somehow that never got to Princess, and as a result I ended up with a different dining assignment than the rest of the group. Fortunately, when we went to the Maitre'd to fix this on the first day they had just had a cancellation on one of the tables for 10 in the Botticelli dining room, so they were able to put us in that place. There was actually one night (in Curacao) when I somehow ended up being the only one in the group to show up at dinner, so I ended up being the only one at the biggest table in the dining room. I made sure to make people feel really guilty about that one.:D

[Vexorg]

Oh, and one other thing from the Meet-and-greet: In the Q&A, when asked about it, the captain confirmed that a passenger had died on the ship the previous week. There weren't a lot of details given, but he did say that the Mexican and Belize authorities were content to let the matter be dealt with upon return to the US, so it sounds like it was just natural causes. He did briefly mention that the ships are equipped with a small morgue facility for cases like this, and did say that with the number of passengers that go through the ships each year it's inevitable that someone will die on board every once in a while. If I recall from the ship tour I took on the Ruby last year, the doctor there said that on average there are about 2-3 deaths across the Princess fleet each year.

[Kirsten T]

All very interesting - thanks, Vexorg. Looking forward to your full review. We'll be doing the same route in March; the extra sea day appealed to DH as we enjoy just camping out on the veranda with our Kindles. I'll be sure to pack extra Bonine, though.

 

Cheers,

Kirsten

[Ldyandrea]

I did this itinerary on Crown back in early December with a group of 10 of us. We also had a couple days and nights of seriously rocky seas (seems to be a trend this season) which didn't bother me, but some of the less seasoned cruisers amongst us weren't thrilled about it.

 

We ate in the Boticelli dining room all week, and had the best service I can recall on a cruise (I've done like 15).

 

I do recall seeing lots of hand sanitizer stations in evidence, and outer doors to the public restrooms were propped open so you didn't have to touch door handles, etc.

 

None of us caught Noro, but pretty much all of us came down with colds the day or two after we got back into FLL. While not pleasant, it was likely not nearly as bad as catching Noro!

 

Ultimately, we all had a great time, and I'm already jonsing for my next cruise! :)