First Cruise On CB Princess...a Must Read!!!

[missaretha]

We sailed on CB Princess for the first time on September 17th. We were met at the airport in Ft. Lauderdale by courteous people to pick up our transfer bus to the ship. The buses were late because apparently US Customs arrived late and delayed disembarkation. So we waited for 2 hours before finally boarding a bus to Port Everglades.

 

The bus ride was short and painless and we didn't need to worry about our luggage but we were in line for another hour just to get on board.

 

As we approached the building, we were given a health form to sign. No problem there as we were able to borrow a pen from the couple in front of us. Then came the citizenship form for the Bahamas. I swear I did this online. The plan was to borrow the pen again and fill it out as we moved in line inside the building. The lady who gave us the forms insisted that another lady farther down the line would not let us pass until the forms were filled in and directed us to a table off to the side, losing our place in line.

 

After filling out the forms, we walked right over to the other woman who supposedly would not let us pass and she didn't even look at us let alone the stupid forms. I was furious.

 

So finally, we boarded. Finding our stateroom was easy and painless and we were happy to find we'd been massively upgraded on a sold out ship. Instead of an inside stateroom on a lower deck, we were upgraded to an obstructed view outside stateroom on Emerald Deck.

 

Our steward, Roel, came by an introduced himself almost immediately upon our arrival. We asked for an egg crate foam to be placed on the bed (which were already put together into a king-sized bed for us) and somewhere between us touring the ship and heading back to shower and dress for dinner, it was done.

 

Entertainment: in my view, the show Piano Man was mediocre, almost high school. The four lead singers were pretty good but the dancers were awful and completely out of sync. But, it was nice to sing along with the songs of Billy Joel, Elton John, etc.

 

The crew's onstage show in the Princess Theatre was okay. The best part of it was a WAITER who came out and sang "O Sole Mio" acapella. Well, that was no waiter, that was a man who should have been giving lessons to the lead singers of Piano Man.

 

Bert Stratton! What's my name? BERT! I've been Bertified and my husband is as well. Bert Stratton was by far, the best entertainment on the entire ship. For those who have seen Bert, no explanation needed. For those planning to go on CB in the near future, he's a not-to-be-missed show. Get there about 20 to 30 minutes before he starts. While it'll appear empty at the start, you will be amazed at how full it is 5 minutes AFTER he starts.

 

Princess Pop Idol (held in Club Fusion): think you can sing? Well, even if you are professionally trained like myself, don't bother if you don't have 20 to 40 people with you to vote for you. Your singing talent has nothing to do with it.

 

The Princess Pop Idol "contest" is not a singing contest at all. It's who has the most people, who can stuff the ballots and it is poorly executed. They take 12 singers a night and they sing a karaoke song. You cannot use your own disks of you have them (like I did) and all of the songs are transposed out of the original keys making it difficult for most of the women. And they do not have the updated software on their hard drive to change the pitch of the songs. The software has to be at least 5 years old because I know plenty of karaoke DJ's who use computerized systems and all of them have pitch control.

 

Out of the 12 singers, one is selected per night and then the six "winners" compete the last night of the cruise. I was so disgusted by losing out on so many attempts, we never even went to the final night. Even the DJ/Cruise Director running the sound knew that I got hosed night after night. I was approached every night while exiting and was told "you got robbed," "you got jacked," "you have been the best singer all week," and so on. And speaking without bias, I was the very best vocalist of all of those who competed.

 

I lost out to a tall Marine in formal dress blues who gave a bad rendition of "My Way," a fat bald guy who butchered "Mack the Knife" who happened to have 40 people with him, a terrible mullet wearing female who got votes from the overbearing Pittsburgh representation on board, etc. It was a losing deal from the start. If you merely like to sing karaoke, wait for the karaoke power hour during the week, you'll have a lot more fun.

 

Club Fusion: except for the awful Princess Pop Idol contest, if you like to dance, then you'll have a good time at Club Fusion. There are various theme nights like 80's Night, Motown Night and the like. DJ/Cruise Director Bill spins out good tunes and take requests. Very easy to talk to and get along with.

 

Cruise Directors: Cruise Director James and Assistant Cruise Directors Anna, Josh, Bill are amazing. They make you feel at home, they love to meet the passengers and are generally nice people. Watch the morning show with James and Anna everyday for a good morning chuckle. Their most pleasant British accents don't hurt a thing either.

 

Food: Average except for Sabatini's. Excellent food there if you don't mind the $20 pp cover charge.

 

Spa: don't get your teeth whitened. See my post on the ripoff scam involved there. Acrylic nail refills are way overpriced but the technician was good. See my post on this as well.

 

Photos: Good photographers but photos are way overpriced. We got some good B & W's and one good color photo but the poses at each background are all the same. One can only own so many photos that look like yearbook pix. I think we got better shots asking others to take pix of us with our own digital camera.

 

Ports: we were diverted to Princess Cays at the beginning of the itinerary because of the watch on Tropical Storm 17. Princess Cays was lovely. I tanned, played beach volleyball, got to go swimming in beautiful waters with the ship in full view just a stone's throw away. The buffet was average but appreciated. Plenty of good drinks at the bar.

 

Tropical Storm 17 became Hurricane Rita quickly and our itinerary was completely changed from the Eastern Caribbean to the Western Caribbean itinerary. After Princess Cays, we out ran the Hurricane and headed for Cozumel, Grand Cayman and Ocho Rios. We've been to Cozumel so we stayed on the ship that day but we did go around Grand Cayman where I got the best pair of Ammolite earrings (tax and duty free) and Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville in Ocho Rios is an adult playground with a restaurant, bar, waterslide, pool, free access to the beach and lots of complementary shots.

 

Tendering: smooth as silk. Very well organized.

 

Disembarking was slow and fairly disorganized. Luggage needs to go outside your stateroom by 5 PM the night before (way too early) and then the wait in the lounges is atrocious. By comparison, disembarking on the Norwegian Sea was smoother and you did not need to put out luggage until bedtime and were allowed to wait in your stateroom for your luggage tag color to be called.

 

Summary: all in all, a great cruise and a lot of fun. Changing ports was not a huge surprise, we were prepared for that possibility. No cruise is perfect but we got a lot out of it. I love the idea of visiting a bunch of new places in one week's time. It's like a sampler plate of the world.

[vmom]

Glad you had a nice vacation and appreciated your review.

 

On a side note, regarding the "Idol" contest. Been to the idol contest on both Princess and RCCL. RCCL ships have the same idol thing going on and we noticed the same thing...not exactly an unbiased way of determining a winner. On the RCCL ship we were on, they chose 3 passengers from the audience to be judges, so who ever won depended on whether they were singing a style or song that those 3 judges liked...not a fair way to handle things at all.

 

My take on the idol thing on the ships is don't take it seriously. Its not a serious competition and if you approach it that way you are sure to be disappointed.

[GottaLuvCruising]

Thanks for the review! We're doing our first Princess cruise in February, so I'm checking everything out.

 

Re: Idol contests - my adult daughter had the same experience on RCI Voyager. She's an amazing singer (completely unbiased opinion of her mother) and has been entertaining for years. But votes were NOT for the best performer, instead it went to the person with the noisiest friends in the crowd. It was frustrating for her as well.

[Cruisin4eva]

Thanks for the review... always great to hear how other peoples cruises went.

 

As for the the Bahama Citizenship form.. that one you don't fill out on line... just the immigration is done online... I have my Bahama form right here and checked on line and there is no place to fill that one out via internet. Sorry you had to be "furious" before you even got on board.... that is a bummer. I did however put a pen in my travel bag... with my Bahama form filled out :) Thanks for the heads up on that one!!

 

Congrats on your upgrade... that must have been nice! :)

 

I agree with vmom, I don't think Princess (or any other cruise-line) takes the contests seriously. It's all in fun.

 

Thanks again for giving us the scoop:)

[MaryPoppinz]

As for the the Bahama Citizenship form.. that one you don't fill out on line... just the immigration is done online...

 

I don't even know why they do this. Even if you are the type to fax all of your pre-cruise stuff rather than completing your information online, and even if you were to fax the Bahama Immigration form with that, you would be asked to re-do it at embarkation. They will not have your form at the pier. They shouldn't bother to include this with yoru pre-cruise documents, unless it is to tell you to bring it to the pier, completed.

 

I don't think Princess (or any other cruise-line) takes the contests seriously. It's all in fun.

 

How could it be anything other than what it is? The judging isn't judging. It's just....voting.

[cruzinchris]

Missaretha,

Thanks for the thoughtful review. Glad to know that most aspects of your cruise were enjoyable. Sorry about the Princess Idol contest - even your user name sounds like you can really sing!

 

Your description of Princess Idol sounds as if the competition is slightly different than what DH and I saw in January. There were only six singers on each of the first three nights of Karaoke. Two members of the Cruise Director's staff judged the first three evenings. The audience didn't know who had won the preliminaries; finalists were notified 48 hours prior to the final night of Princess Idol. The audience voted only on the last night. All six finalists were good, but the winner was truly a standout. I didn't think she had a "fan club" there; I believe she won because she was the finest vocalist.

 

Thanks, again, for taking the time to share your cruise experience with us.

Chris

[bdjam]

Princess Pop Idol (held in Club Fusion): think you can sing? Well, even if you are professionally trained like myself, don't bother if you don't have 20 to 40 people with you to vote for you. Your singing talent has nothing to do with it.

 

The Princess Pop Idol "contest" is not a singing contest at all. It's who has the most people, who can stuff the ballots and it is poorly executed

Kudos to Princess – sounds like they’ve duplicated the TV show perfectly.

[spongerob]

:D Good one, Bdjam!

 

Thanks for writing up your comments, Missaretha.

[Isletime]

Thanks for the review. We will be heading out on the Caribbean Princess on Sat. oct. 1st. Yippee!!! It's finally time!

 

 

Question: those reading who took a cab over to catch the ship - from the Ft. Lauderdale airport, do you just catch a cab and say take me to Port Everglades? Never been there before so I'm not sure if there is a specific place we need to go to or not. I haven't looked through all the paperwork yet maybe directions are in there.

[jbrambach]

Re: Cab to port

Yes, collect your luggage and you can get a cab right outside the luggage terminal. Just tell the driver you want to go to the cruise ship terminal or tell him what cruise ship you are on, takes about 5 minutes w/o traffic. Have fun!!!

[TorontoTL]

The cab ride usually costs about 10 to 12 dollars. Tell them which ship you are going to and they will do the rest. When they enter the port area there are signs telling the drivers which area each of the ships are docked.

[coo359a2]

Our cab from ship to Southwest door was exactly $12.50

 

Went to Princess Idol each night. Do agree that there were better singers that didn't make it.

 

Did you sing R E S P E C T??

[missaretha]

Glad you had a nice vacation and appreciated your review.

 

On a side note, regarding the "Idol" contest. Been to the idol contest on both Princess and RCCL. RCCL ships have the same idol thing going on and we noticed the same thing...not exactly an unbiased way of determining a winner. On the RCCL ship we were on, they chose 3 passengers from the audience to be judges, so who ever won depended on whether they were singing a style or song that those 3 judges liked...not a fair way to handle things at all.

 

My take on the idol thing on the ships is don't take it seriously. Its not a serious competition and if you approach it that way you are sure to be disappointed.

 

I did a competition on the Norwegian Sea back in January and it was handled much differently. If you were a singer, you could use your own music but their was no karaoke. You had to perform from memory, which I am accustomed to the most.

 

I realized the second evening that this whole Princess Idol thing was a complete and total joke. I kept going back after that just to sing a song.

 

After doing so many singing contests over the years (in the hundreds, easily), it was pretty easy to ascertain this one was a complete and total joke.

[missaretha]

 

Went to Princess Idol each night. Do agree that there were better singers that didn't make it.

 

Did you sing R E S P E C T??

 

Yup, sure did...

[coo359a2]

You were very very good and I was surprsied you didn't make it to the finals. Did you go to the finals. The marine was terrible. It was like he was making a joke of the whole song. I told friends about the Idol and they showed up (only one night) when the group from Salt Lake all sang. I was embarrassed that I had asked them to com. My husband walked out. Good luck in future cruises.

[Rowtyd]

What a great cruise!! :D

This week at work is almost half over (thank goodness!)-and the first few days were killer! :o

I WANNA GO BACK ONBOARD!

 

Here's a link to pictures from last week's trip-I've been looking at them often to help take me back! ;)

 

http://community.webshots.com/user/rowtyd

 

Have a great rest of the week my former fellow shipmates! :)

[pattict1]

Missareatha

We were on the Sea last January too, (the Jan 15, 2005 sailing) and will be on the CBn Princess in Feb 06. I assume the ships are like night and day?

[missaretha]

Missaretha

We were on the Sea last January too, (the Jan 15, 2005 sailing) and will be on the CBn Princess in Feb 06. I assume the ships are like night and day?

 

Our trip on the Sea in January was the January 1st sailing. I'd say the two have some of same features found on every ship but in terms of size, the CB Princess is probably 3X the size of the Sea. It's almost overwhelming seeing it for the first time.

 

The food in the dining rooms was better on Princess for me that the Sea but the buffets seemed the same quality.

 

Overall, I wouldn't say night and day but CB Princess is a lot bigger, has more to offer but is also more expensive in the boutiques, bars, etc.

[mpdahmer]

What a great cruise!! :D

This week at work is almost half over (thank goodness!)-and the first few days were killer! :o

I WANNA GO BACK ONBOARD!

 

Here's a link to pictures from last week's trip-I've been looking at them often to help take me back! ;)

 

http://community.webshots.com/user/rowtyd

 

Have a great rest of the week my former fellow shipmates! :)

 

Rowtyd: We had the same cabin C718 on the 2nd sailing of the CB back in April-04'. Did you get the stuff we left in the drawer for you??? J/K.

 

It brought me back as well. We are booked on her againg for this coming April. Can't Wait...