Diamond 4/10 - Mexican Riveria (Long)

[DVC Calif]

Although the Diamond has been recently reviewed (and very well too) by Sandy R, SneekPeek, and Jasminedog, I thought I'd post some of my personal observations - from a first time Princess passenger.

 

We sailed the Diamond Princess on the 4/10 Easter cruise - myself, wife, and two daughters (10 and 12) as well as my BIL and his daughter (age 3). We have sailed over a dozen times on other lines (NCL, Premier, RCCL, Carnival, and Disney), but have not had the pleasure of sailing Princess. When we found that the brand new Diamond would be sailing close to spring break, we decided to not to let another opportunity slip by and called our TA.

 

We have cruised in all variety of cabins - Cat 12 suites on Carnival, Family Suites on RCCL, Cat 5 Balcony and Cat 10 Inside on Disney. Since we were booking two cabins, we decided to save some money and selected Cat JJ inside for the Diamond. For those of you who read my earlier post Diamond 4/10 Overbooked!!!, you know that at the last minute, Princess made us an offer we couldn't refuse. If we gave up one of our cabins and stayed in an inside quad, they would post $600 pp shipboard credit, or $2400 for four, for our inconvenience. This would be in addition to the $50 pp credit we had as part of an early booking promotion, giving us $2600 total. Since we had only paid $800 pp for the two cabins, we jumped at the chance. (More on how this worked out later.)

 

EMBARKATION

As has already been noted, the Diamond returned very late in San Pedro. In fact, she arrived at the port the same time we did, 10:30 AM. (We found out later that this was due to leaving Cabo late and primarily from a mechanical problem that greatly reduced her cruising speed.) We had driven down and the guard at the security gate told us that we would not be able to board until 3pm at the earliest. We killed time by touring the "Ports O' Call" area down the street (not much to report), visited the Sheraton San Pedro (for next cruise), and finally drove to a local shopping mall, Del Amo, for lunch.

 

We returned to the port at 2:30 p.m. and the guard said that boarding still wouldn't be until 3:30. We decided to suffer with everyone else, dropped off our luggage curbside and drove to the adjacent parking lot. (BTW - the daily parking has gone up to $11/day or $77 for a full week). We took the shuttle back to the terminal and went to check-in.

 

We were given boarding number 1648 & 1649 which were good for each couple. That meant there were 3296 people ahead of us! Express check-in went fast, probably because everyone had already checked in. They began boarding at 3:30 p.m. and started with Platinum, Elites, handicaps, and suites. The funny part was when they began regular boarding, they started with numbers 1 through 50 and increased 50 at a time (e.g. 1-100, 1-150, 1-200, etc.) You could hear a collective "D'oh" from everyone because it sounded like this would take forever. I think we were finally called around 4:30, which in hindsight is pretty fast considering the amount of people they had to move through.

 

OUR CABIN

We went directly to our cabin (Baja 717, starboard/aft) and right away knew we should have held out for more credit. Four people in an inside quad is two too many. We were stepping over each other unpacking and constantly in each others way. It was especially cramped when the bunk beds were lowered from the ceiling. These were on each side of the cabin with the queen bed in between. Lots of bumped heads the entire trip. We were never in the cabin that much (thank goodness) but still had to take turns being in the room for showers and changing.

 

 

DINING ROOMS

We had reserved main seating in the International dining room. However, we decided we really wanted to experience the other restaurants as well. Because there were computer problems the first night, we ate in the main dining room. The next day, we called the concierge at ext. 3463 (spells DINE) and made reservations for Santa Fe (Tex Mex), Pacific Moon (Asian), Vivaldi (Italian), and Sterling (Steakhouse). We were able to get back into the International for Thursday's formal Captain's Gala and repeated Santa Fe the last night. On hindsight, we should have done International on Friday so we could watch the Baked Alaska parade.

 

We enjoyed the variety of the different restaurants and the availability of having TWO menus to order from - the specialty restaurants and the main dining room. The service in the alternative restaurants, while professional, was also very slow. I think that having multiple tables dining at different times threw off the wait staff's timing. Other than that, we enjoyed every meal in every restaurant.

 

HORIZON COURT

Okay, almost every restaurant. As most people have posted, the buffet system set up at Horizon Court is confusing at best, and darned slow at worst. It simply does not work with the limited amount of space and the vast number of people that feed into it. Also, it was very apparent that alot of the dining room food was "recycled" up in the buffets. This could work to your advantage if you had trouble choosing between two entrees. Our common joke was "Oh well, I'll wait to try that tonight at the Horizon" because we knew we would see it on the buffet line later.

 

ENTERTAINMENT

Top notch, excellent productions in the main Princess theater. However, the Explorers Lounge and Club Fusion don't have the capacity to hold many people. There were some nights people sitting in the aisles to see popular comedians, hypnotists, Princess Idol, and bingo. They need to rethink how to handle that many people.

 

PORTS

We must have "sucker" written across our foreheads because we couldn't haggle worth a darn with anyone. Not the storeowners, not the silver peddlers, and least of all the cabdrivers. Our best day was in Mazatlan where we took the timeshare tour to the El Cid Mega resort north of the Golden Zone. The tour took about 60-90 minutes, low pressure. We said not interested and were given wrist bands that gave us access to the pools and grounds plus free meals and drinks. El Cid has a bid tent right where the tram lets passengers off at the terminal. There's an entire line of staff hawking their coupons so there no missing them. Defiantly worth giving up an hour.

 

I also tried parasailing on the beach outside El Cid. Only $25 bucks! They hook you up to a harness and tow rope on a power boat and up you go. Very cool. Pretty exciting when you crossed the paths of other parasailers. I was nervous that the lines would tangle and we'd both drop into the ocean. But the drivers seem to know what there doing and kept us at different altitudes. After you land, the team helping you with the equipment, all have their hands out for tips. I was so happy with the experience that I gave up another $6 bucks.

 

Didn't do too much in Puerta Vallarta, took a cab downtown and sightseed. Cabo was too americanized. We walked over to the Puerto Paraiso (sp.?) mall. There's a Ruth's Chris steakhouse, Johnny Rockets, Harley Davidson Cafe, Baskin Robbins, etc. Most of the famous local spots didn't open till 11:00 or noon (Squid Roe, Cabo Wabo, etc). Since the last tender was supposedly at 1:30, that didn't leave enough time to really experience them.

 

Be careful crossing the streets here, traffic is heavy and the drivers are muy loco.

 

DISEMBARKATION

Very orderly but slowed down by US Customs. It took us about 20-30 minutes from when we last clocked out our cabin cards to the door of the terminal. We're always in the wrong line as well. Our agent, a chatty young fella, was giving everyone a good thourough check on the computer. His partner, an experence femal agent, was practically waving people through at out paced our line about 4:1. After that it was quick to catch a porter, find our bags, and head out to curbside to catch the parking lot shuttle.

 

BTW - we were able to use our shipboard credit for everything on board - tips, salon, massages, drinks, etc. We use $400 as a deposit for a future cruise. We still had over a thousand dollars left on Friday. The purser offered to refund us cash or apply it on our credit card. We took the cash!

 

All in all, a great cruise on a great ship. I'd be happy to answer any questions.

 

Mucho Gusto, Steban (Steve)

[cnmiranda]

Another terrific review! Thanks Steban

 

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[ov911lady]

I want to know, did you have to sleep on the top bunk? HA! I did, and it was a pain in the aft trying to get down the little ladder in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom!

Great review. What did your family think of the backstage tour? I thought the most interesting part was seeing the dressing rooms and the dry-cleaner type device they used to store the costumes.

Janelle

 

Diamond Princess