LIVE: Royal Princess, Dec. 10-20, 2017, 10-Day Caribbean

[willtup5]

You bet

 

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[geoherb]

We went to an EFFY event before dinner. They’d advertised champagne, a free gift with invitation, and a raffle at 7:15. It turned out the raffle was going to be drawn out all evening. We did not win the first one and did not want to wait 10 minutes for the second one—and so on and so on. We went to dinner in the Club Class section with the couple from Baltimore who were also at the event. It was nice. The wife said that their laundry in a suite is taking two days. My last load of laundry came back last night as expected—24 hours after I turned it in. DH is expecting his final load to come back tonight. My total for the three loads of laundry during this cruise was $64.25. DH’s total for two loads so far is $49.75. I’m betting his final load will be over $30. Getting free laundry is a great perk.

 

After dinner, we got to the Vista Lounge around 9 for the 9:15 comedy show. It was already packed. We were standing in the back of the lounge in front of the audiovisual booth. The guy there said we weren’t blocking him from doing his job. The comedian was Rollin Jay Moore. I think we’ve seen him on other cruises. He wasn’t that funny to me. I don’t react to cruise ship cabin shower jokes anymore, and most other passengers weren’t laughing very much either. We ended up leaving after 25 minutes.

 

We probably would have stayed if we had been sitting, but I may have napped during his act. Trying to stand and balance during the rough seas was difficult. I estimate the swells are 10 feet, just enough to rock the ship gently. We have moisture from the spray on our balcony this morning. It’s not the heavy spray from when the bow crashes into a wave, but more of the misty kind. The balconies farther back on the ship look like they’re getting a lot more of it.

 

We caught the very end of the ’70s music trivia. We sat with the Canadian couple. They had also gotten there too late to play. The back-to-backers were down to three on their team. They ended up in a tie with another team with 17½ points out of 21. They lost the tie-break question.

 

We came back to the cabin instead of going to the Nat King Cole tribute show. We had missed our afternoon naps yesterday to watch The Big Sick. We’ve also been enjoying episodes of Veep on demand on the televisions. It’s great that they have all the options on the televisions, but I sort of miss the surfing through the channels.

[geoherb]

Today has a jam-packed schedule for our second full day at sea. There are lots of unhosted events such as Bible study, ping pong, sports equipment available, bridge, and mahjong. Fitness activities include morning stretch, Zumba, around the world basketball competition, line dancing, shuffleboard competition, pool games, and putting competition. There’s another champagne ring toss for us to try to win another bottle this afternoon. We’ll be doing morning trivia, the paper airplane competition, the ring toss, and afternoon trivia.

 

Tonight is our second formal night and another no-smoking night in the casino. They’re premiering Encore with the Royal Princess singers and dancers tonight. I hope it’s good. We’ll take a nap sometime before dinner so that we can stay up for it.

[geoherb]

Around 4:30 they made an announcement that went to the passenger cabins. Most of the time, we have to open the cabin door to hear announcements. The only other announcements I remember hearing in our cabin this cruise were before the muster drill and before we left Curacao, when they announced that we were waiting for a crew member to return. The early morning announcement was about some team reporting to the main galley. I wonder if any crew members will let us know what happened.

[Cuizer2]

We are sailing on the Royal Princess for 10 days. The ports are Amber Cove (Dominican Republic), St. Thomas, Martinique, Grenada, Bonaire, and Curacao. We have one day at sea tomorrow and two on the way back.

 

I was on the Royal Princess for the cruise before yours. We stopped in Princess Cays, St. Thomas, Martinique, Grenada, Bonaire, and Curacao. I have posted my review if you want to compare the two cruises. Here is a link to my review ...

 

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2575145

[geoherb]

The captain made an announcement around 10 this morning. He said that the emergency call early this morning was about a small electrical fire in the galley. He said the automatic suppression system put out the fire, but they had to activate the team as protocol. He did not explain why they had to wake up passengers for this.

 

We could really see the rough seas from breakfast at Sabatini’s. A few waves crashed up over the windows. I ordered a fruit plate and blueberry pancakes. The pancakes aren’t on the menu, but our waiter said they could make them. I told the couple next to us how good they were, and the husband ordered them as well. We did not stay to find out if he liked them.

 

The morning trivia started a bit early. Two of our regular teammates did not show up. We ended up with 18 out of 20. The back-to-backers had a perfect score along with another team. We rushed to the paper airplane contest and did not stay to find out who won the tie-break question. My airplane flew great—a little too great, over the hula hoop. DH’s was a flop.

[Liz54]

 

Love this! First world problem! Loving your reports!

[Cuizer2]

Love this! First world problem! Loving your reports!

 

A paper airplane is a first world problem? :confused:

[geoherb]

Cuizer2: Thanks for the link to your review thread. I enjoyed reading about your experiences.

 

We enjoyed lunch in the dining room finally again. I wish they still opened it on port days like they used to do. The special presentation for Club Class at lunch was a pasta with shrimp. I had it without the shrimp, trying to do #MeatlessMondays still. I’ll probably fall off the wagon at dinner tonight. Our lunchtime waiter said tonight’s featured menu item will be lobster thermador.

The champagne ring toss was on the putting green this afternoon. Instead of three tries, each person got just one. The cruise director’s staff member brought just three bottles of champagne. There were just two bottles left when I got my turn. I missed. People won the other two bottles before I got a second try.

 

Afternoon trivia went well. We did not win, but the back-to-backers did not either. The questions must have been new. The funny thing is that one of the back-to-backers mentioned to DH that it was easy to win when there are seven people on a team. Apparently that’s how many were sitting near them. I wasn’t close enough to see. I wish DH had told her it’s easy to win when you had the same questions on the previous cruise. But he did not.

 

We enjoyed tea in the dining room after trivia. They held it in the Club Class section of Concerto. It was mostly full. The Royal Tea was being held at the same time in the piazza. I don’t think we need to spend $20 for the two of us to get the tower of treats. The free ones in the dining room are good enough for us. Maybe tomorrow we’ll order the balcony tea service. I thought about it today but did not do it.

[Cuizer2]

Cuizer2: Thanks for the link to your review thread. I enjoyed reading about your experiences.

 

Glad you enjoyed it. :D

[dickinson]

Sad that some people feel they need to cheat at trivia and even mention one way in which they did!

[geoherb]

We decided on an evening swim in the main pool. It’s nice that there are not many children on board this cruise. I bet there are a lot more on the next one for the Christmas cruise. A couple who sat beside us at breakfast are staying on for it—and are being joined by their kids and grandchildren. They were showing a Billy Joel concert on MUTS.

 

We met a crew doing promotional videos for Ocean Medallion. They had a pretty model wearing one as a necklace and walking on the sea walk. It turned out the young man we’ve seen around the ship is the head of promotions for Princess. There are six of them in total working on the videos. The guy from the independent company working with Princess said that they were also shooting video for some TV show about selling private islands.

 

Dinner tonight is the second formal night. DH is waiting for his pants to come back in the laundry. Our cabin steward said he’d check on them. If they’re not back by 7, DH will wear his black jeans with a dress shirt, tie, and sports coat. We received the chocolate truffles for this formal night but did not receive boutonnieres again. We haven’t been asking for the daily canapés that we could be getting. The ones we had the first afternoon and the ones with the Ultimate Balcony Dinner were not that good.

[geoherb]

Good news and bad news on the laundry front. Our cabin steward delivered it around 6:45. The bad news was that the zipper on DH’s pants was broken. I took it down to guest services. I filled out a form for the tailor on board to see if it could be fixed. We will find out tomorrow if it could or if we’ll get some sort of credit instead.

 

Dinner was delicious. The specials for the Club Class section were lobster thermador as promised and cherries jubilee. The woman sitting beside me had the lobster dish. It did not look very good, so I ordered the lobster and shrimp combination from the regular menu. The couple regaled us with tales of woe about their cruise. Overall, though, they were still having a good time. Their tale started with being misdirected the first evening to the wrong dining room. They tried to insist they were Club Class but still were sent to a regular dining room. To make it up to them, they served rum raisin ice cream to the husband every night. Their second tale of woe involved TVs in their cabin that did not work. Several service folks had been to their cabin to try to fix them.

 

We got to the show after dinner. There were plenty of seats for people who showed up within 10 minutes of show time. The show reminded me of the one we saw on the Caribbean Princess this past summer. It was a pastiche of popular songs and light opera. The singers were very good. The dancers, once again, did not have a lot to do. There were a few featured dancers during some of the numbers. They were good but underutilized. The musicians on stage played along with the soundtrack. I know it’s done, just like the dancers lip syncing to the sweetener track, but it’s disturbing to me to hear a full string section and see one violinist and a bass player.

 

After the show, they held the balloon drop. I walked through to watch it from an upper level in the atrium. People were enjoying it. Tomorrow night is a repeat of the show early in the evening. The comedian Rollin Jay Moore repeats in the Vista Lounge.

[appscott]

Thanks for the updates on your cruise - it's fun to read! Have you noticed any differences in the Internet speed since the beginning of your cruise?

[geoherb]

We enjoyed our last breakfast in Sabatini’s this morning. I took this last chance to try the Belgian waffles. They were good, but I liked yesterday’s blueberry pancakes better. We ate with the couple from Maryland. It’s nice that we can share a table with them. Tonight at dinner we’ll be eating with the family with whom we ate twice before. They were going to arrange for them to save the table for six for us.

 

The back-to-backers lost another trivia. One team had 20 out of 20 possible points and they had just 19. The cruise director’s staff has a new prize—plastic coasters. We did the lawn bowling. DH and I won against two other teams of two. The guy leading it did not have a prize for us, and we did not ask. We also tried the putting competition again. This time it was a hole-in-one champagne competition. Two people out of around a dozen and a half got scored aces. The gentleman who did allowed the lady to win the bottle without a playoff since she was a newlywed on her honeymoon with her husband.

 

I talked with the promotions guy after the putting competition. He said their work on this cruise is over. He’s getting a two-week vacation on a Seabourn ship after this cruise. His girlfriend is joining him.

 

We went to the outlet sale in a dining room. They had the usual assortment of $10 items and items leftover from previous itineraries. I was surprised by how many Majestic Princess items they had for sale. The only 50th anniversary tagged items I saw were the cookbooks. They weren’t part of the sale but were for the people taking the galley tour, ending up in one end of the dining room after exiting the galley.

 

Today’s special for Club Class diners was spaghetti dressed with olive oil and garlic. I had a delicious pappardelle instead as an appetizer portion. I also ordered an appetizer size portion of paella, but our waiter brought me the full size portion. I ate about half of it—picking out the good parts and leaving a lot of rice.

 

I signed on to get our boarding position numbers for our Southwest flights home tomorrow. We’re connecting through Atlanta. I hope they’ve recovered from the problems earlier in the week. I’ve used a little more than an hour out of the 250 free internet minutes. Most of the time I’ve added to this thread, I manage to do it in a minute or less.

[geoherb]

Thanks for the updates on your cruise - it's fun to read! Have you noticed any differences in the Internet speed since the beginning of your cruise?

No. It's fine for posting updates. Facebook and my email load slowly. I haven't been surfing to other sites.

[richsea]

I’ve really enjoyed following your travels.thanks for taking the time out of your cruise to do it.

 

One question; do you know if they are still offering the buy one/get one for $1 daily drink special? Someone on snother ship said they were told it has been discontinuted. Thanks!

[geoherb]

The back-to-backers won the final afternoon trivia with 21 out of 22 points. It was a hard trivia if you had not heard the questions before. We split a second gelato this afternoon. The word from the guy at the counter is that starting this cruise, they don’t accept the coffee cards anymore. After I let him know that we had successfully used a punch for gelato earlier this cruise, he relented. We had just two scoops. Our friend from trivia had the full works, three scoops with toppings and whipped cream.

 

DH’s pants came back from the tailor with a new zipper. He’s happy.

[geoherb]

I’ve really enjoyed following your travels.thanks for taking the time out of your cruise to do it.

 

One question; do you know if they are still offering the buy one/get one for $1 daily drink special? Someone on snother ship said they were told it has been discontinuted. Thanks!

Yes. It's from 3 to 4 in Crooners and 10 to 11 in Club 6 on our cruise.

[vickie_bernie]

My DH use to love trivia but stopped due to the group that has the binder with the questions started appearing.

 

We do back to backs normally around 2 or 3 in a row and the questions are never repeated but these people are on board a long time and actually track the questions. Pretty sad.

 

One time we went to liars club and the words we recognized from a cruise a while ago. We did not feel right participating. But the lovely couple celebrating their anniversary were helped out buy us when they were going to answer incorrectly. They loved the champagne.

[floridalover5623]

The word from the guy at the counter is that starting this cruise, they don’t accept the coffee cards anymore. After I let him know that we had successfully used a punch for gelato earlier this cruise, he relented.

Was that Angelo?

[Florida_gal_50]

Excellent thread. Thanks so much.

[dickinson]

My DH use to love trivia but stopped due to the group that has the binder with the questions started appearing.

 

We do back to backs normally around 2 or 3 in a row and the questions are never repeated but these people are on board a long time and actually track the questions. Pretty sad.

 

One time we went to liars club and the words we recognized from a cruise a while ago. We did not feel right participating. But the lovely couple celebrating their anniversary were helped out buy us when they were going to answer incorrectly. They loved the champagne.

 

Vickie.... and geoherb..... has anyone politely (and privately) said anything to the people who conduct the trivia that this is happening? It is definitely not fair to everyone (and I would think boring for the people winning all the time). I want to lose fair and square! I'm going on this ship Dec 30. If these people take long cruises it looks like they will probably be on our cruise too :mad:

[geoherb]

We went for a final swim before dinner. The pools are very nice. I did notice quite a bit of chair hogging at the MUTS pool area this morning. I did not see it on previous mornings. This was a very port-intensive itinerary with only three sea days out of ten and yesterday’s sea day started off with rough seas and scattered showers.

 

The only time I noticed chair saving in the theater and other venues was the kind I don’t mind—saving a seat for someone who’s gone to the restroom. I never saw anyone try to save a block of seats. One time in Princess Live, one of the crew members told a passenger that there wasn’t any saving of seats—and proceeded to take away a couple of seats the man was trying to save in order to make room for a scooter. I wanted to applaud.

 

Overall, we’ve had a great cruise. We enjoyed the suite life a lot—not enough to pay full price, but enough to consider purchasing another upsell. Some of the disappointments for us on this cruise include not getting the same-day laundry as promised, DH’s broken zipper, a sewage smell from the toilet when the lid was open (which apparently was a major complaint for one of our neighbors down the corridor in an inside cabin), the vent over the bed instead of a place where it wouldn’t blow air down on me while I slept, the narrow balcony, the repeat questions on the trivias that made it almost impossible for newcomers to win, the scarcity of shows performed by the singers and dancers, the guest entertainers overall, the lack of thermal suite access for suite passengers on the Royal and Regal, and the inconsistency with things such as the gelato for a coffee card punch.

 

Dinner tonight was with the family. We had a great time with them. I had a plethora of seafood dishes: a seafood salad with lobster, shrimp, and calamari; Caribbean seafood stew with crab toast; linguine with clam sauce; and tamarind glazed salmon over a rice and pea cake. I finally ordered the creme brulee for dessert. I used to order it every time it appeared on the menu. Now that it’s part of the always available side of the menu, I don’t order very often. I know I can always get it another night. Three of the people at the table ordered the New York strip steak and said it was good. I still remember getting an inedible piece of steak when I ordered it several cruises ago. I haven’t tried it since. The other two had the turkey and seemed to enjoy it.

 

On the way out of the dining room, we caught the tail end of the performance by the Royal Princess orchestra and singers from the various bands and two from the production singers. They put on a great show. It’s great to hear them actually perform instead of playing along with canned music.

 

I watched people playing games in the casino I did not understand: some kind of three-card poker game and craps. My overall loss on playing the slots was $3.80. I watched several players loading a hundred dollars at a time onto their machines by charging their room accounts. I’m not sure how we qualified for a Players Club offer. I wouldn’t mind getting one again, but I’m not going to change my playing habits.

 

We put one bag out before dinner and one after. I hung the breakfast card on the door a few minutes ago. When I tried to log into the suite breakfast order menu, it said to call in the morning. But since our cabin steward left us the hang tag, I thought I’d try doing it by that method. We haven’t had breakfast in our cabin except for the Ultimate Balcony Breakfast. We still have one of the little bottles of champagne to make mimosas with in the morning.

[geoherb]

Was that Angelo?

Sorry, but I did not notice his name. He was one of the shorter servers. It was a taller one and one who looked like a supervisor who honored using a punch earlier in the cruise.