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Sapphire Princess Review Oct 8-15

SLU Billikens

By SLU Billikens,
in Princess Cruises

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SLU Billikens

SLU Billikens

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This review will turn out to be long. I will split it up into multiple segments. I know when I was waiting for my cruise I appreciated so much the information other passengers were putting up for me to read, so here is my chance to return the favor.

 

First a little about myself. I am 45 and sailed with my DW who does not even tell me her age. This was our 4th cruise and first with Princess. Previously we had sailed twice with Celebrity and once with NCL. I can't help but make some comparisons to Celebrity since that is our main experience. I should also make the disclaimer that it was a wonderful cruise. I would absolutely recommend the Sapphire Princess to friends. I say that because I son't want any small notices of less positive comments to make anyone feel we did not enjoy our Princess experience. Another important aspect of this cruise you need to be aware of is my wife and I were taking a relax and get away cruise. Our previous cruises were with our 3 wonderful kids. On those cruises we were busy, busy, busy. Snorkeling, playing ball, swimming at beaches etc... On this cruise we were looking for quiet, relax, afternoon naps, etc...

 

We flew into L.A. on Friday morning. Rented a car from Enterprise at LAX. They have a policy that if you are taking a cruise they will let you turn in the car at the San Pedro Enterprise 1 block from the pier with no extra charge. We rented a Sebring Convertible for $56. A great deal in our eyes since cabs to the airport and the pier would have cost over $80 alone. What a great day we had. We drove south on the 405 detouring over to Newport Beach. Had lunch at Dukes (recommended from a fellow cruise critic member) and it was great. We then spend the afternoon driving up the PCH (1) to Marina Del Rey where we were staying. Beware this was a wonderful drive but took us all day. We were taking our time and enjoying the sights etc... We sayed at the Marriott Marina Del Rey. We got an awesome deal in my eyes by using Priceline. This was my first experience with Priceline since you have to give them a credit card and offer and do not even know what hotel you are staying at. But in this case I put in $99 for a 3 star hotel and it came back the Marriott. It was the best 3 star hotel I have ever stayed at. After we checked in we went to Beverly Hills and Hollywood driving around in our convertible and having a great time just driving around.

 

On Saturday we got up early and walked down to Venice Beach. Stopped at Starbucks and walked on the pier. What a great way to start our vacation. We then headed for San Pedro.

 

We dropped off our bags at the ship about 10:30am and took the car back. Enterprise offered a ride back to the ship but we could see it from the rental office and decided to walk.

 

Embarkation:

This was the largest ship we have been on at 113,000 tons. Yet embarkation was a breeze. Within 10 minutes of being back at the ship we were checked in and had our cruise cards. We did then have to wait about 30 minutes before they started boarding passengers. So probably around 11:30 they started letting passengers on and by noon we were on the ship and at the Horizon court eating lunch at the buffet. The food was very good for buffet food with salads, roast beef carveing station, pastas, and much more. One thing they were selling pretty hard were the Coke stickers. This would allow the bearer to drink unlimited amounts of Coke products at the bars and restaurants. I did not get it (I brought a 6 pack of Pepsi on board with me which was plenty for my small soda needs), but I believe it was $37. I did however get the Expresso Card. It was $25 including the 15% gratuity and had 15 coupons for espresso drinks (such as Caffe Latte's)

 

Our Room:

We had a Mini-Suite on the Dolphin deck (D600). This was the nicest cabin my DW and I have ever had on a ship. To be fair it was our first balcony cabin. However the room was like new. Upon a detail look my wife and I found 1 small stain on the carpet. The Mini-Suite has a bed, reasonable sized closet, desk and chair with large mirror with a hairdryer, a couch with cofee table, 2 televisions, and of course the wonderful balcony. I would guess it was about 8'-9' square. It had 4 chairs and a small table. While it was usually too chilly to spend much timie out there on sea days, it was very nice in port. It will be difficult to do cabins from now on without a balcony. btw, the Dolphin Mini's do indeed have a balcony that can be see from above. This was not a problem for us however. We never felt like people were stating at us or anything.

 

The cabin also had a nice bathroom with a tub/shower combo. By far giving me the most room ever for showering on a cruise chip. The room had plenty of storage and for anyone who may be new to cruising, there is plety of room under the beds for your suitcases.

 

I also found my tuxedo I had rented from Cruise Formals in my room. I love that service. I had considered purchasing a tux for cruising etc... but the rental service means I never have to transport a suit or tux to the ship ever again. It was about $80 and they do a great job. This was the third time I have used them and I recommend them if nothing else for the convenience. You can get their website off the Princess web page. If you can't find it email me and I will get it to you.

 

Entertainment:

We attended the entertainment every night. I do not know if it will be the same every week but here is what was on-board our week on the Sapphire Princess.

 

Main Theatre Enertainment:

Saturday - Welcome aboard show with a pretty good comedien. They also had a little sing and dance routine. Decent but typical of a welcome aboard show.

Sunday - Piano Man - A sing and dance show with the Sapphire Princess dancers and singers. It was a decent entertaining show. I must say however I personally found the singers and dancers better on the Celebrity ships we have been on. I still enjoyed it just throwing in my opinion.

Monday - Comedy and Magic of Lorenzo Clark - He was pretty enertaining and we enjoyed his show. The comedy was much better han the magic. But we are easy going and pretty easy to entertain. I wold however once again have to say Celebrity was a little better. We saw a guy called the "Ladder Guy" who was awesome on both the Celebrity Mercury and Century.

After the show in the Princess Theater we went to the Explorers lounge to see a comedian "Don Ware". He was the only entertainment all week that I thought was really not good. He was very boring in my opinion.

Tuesday - Variety Performer Dan Bennett - He was pretty funny and did some very good juggling. I enjoyed him more than my DW did however. Maybe it had to do with him juggling basketballs???

Wednesday - Brandi Chapman - A pretty talented siniger. She did a pretty good job I thought of entertaining us with songs from all venues from Elvis, to Frank Sinatra, to Country. I did notice somoe people leaving i the middle of the show so I guess some others weren't as enertained as I was.

Thursday - Singing/Dance routine called "Undercover". I have read from others that they thought Piano Man was the best. I personally liked this Undercover show from the Sapphire Princess singers and dancers best myself. I thought it was quite entertaining with music and songs from James Bond, Austin Powers and others. My DW agreed by the way that this was the best show.

Friday they did Undercover again and also showed a movie "Bewitched" which we had already seen. So we went to the Explorers lounge where a pair of comedy acts were presented by Michael Ziegfled, and Rick Corso. They were pretty good I thought.

 

As I mentioned before we were on a sit back and relax cruise. As a result we were very pleased to see that Princess has a channel on the television running good movies non-stop the entire cruise. We saw Sahara, Meet the Fockers, West Side Story, National Treasure, and Hostage on the tv in our stateroom. No additional charge. In addition we had CNN, ESPN, TNT, TMC and another channel hosted by Princess showing various sitcoms and cop shows.

 

The Sapphire Princess also featured newer release movies in the Princess Theatre each mid-morning and afternoon. We went to a somoe and say Bewitched, Monster In-Law, and Mr. and Mrs Smith.

 

I am sure some of this would be extremely boring to many of you, but it was perfect for us. We are taking the RCL Navigator of the Seas in March with our kids. We will not have any time for such relaxation on that trip, so I guess you could say we took this cruise to restup for our adventurous cruise.

 

I need to stop for now but I will do another segment regarding Food and service soon.

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Linda the Book Lover

Linda the Book Lover

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I did however get the Expresso Card. It was $25 including the 15% gratuity and had 15 coupons for espresso drinks (such as Caffe Latte's)
Thanks for the very nice review. I would love more info about the espresso drink card. I am interested if the card is the same as the soda card and can be used anywhere on board including room service.
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TigerLadyK

TigerLadyK

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Thank you so much for your review. We will be on this ship 4 weeks from today. Your review on the entertainment was very helpful.

 

We want to do Sabatini's one night, which night would you recommend? Since we will both miss the regular dinner and the show.

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emmy

emmy

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We flew into L.A. on Friday morning. Rented a car from Enterprise at LAX. They have a policy that if you are taking a cruise they will let you turn in the car at the San Pedro Enterprise 1 block from the pier with no extra charge. We rented a Sebring Convertible for $56. A great deal in our eyes since cabs to the airport and the pier would have cost over $80 alone. What a great day we had. We drove south on the 405 detouring over to Newport Beach. Had lunch at Dukes (recommended from a fellow cruise critic member) and it was great. We then spend the afternoon driving up the PCH (1) to Marina Del Rey where we were staying. Beware this was a wonderful drive but took us all day. We were taking our time and enjoying the sights etc...

 

Thank you for the review so far :) Enjoying it as we will be sailing on Sapphire in 5 days

 

We also have a car rental booked with Enterprise out of LAX and planned to return it to SanPedro pier...nice to know that did not charge you that $25.00 drop off charge...hope our experience is the same... and by coincidence we are also driving to Newport Beach to see an old friend.

 

So am I to understand you were able to drop off your luggage first and then went to return the vehicle? How far was the walk from San Pedro Enterprise office to the pier?

 

Was it difficult to find the terminal that the Sapphire was sailing out of at the San Pedro pier?

 

Good information...thank you

 

Emmy

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AZcruiser321

AZcruiser321

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Great review. Thanks!

 

We also want to go to Sabbitini's. Which night would you recommend? Also, did you do traditional or personal choice dining? If PC, did you experience any problems or long delays?

 

Where did you get the expresso drinks? Were they available in all the bars or a specific one?

 

Barb

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WHYTSHLDRZ

WHYTSHLDRZ

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I am also cruising on the Sapphire 11/26 and can't wait!!! Thanks for sharing your insight and info. Can you tell us which nights we might want to do the paying dining venues????

I have been told that the first evening you get on the ship and the last evening before you leave are the best time to sample the pay dining venues....another cruiser said Italian night.....I am sure a lot depends on what type of food you enjoy!!!

Is Sabatinis' still open during port days??? Can you have lunch there then???? Did you do the wine tasting, and what other tips do you have for us????:confused:

Can't wait to read the rest of your review.........Thanks so much:D :D :D

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SLU Billikens

SLU Billikens

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I will try to answer a couple of the questions coming across.

 

We did Sabatini's on Monday. This worked out to be a good day we thought. Monday is the Italian themed menu in the regular dining room. I will review in the next segment but in short it was very very good. You would not want to do (imo) Thursday since it is lobster tail night. More on dining to come.

 

We had traditional dining, first seating. This brings about an interesting thing on our cruise. Normally the traditional dining is in the International Dining Room. Since the PC dining dropped the unique menus it seems more and more aare requesting traditional dining. As a result we had traditional dining in the Vivaldi Dining Room. Thus there were only 3 dining rooms for PC dining. This was for dinner only. More on meal service tomorrow.

 

Regarding the Espresso. As far as I could tell there were 3 places to get espresso drinks. In the dining room, iin a bar in the midship atrium on deck 5, and at the internet cafe. I was a little disappointed that I could not order a cafe latte in the Princess Theater. I had to go get it myself at the midship bar. I did think the expresso was a very good quality however. I commented to a waiter regarding how much I liked them and he said they use Starbucks beans?? I want to be careful not to start a wild rumor since I cannot back this up, but that is what a waiter told me. I did not try to order espresso from room service. I doubt you can but I did not try.

 

The Enterprise office is only about a block or so from the pier. You can easily see the Sapphire princess from the Enterprise office. And yes it was very easy to find the pier and drop off the luggage. It did not even take me 5 minutes to pull up to the ship, find a porter to take our luggage and make it out of the gates to the pier. I was truly amazed at how easy it was to get our luggage there, turn in the car and get on the ship.

 

Make sure you go to the Princess website and signup for the Express Check in. We notice when we went to check in they put everyone in line and we noticed a line with only one person at the desk with Express Check In above the attendant. We moved to that line and had our seapass cards in 2-3 minutes. The lesson here is the Princess staff did not mention express check in or going to that line. We simply moved to that line on our own.

 

I will be happy to answer any other questions you might have. Happy sailing and I am jealous of those looking forward to boarding the Sapphire princess soon.

 

Ed

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abbydancer2003 "Live from...." Rare

abbydancer2003

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Nice review. I think we arrived (all 50 of us) soon after you did at embarcation. It took about 5 minutes for us to get our cruise cards (we'd done all the paperwork over the internet, so all she had to do was take an imprint of the card) and then about 15 minutes for them to clear the two boarding groups ahead of us.

 

I liked that you could bypass the embarcation photo op.

 

I liked both the Piano Man and Undercover shows, although we found a couple of times that the singers were out of key (one of our friends is a musician). I didn't see any of the comedy, although the bits I heard as I walked by the Explorers lounge wasn't very good.

 

And a correction - the Coke card was 27.00 plus 15% making it about 31.00 and change. They did not let me opt out of the souvenir cup to reduce the cost. It was very convenient to have.

 

I hope to write my own review soon.

 

abby

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cck0000

cck0000

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Hi ED

WOW, thanks so much for your time and efforts! I too have been eagerly watching these boards for such great Sapphire info! We're headed to Alaska next summer.

 

ED, I love your tip about online/express check in! I will look for that the night before on our lap top.

 

And I will look also for the Latte card!

 

Ed, regarding main dining traditional seating, I have read some differing information about TIMES that you are required to show up for dinner, and some poor treatment when arriving a little late?? What are your thoughts/experience with that?

 

THANK YOU!!!

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SLU Billikens

SLU Billikens

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Thanks Abby for the clarification on the cost of the coke sticker. i did not purchase one myself so was not sure.

 

And I see Natasha has placed a link for the cruise personalizer on the Princess web site. This obviously needs a little clarification. When I say express check in, I am referring to going to the Princess Web site and completing the information under Cruise Personalizer. You only need your name and booking number to logon. There you can complete alll you personal information including your passport number and a credit card number you will be using for your shipboard charges. Emergency contact information etc... If you complete this information in advance you can then use Express Check-In when you go to board the ship. So cck, you should go ahead and comlete the Cruise Personalizer farther in advance (you cannot do it the night before you leave). In fact, you will receive papers in the mail to complete this information and mail it back. If you have registered and completed your on-line personalizer you won't have to bother mailing it back.

 

I am not sure if Sabatini's was open for lunch or not. And I agree that the first and last nights would be fine evenings for Sabatini's. We made reservations when we first boarded the ship. However it was not completely full the evening we went. I will talk more about Sabatini's menu etc... in another segment of the review. I will try to get to it tonight.

 

We were never late for dinner. My DW noted one evening a couple showing up about 20 minutes late and they were let in. One interesting thing we noted was a couple that showed up on formal evening (we were pretty close to the entrance) without a jacket or tie and he was asked to comply for the appreciation of all guests to the dress code of the evening in the dining room. It was also suggested that if he preferred not to dress the buffet was available as an alternative. This is always an interesting topic ona these boards regarding formal evenings. I will therefore chicken out of putting my own opine forth. My family including my children do however have a special fondness of the formal evenings and dressing up. I would say that there were very few Tuxedos on board. Maybe 10% wearing tuxedos. Most men wore suit and tie. I feel a suit and tie are quite appropriate for formal wear. I personally rent a tuxedo for each cruise simply as a convenience in not transporting my suits (see the first part of my review for more info). The women were a mixture of very formal and what I would call semi formal.

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abbydancer2003 "Live from...." Rare

abbydancer2003

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One other question please.

 

While in port, was local time observed or was the "ship's time" kept?

 

The first night, the clocks were moved forward 1 hour to match "Mexico" time. What that actually meant was that it matched the time in Mazatlan and Cabo. So, at Puerto Vallerta, the ships time was one hour off. (1pm on shore was 12 pm on ship). It was the same in the other two stops.

 

It was moved back an hour on Thursday night.

 

On another topic, the Princess website implies that Sabatini's is open for lunch on sea days, but I don't think it actually was.

 

abby

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