Caribbean Princess (CB) 2/16 Southern Review

[bulldog on water]

Forgot to say we went Sabatinis on the first formal night and to the crown grill on the last nite. Sabs has changed and we all agree we will do crown gril twice, it was great (we are not vegiterians, no offense). The last nite the diner menu is not that great except for the baked Alaska. Platters of lobster tail appetizers made up for that. Don't go to a specialty resturant on Thursday that is lobster nite in the DMV. In curesau (sic) we went to cabana beach very nice and in Aruba eagle beach ( less crowded than palm beach, but if this is your first time at Aruba you have to go to palm beach.

[gs627]

What was the name of your cruise director?

[boca7]

Hello, we recently got back from our first Princess cruise and thought I would post a review here on the board. I will also post to the review section. First some quick background....we did our first "real" cruise on RCL back in 1999 on the Monarch of the Seas for our Honeymoon and caught the cruising bug. We felt the ship was a bit beat up at the time and after talking to fellow passengers learned that from our perspective it may be better to book the newer bigger ships and that is what we have done for our past three cruises. Went on the inaugural Caribbean voyage of the Carnival Pride in 2001 and then on the fairly new Liberty of the Seas and NCL Epic after taking several years off from cruising. This first Princess cruise of ours was a departure somewhat of our recent pattern and we choose this cruise based on the itinerary in lieu of going on one of the newest ships.

 

One thing I will also say before getting into the particulars is that I doubt we will ever be the kind of people that mainly stick to one cruise line. I know the perks you get for being loyal to one line are nice, but we like to have some variety. They all have pluses and minuses in my opinion. That being said, we very much enjoyed our cruise and will try to lay out what we like and did not like.

 

Positives for Princess/CB:

 

• Food Quality-I know that there is a lot of subjectivity to this, but we felt that the Princess food was the best we have had on a cruise.
  
  • The Pizza was as good as advertised. Is it the best Pizza ever? No. Was it much better than RCL? Yes. It was 1000 times better than NCL Pizza which I did not even consider to be edible.
    
  • Our favorite meals were the Beef Medallions(DW) & Fettuccine Alfredo(me).
    
  • Loved the baked Alaska on the last night and the passion fruit soufflé on the first night.
    
  • The International Cafe was great and we hit that quite often.
    
  • I am a vegetarian and overall I thought the available options were pretty good.
    

  [*]Service levels-Overall we felt the service from the staff was much better than recent cruises on other lines. I would say marginally better than RCL and again much better than NCL where we thought the service was terrible.

  • The head waiter we had was very good. By far the best head waiter we ever had. From our experience we used to get a token visit from the head waiter a few times a cruise, but on this cruise he came over every night and made sure we were ok and always remembered exactly who we were when we saw him.
    
  • One of the baristas at the IC was amazing. He would really go all out and paid special attention to detail when preparing our coffees and teas. It wasn't that the other baristas were not doing their job, it was just that this one barista was overly exceptional. We did one of those recognition cards at the end of the cruise for him.
    
  • Our waiter in the MDR was actually kind of slow and the people next to us repeatedly got their food from a different waiter 15 minutes ahead of us. However, he was still better than the servers we had on out last NCL cruise and it seemed like we got the slowest guy from looking around the room. Maybe he had too many tables or was new....he was a nice guy though so we did not complain about it.
    

  [*]Coffee Card-I was on the fence about getting this and I am so glad I did. Aside from the espresso drinks, we went to the IC and got a ton of iced coffees and teas which did not require a hole punch and that made this a very good value.

  [*]The SPA-I know this can be hit or miss depending on who does the service, but DW had several massages and raved about the therapist doing them...one of the best she has had. Also DW thought the Bamboo massage was a big hit(Be warned-this should only be for people that like DEEP tissue massages)

  [*]Pools-there were more pools than what we have seen on other ships so they were not that crowded if you wanted to go in the water. (Deck space/chair hogs were another story though.)

  [*]Condition of the ship-I was pleasantly surprised how good the ship looked considering the age. Seems like Princess does a better job at upkeep than other lines.

Negatives for Princess/CB:

 

• BEDS!!!-Wow, I know this has been talked about a lot but the comfort of the bed we had was absolutely horrible. We had an old mattress and even with the egg crate added my DW and I had terrible back pain because of that bed. This is completely unacceptable and Princess needs to speed up the replacing of these beds.
  
• Entertainment/shows-We felt that compared to other lines the entertainment was a bit lacking and that there was not as much to do on this cruise. Also, the one show we went to was abysmally bad. The lead male singer was like a scary cross between William Shatner and Will Farrell and the performance was frightening to say the least.
  
• Evening schedule with respect to late dining. We like the concept of anytime dining, but on our last couple of cruises did not like the way it was executed so we went back to traditional dining this time. Early dining is much too early for us so we had to go with the 8:15 time slot. Well, the entertainment and other nightly activities were not scheduled to accommodate that dining time as all. For example:
  
  • One night we wanted to see the movie at MUTS. Well the times for the 2 hour movie were 7:00pm and 9:30pm. How are we supposed to do that without being very late to dinner or the start of the movie?
    
  • We wanted to see the comedian and there was not a late show after dinner at all. If we have to get ready for dinner at 5:30 to see the comedian what is the point of having late dining?
    

  [*]Chair hogs-I know this is a problem on all cruises, but it seems worse on the CB for some reason. I did not see a single instance of staff removing towels from reserved chairs after the supposed 15 minute deadline.

  [*]Sanctuary scheduling-I am not sure what the solution is, but scheduling this is a mess and as a result we did not use it. DW just wanted to go a couple of afternoons and it seems crazy that you need to get there at 6:30am to schedule a 12:30-5:00pm time slot. Perhaps they need to make this space bigger and to create some sort of reservation system that can be done in advance for specific days?

Other Observations(Not really negative or positive per say):

 

• Gym was kind of small compared to other ships we have been on. The equipment was decent though and in fairly good shape so I was able to get by.
  
• Cruise director and his staff-They were "ok"...not bad, but not great either.
  
• Cabin-DW thought it was a bit small and the mats out on the balcony were dirty and stained. Our shower also broke but they fixed it in a couple of hours and it was fine for the rest of the cruise. Bottom line is that it was just "ok" as well. I think it seemed smaller because our last two cruises we had a deluxe balcony(RCL) and the wave balcony(NCL Epic) so they were both larger than what we had here.
  
• We ended up skipping Princess Cays because there were like 40-50mph winds and the captain thought it was too risky to tender. It did not bother me at all since that meant we would arrive in Curacao at 8am instead of 2pm and I was not especially looking forward to the "beach day" on PC. I know some people like PC, but I literally did not hear one other passenger complain about missing that port. It seemed like most people were glad to have the extra time in Curacao.
  

 

I probably missed some stuff, but can't think of it at this point. Bottom line is while we thought there were positives and negatives to our cruise, we liked Princess and would probably cruise with them again. If we could have the food/service of Princess combined with some of the bells and whistles of RCL/NCL that would be perfect for us:D. At this point we would likely book either Princess or RCL for our next cruise, with Carnival being an outside possibility(their recent troubles notwithstanding).

 

 

 

 

PS-I will try and post some pictures to this review at a later point.

Your impressions are right on, I was lucky in Dec & had a newer mattress but still too hard. This is Princess cruises weakest offering of everything they provide. They obviously aren't listening.

[lovevacadays]

Thank you for your review. I think reviews from cruisers like you who cruise several different lines are great. Definitely unbiased!:)

[Crusin Hogs]

We did the CB in Jan this year , 1st time on Princess , 5 on Carnival . Loved the look and feel of the ship . Music and shows are better than we have seen on Carnival. IMO . Really liked the 70's ,Buffett , Regae on the CB , Carnival has gone with to much rap. I did find the crew ,waiters RUDE compared to Carnival's , The beds were the WORST I have ever slept on , 1 night I slept awhile on the balcony in a chair . In Aruba we did

Trikes Aruba , They are rated the #1 excursion in Aruba , Book EARLY they only have 3 trikes . http://www.trikes-aruba.com/ This cannot be book thru Princess . Curasou we did a sunset dinner cruise seen alot of the island from the water. I found a lot of pasengers to be a little more snobbish than Carnival cruisers . Overall had a good time , but don't think I would cruise Princess again . AND This cruise on Princess was alot cheaper than same route on Carnival would have been , 11th Fl balcony room on Princess was $699.00 per person , If we did the route on Carnival a balcony room would have been $ 1275.00 per person ! So we did get our money's worth, looking back