4Day Cruise Golden Princess Blog 9/26-9/30

[Piepkorn]

Welcome home...we see you came through the breakwater at 530a. We are all waiting anxiously to hear all about your trip. :D

[trbarton]

At sea Day 3

 

Beautiful day at sea. Saw a interesting cooking demonstration with they Executive Chef and the Hotel General Manager. Good and funny. Afterwards we had a tour of the galley.

 

They had one dinning room opened for a sale from the shops. A lot of people there.

 

Lunch they had a Pub Lunch which was good especially with the music of Sir Elton John playing in the background.

 

Their will be entertainment with the comedian Sarge plus the ships dancers and singers in the explorers lounge.

 

I'm still waiting for an answer from the tour desk about the tour in Ensenada that goes to 2 wineries and from the Princess web site it says that you will get a complementary bottle of wine. The tour hand out says nothing about the free bottle. The person at the tour desk said that someone would call me about the FREE bottle.

 

Wine tasting this afternoon.

 

Princess web site said 3 smart casual nights and one formal. Found out that their a no formal night.

 

They had a deck party with live music and dancing and lots of people enjoying themselves.

 

Please enjoy my blog.

 

I will post photos when I return.

 

Tom

 

Day 4.....Ensenada

 

We arrived in Ensenada with warm and bright sky's.

 

Took a nice tour to 2 wineries. The tour guide gave a lot of good history and explained about our wineries. We had an excellent tour of the winery. Some of the oak cask's had writing on them from famous singers. Everyone got a bottle of wine to take with us.

 

Downtown was loaded with lots of shops with venders wanting your money.

 

Their are shuttles for $1 back to the ship.

 

I looked for Wi-Fy but didn't find any.

 

About the ship......I had excellent meals in the MDR and excellent service. All of the staff friendly. Good shows at night. Ship looks great and I didn't notice any problems.

 

You have to really focus on what you want to do since you only have 4 days. For myself since I have never done a short cruise like this I'm more into a longer cruise. I've been spoiled by 2 week cruises.

 

As soon as I can I will post some of my photos.

 

Tom

 

Day 5....Leaving the ship. It was a mess and long delay disembarking the ship. Almost 1 hr. from my scheduled time of 9:30and I finally left when they called the next group regardless of my group number. Also not enough enough custom agents which added to the delay. Agent said to contact my congress person. The delay was with the custom process. No problems when I cruised out of San Francisco.

 

People using the Princess shuttle had left 1 hr earlier. From my observations use the Princes shuttle and don't try and save money, plus the company had no record that I had paid even tho I had a round trip reservation.

 

I will try and answer questions when I return home.

 

Tom:)

[Princessmich]

Thanks for the info! I was glad to hear there is a Pub lunch! Can you tell us what movies were shown on Muts?

thanks! glad you had a good time!

[DrivesLikeMario]

It's very typical for there to be border patrol-type hold-ups at the Port of LA. I don't know what it is; I used to think it was because they were short-staffed all the time but then recently, it seems to have been security issues that have caused the delays. Either way, allow extra time to get to the airport when coming into, or out of, LA especially when it's the ship's first run on a new itinerary.

 

The bottle of wine per person on the Ensenada winery tour is new. It wasn't that way before. Interesting!

[Rosefloater]

The bottle of wine per person on the Ensenada winery tour is new. It wasn't that way before. Interesting!

 

I don't know about the free bottle for the Princess tour, but on the Carnival winery tour (operated by the same tour company), they have given a free bottle of wine for at least 5 years.

 

trbarton - thank you for your blog. Is the galley tour open to everyone? If possible, can you post (or link) the patters? TIA

[luvcdays]

Tom, curious to know what movies are on MUTS? Also if you can tell us if there is a pub lunch on any days? Usually they have them on sea days but on our last 7 day coastal they didn't offer one:( Thanks again for the blog!:)

 

Michelle:)

 

Hey Michelle,

 

I thought they offered a pub lunch on the first day that we arrived in SF, since that was our only sea day (somewhat). We choose not to go to it since we were sailing under the GG bridge at that time.

 

Hope you have a great time with Linda and please let me know if you do have a formal night. Ours would be on Thanksgiving Day if we have one and I bought a new dress for it :D

[Princessmich]

Hi Janis! I just checked my patters from that day and it's not there...I know I was scouring over those things looking for that lunch, so I just accepted the fact that alas..there was not one :( If you check your personalizer, it should say if there's formal night. Princess did correct their website so now it does state 0 formal nights 4 smart casual nights. So I quit bugging Rob to get his suit cleaned! I'm looking forward to this getaway and new ship for us!

Hey Michelle,

 

I thought they offered a pub lunch on the first day that we arrived in SF, since that was our only sea day (somewhat). We choose not to go to it since we were sailing under the GG bridge at that time.

 

Hope you have a great time with Linda and please let me know if you do have a formal night. Ours would be on Thanksgiving Day if we have one and I bought a new dress for it :D

[trbarton]

We'll be doing the same 4 day in October. We were told we have no formal night. Do you have a formal night?

 

We've had roll calls that were very active and then only have a few people show up at the M&G.

 

FYI - We're having high winds in the LA area today.

 

My information from Princess before my cruise was 3 smart casual and 1 formal night. Other people had the same information but their was NO formal night.

 

Tom:)

[trbarton]

TOM, IF YOU HAVE TIME, COULD YOU LIST COPIES OF THE PLATTERS?

MAINLY INTERESTED IN HE DINING MENUES.

 

lAST BUT NOT LEAST QUESTION....

lAT QUESTION, WHAT TIME WERE THE HANDICAP FOLKS ALLOWED TO BOARD?

 

getting OFF AS YOU DEBARK...lol :confused:

 

Their was no menus in the Platter that I saw. If you still want the Platters please let me know. I don't know what time the Handicap people boarded as I arrived at 2:15 pm.

 

Tom:)

[trbarton]

Tom, curious to know what movies are on MUTS? Also if you can tell us if there is a pub lunch on any days? Usually they have them on sea days but on our last 7 day coastal they didn't offer one:( Thanks again for the blog!:)

 

Michelle:)

 

The Pub Lunch was on the one sea day. I will try and post the Platters where they list the MUTS movies. I never saw one so I didn't follow what they had.

 

Tom:)

[DrivesLikeMario]

I don't know about the free bottle for the Princess tour, but on the Carnival winery tour (operated by the same tour company), they have given a free bottle of wine for at least 5 years.

 

trbarton - thank you for your blog. Is the galley tour open to everyone? If possible, can you post (or link) the patters? TIA

 

I've been on the tour twice before and didn't get a free bottle of wine. :confused:

[Princessmich]

When we were in Ensenada in may we did this Casa Dona Lupe, L.A. Cetto & Wine Tasting tour and everyone got 1 free bottle...we actually received several due to some fellow cruisers who were traveling home by air didn't want to take them back :)

 

I've been on the tour twice before and didn't get a free bottle of wine. :confused:

[trbarton]

 

 

Tom:D

[Mindy97]

I was on the same cruise. Over 90% of the people did Walk Off. If you were doing Walk Off, you didn't have to show anything to prove what time you were due to get off the ship (at east that I could see). So I think one of the reasons everything was running late was because people left before they were scheduled to, and that gummed things up.

 

We were in the second Walk Off group, and were called to walk off at about 7:55, which was ten minutes after our reporting time. The line was minimal, but behind us it became very long, winding all around the ramps and back to the other side.

 

I don't know how many Immigration lines there were, but it seemed about normal to me (perhaps not, though, I can't tell since I always must use the one on the far right). We had combined Customs and Immigration upstairs today, which made it easy to walk out on the lower floor.

 

The time you are told to report for disembarkation, btw, is 30 minutes earlier than they expect you to actually disembark. So we actually got off early.

 

M.

[trbarton]

 

 

Tom:D

[Princessmich]

Wow! Thanks for posting the whole thing! My dh is thrilled...they have the Star Trek movie on Muts (me not so much):)

[trbarton]

 

 

 

 

 

Tom:D

[trbarton]

 

 

 

 

Tom:D

[californiagirl]

We were on the same cruise. No formal night, however, I think people that brought their dressier clothes wore them that night. Disembarkation was not bad for us. We were in the 8:20 group and we were through customs by 8:40. The weather could not have been better for us.

 

If you want to rent a golf cart in Catalina (strongly recommended), be sure to book online. If you did not book online, you did not get a cart. There was one place that does not accept reservations, but you needed to be off the ship early.

 

We saw a doe and a buck on Catalina, they ran right infront of us. From the ship we saw dolphin, seals and last night: whales! Very cool.

[trbarton]

Photos around the ship.

 

 

 

 

 

Sky Walkers Disco

 

[trbarton]

 

 

 

 

 

 

[trbarton]

 

 

 

 

[trbarton]

Atlantis Submarine

 

 

 

 

 

[trbarton]

Balloon Drop Party

 

Cooking Show

 

Kitchen Tour

 

[trbarton]

Kitchen Photos