Review: Island Princess Panama Canal Cruise Dec 21 2017 - Jan 9 2018

[rayliang]

These are my thoughts on my19 Days Panama Canal Cruise on-board the Island Princess.

Cruisers: mostly older couples, with I think no more than ahundred kids. Most cruisers are veterans of multiple Panama Canal sailings,whom you can ask and learn a lot from regarding the trip.

Ship: Overall my experience on the ship has being good. Theship's movement lines are weird and sometimes illogical, making moving from onepart of the ship to another part sometimes more convoluted then it should be.But once you get used to the ship, its not a big deal.

Room: Oceanview Plaza 612. Small but cozy, overall a good stayover 19 days. Only bad thing is the room is right below the Explorer Lounge, solate night music might be problematic if you are a light sleeper. The newPrincess Bed is comfortable, but overall doesn't breath well and I tend to overheat at night. And the bed for me is a little too soft.

Entertainment: Band for nightly dancing attracts a good # ofpeople to the dance floor. Entertainment in general is nice.

Food: is decent, though the soup had being consistently oversalted, and fish is fairly consistently over-cooked, while other seafood onaverage is a little blander then I liked. If possible do not get AnytimeDining. From my observations the lines for anytime diner is consistently 30min+after 6pm. Horizon Court is not bad at all.

Crew / Service: I experienced good service overall. CaptainTuvel is by far the best cruise ship captain of my experience, friendly andvery approachable, and proactive in fixing any issues he encounters. Otherservice members has being good to me as well. Though according to multipleveteran Princess cruisers I talked with during the cruise, service and foodseems to be toward the low end of their Princess experiences.

Port of Calls: Overall any of the local tour guides allows youto see far more with far smaller group and cheaper by about 10-20% vs.comparable Princess tours. Will highly highly recommend using local companiesvs. Princess’ own cruise tours.

Huatulco: small town without much of interest. Being in Oaxaca,I went to restaurant El Sabor for some mole. Their black mole is awesome,though the coloratito (red) mole is bland. The chicken that accompanies themole sauces were ok.

Puerto Chiapas: I joined a tour right off the dock from"Tour Guide Association of Puerto Chiapas"(miekevanostaeyen@hotmail.com) for $45. You can find their tour desk at theentrance to the cruise terminal building where everyone is gathering to get onbuses. It does the same itinerary as Princess Cruise's own tour to Izapa andchocolate demonstration, but with an added trip into Tapachula proper. The tourgroup has a maximum size of 12 people and we rode in a decent full size tourvan. The tour includes bottled water for everyone. Our guide is Uriel, whospeaks excellent English and is very informative of all things Tapachula andsurrounding areas. I highly recommend doing this tour with them instead of withPrincess. Izapa is not much to look at, especially if you being to other biggerMayan sites like Chichen Itza or Coba. The highlight of the tour is thechocolate demonstration. Our small group went to the chocolatier's own home.Her family treated us to local snacks, freshly made tortilla and queso fresco,and a local beverage. The chocolatier has coco trees with ripe coco fruitsright in her backyard. She demonstrated the whole Mayan chocolate makingprocess, from fresh fruit, to the coco seeds, to drying, toasting, grinding,and molding into chocolates, and the final process of making Mayan hotchocolate drink. We get to taste every intermediate steps (the coco seedcoating is sweet!!!), and we get to ask the chocolatier all sort of questionsat each step. By comparison, the Princess tours went to the local townplaza at Tuxla Chico to do their chocolate demonstration, where bus full ofpeople crowd around a stage trying to see how things are done. Our chocolatedemonstration was a absolutely wonderful experience and in my opinion thechocolate experience is worth the $45 alone, and everything else on the tour isjust gravy. If you go with this tour, please ask and insist w/ the tour guide thatyou want the small demonstration at the chocolatier's home. I enjoy thedemonstration so much I bought a bag of everything. We went to Tapachula thento a restaurant with decent food and fast wifi for an hour before returning tothe ship. There's really not much in Tapachula.

Puerto Quetzal: I hadoriginally planned to hire a local taxi for the day to take us to Antigua,thinking it will cost about $50-$100 (according to our guide Uriel at theprevious port, $500 Quetzal should be enough). However, Puerto Quetzal turnedout not to have any taxis. If you do not take Princess’ tours, your only otheroption is a single tour company that will charge you $200 for 1 car for theday, or $45 / ppl if you have 6+. We ended up negotiated together with anotherfamily down to $40 / person for the day and hopped in. I don’t remember theguide’s name, and he didn’t provide much information either. We had the vantook us to Finca Filadelphia, just north of Antigua. The coffee plantationprovided an excellent introduction in the coffee production business, and has agood restaurant serving good Guatemalan food and juices. Well worth a visit. Wetook the plantation’s free shuttle back to Antigua to meet up with rest of thegroup and walked around town before heading back. Antigua is beautiful andvibrant, wish I had more time to walk around.

Puntarenas: We went with the10in1 tour from Thumbs Up Tours. Our guide was Kari, an American expat. Thetour itself was nice and we saw many animals, though sadly didn’t see any manymonkeys, toucans, and macaws as we liked. Saw plenty of gators and other birdson the tour though. According to the tour guide we need to go to higherelevations to see those birds more often, or take a tour to the bird sanctuary.Overall I very much enjoy the tour and saw a lot. Though the included lunchhonestly is not good in my opinion. I do still recommend them over Princess.

San Juan Del Sur: we went with Macua tours. The tourincludes Masaya Volcano, the local crater lake (volcano lake), a boat ride onLake Nicaragua, lunch, and a short walking tour of Granada. The tour guide wasexcellent and provided a lot of information along the way to Masaya volcano andto Granada. We had a lot of fun seeing the sights and learning about Nicaragua.The Masaya volcano must not be missed. The tour included a Nicaraguan lunch ata Granada hotel. The food is most wonderful. Highly recommend this tour overanything Princess provides. I kind of wish we have more time in Granada, thoughI think its not as pretty and fun as Antigua.

Manzanillo: We went with Tlaloc Tours, with a group of 6. Contactedthe owner Christopher via Facebook and arranged everything over FacebookMessenger. His tour guide Pancho took us on the same Cuyutlan Turtle Sanctuarytour that Princess provides, with an added bonus of a tour of the Manzanillohotel zone, and a beach front seafood lunch at Santiago Bay (not included intour fee). Although Pancho’s English is heavily accented, he is stillunderstandable and is an excellent guide, providing much information andassistant to us. He also arranged for Cuyutlan Turtle sanctuary to provide useach with 1 baby sea turtle to release back to the ocean. That was anexperience. The lunch location, Ramada Lucita, has a beautiful view of SantiagoBay and the beach goers, in addition to provide excellent seafood and drinks,with absolutely incredibly tasty fresh raw oysters and clams to boot (justcaught that morning). The spiny lobster I think tastes good, but is not worth themoney. The charcoal grilled fish is just top notch and a must order.

 

Conclusion:

 

Great 19 day cruise. Never really felt bored. Really enjoythe trip. Highly recommend this vs. cruise LA <-> Florida instead.

[easyboy]

Thanks for the useful tips on port activities.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

[cmdchiefthom]

Thanks so much for the information on this itinerary. I sounds like you had a great cruise adventure.:D

[riclop]

Thanks for the review.

[JimAOk1945]

Thanks for your thoughts. The Panama Canal Transit is a wonderful itinerary. We completed ours last month and really enjoyed it.

[Keith1010]

Terrific review and glad you enjoyed the cruise.

 

Keith

[hillslife]

Thank you for your quick review Ray. It was a pleasure meeting you on the island princess. We very much enjoyed our cruise. Enjoyed captain Tuvo. He made us smile every day with his humor and his “bye bye” . We also enjoyed all the Christmas decorations, Christmas caroling, gingerbread house competition‘s, escape room, and don’t miss the production shows On the Bayou and Encore. There are unique to the island and coral princess and very very well done. Singers and sets are amazing.

 

We also had a wonderful cruise on the island princess. Crew is fun and very friendly. Food was average for Princess Cruises we would’ve enjoyed more and different enrichment lectures for such a long 19 day cruise. There was only one enrichment lecture and her presentations got old after a while. Also would’ve appreciated more presentations on the Panama Canal, The digging of the new canal, who uses which canal locks, etc.

 

We’ve never done a Christmas and New Year’s cruise before. It was a fun experience and met many new friends along the way.

[Clarea]

Glad you had a great cruise and thanks for the excellent review!