Emerald Princess

[Micahs Grandad]

Just back from our Feb 2 cruise to Hawaii and a few thoughts

 

Overall a very nice cruise with a few hiccups I will discuss first to get them out of the way.

 

Embarkation was a disaster. Princess new there would be a storm and Emerald was not in its usual birth. Due to high winds debarkation took much longer than normal.

 

They new storm was coming and did nothing to prepare. As a result many people could not get inside the terminal and were forced to wait outside in the rain.

 

Total lack of communication telling us what was going on. When embarkation finally started close to 1 pm there was a huge bottleneck as one crewmember had to take pictures of every passenger getting on the ship. Would have thought they could have gone back to the old method of taking our pictures on check in or somehow before we boarded.

 

Captain did a great job keeping the ship out of trouble. Leaving Hilo there was a storm in the area heading westbound and if we would have left at 6 pm as scheduled our trip home would have been horrible putting us in a very dangerous condition called 'following seas". Instead he arranged to stay in port an extra 12 hours so we could get behind the storm and eventually track accross the Pacific 200 miles south of it. Kudos to the captain.

 

Atomic the party band was fabulous. Did an awesome set of Queen and Beatles and showed a very wide repertoire of songs.

 

Production shows were good and they had excellent flyons including two excellent comedians one of whom is a finalist for Princess entertainer of the year.

 

One strange thing was that the ED director hosted more events than the cruise director. Never saw that before and no idea why that should be.  

 

ED (sorry forgot her name) actually gave a one hour talk about life at sea for the crew and she was a fountain of information.

 

Food in DR was fine as well as service. Didnt see much of the room steward but did his job very well.

 

Any questions please ask and if I do not have the answer perhaps someone from our roll call could answer.

[OCruisers]

Glad you were able to have a basically good cruise after the unfortunate beginning.

Like you .... Wonder why the ED hosted more events than the CD.  Normally, this is so not the case.

Emerald Princess has always been one of our favorite ships so appreciate your report/review!  

 

 

[Colo Cruiser]

Thanks for the comments.

[Thrak]

If the ED was hosting the events it's likely the CD was ill.

[Lucky TGO]

Thanks for sharing.

Tony

[caribill]

5 hours ago, Micah's Grandad said:

 When embarkation finally started close to 1 pm there was a huge bottleneck as one crewmember had to take pictures of every passenger getting on the ship. Would have thought they could have gone back to the old method of taking our pictures on check in or somehow before we boarded.

 

 

 

Princess has never taken the security photo at check-in in my experience. I have had this happen on some other cruise lines.

 

When we boarded the Emerald in San Pedro in December they had two lines to get onto the ship (depended on where you can was located) and in our line there were two people taking the security photo on the Promenade deck.

 

How was the Internet on your cruise? On our December cruise it was the worst Internet we have ever had on a cruise ship. Not just in the middle of the Pacific, but also in the Hawaii area.

 

 

[Micahs Grandad]

8 hours ago, Thrak said:

If the ED was hosting the events it's likely the CD was ill.

She seemed ok. She was on stage every night after show telling us what a great show we just saw.

[Micahs Grandad]

4 hours ago, caribill said:

 

Princess has never taken the security photo at check-in in my experience. I have had this happen on some other cruise lines.

 

When we boarded the Emerald in San Pedro in December they had two lines to get onto the ship (depended on where you can was located) and in our line there were two people taking the security photo on the Promenade deck.

 

How was the Internet on your cruise? On our December cruise it was the worst Internet we have ever had on a cruise ship. Not just in the middle of the Pacific, but also in the Hawaii area.

 

 

Perhaps I am confusing Princess with another cruise line for picture taking on embarkation.

 

It took a good hour from the time we were called for getting onto the ship till we actually boarded.

 

Thought the internet was fine, did notice that at all of our ports we could go right to Verizon and save our minutes.

[Dive Girl]

We are just off the Feb 17 sailing on the Emerald Princess to mexico. Internet was awful!!! I could only get online at 6am for about a 1/2 hour. The worst in all our sailings with Princess.

[Micahs Grandad]

40 minutes ago, Dive Girl said:

We are just off the Feb 17 sailing on the Emerald Princess to mexico. Internet was awful!!! I could only get online at 6am for about a 1/2 hour. The worst in all our sailings with Princess.

Interesting how internet worked well for some not so well for others.

 

We used it via smart phones and had no problem. Used my phone often and surprised not to even come close to using up our free 250 minutes benefit.

[sepakcruiser]

15 hours ago, Micah's Grandad said:

Just back from our Feb 2 cruise to Hawaii and a few thoughts

 

Overall a very nice cruise with a few hiccups I will discuss first to get them out of the way.

 

Embarkation was a disaster. Princess new there would be a storm and Emerald was not in its usual birth. Due to high winds debarkation took much longer than normal.

 

They new storm was coming and did nothing to prepare. As a result many people could not get inside the terminal and were forced to wait outside in the rain.

 

Total lack of communication telling us what was going on. When embarkation finally started close to 1 pm there was a huge bottleneck as one crewmember had to take pictures of every passenger getting on the ship. Would have thought they could have gone back to the old method of taking our pictures on check in or somehow before we boarded.

 

Captain did a great job keeping the ship out of trouble. Leaving Hilo there was a storm in the area heading westbound and if we would have left at 6 pm as scheduled our trip home would have been horrible putting us in a very dangerous condition called 'following seas". Instead he arranged to stay in port an extra 12 hours so we could get behind the storm and eventually track accross the Pacific 200 miles south of it. Kudos to the captain.

 

Atomic the party band was fabulous. Did an awesome set of Queen and Beatles and showed a very wide repertoire of songs.

 

Production shows were good and they had excellent flyons including two excellent comedians one of whom is a finalist for Princess entertainer of the year.

 

One strange thing was that the ED director hosted more events than the cruise director. Never saw that before and no idea why that should be.  

 

ED (sorry forgot her name) actually gave a one hour talk about life at sea for the crew and she was a fountain of information.

 

Food in DR was fine as well as service. Didnt see much of the room steward but did his job very well.

 

Any questions please ask and if I do not have the answer perhaps someone from our roll call could answer.

 

We were on this same cruise and I agree with you, embarkation was a complete disaster.  I've never been yelled at so much by people that appear to not know what they doing.  Then if I dared to ask a question, I was totally ignored.  I would love to blame the weather on the terrible service in the port by disembarkation wasn't much better and the weather was wonderful.  I think the people who work on the ground are just really rude.  

 

Aside from that we had a nice cruise.  I will say that I thought overall our other Princess cruises were better.  It seemed that everything was just slightly off on this one compared to our other cruises.  Nothing terrible but nothing really outstanding either.  Our room steward was probably the most friendly and helpful person we dealt with the entire cruise.  

 

Agree with you on the food, it was fine though I thought it took a turn the last few days of the cruise. 

 

I didn't have a problem with the internet speed but maybe that was just my low expectations?

 

[Belle]

Did they say why you weren't at Pier 93?

Did you know ahead of time of your pier number?

 

Thanks for answering in advance.

[caribill]

11 hours ago, sepakcruiser said:

 

 

I didn't have a problem with the internet speed but maybe that was just my low expectations?

 

 

Our problem was not with speed, it was inability to connect at all. Even the Intranet (check onboard account, see Patters, etc.) did not work for several days.

 

One question for you -- what were the times for early and late fixed seating dinner?

[sepakcruiser]

5 hours ago, caribill said:

 

One question for you -- what were the times for early and late fixed seating dinner?

 

The times are 5:15 and 7:30

[Micahs Grandad]

6 hours ago, Belle said:

Did they say why you weren't at Pier 93?

Did you know ahead of time of your pier number?

 

Thanks for answering in advance.

For some reason Ruby Princess got pier 93. I did not know ahead of time but signage at the port took us to the correct pier.

[Micahs Grandad]

6 hours ago, caribill said:

 

Our problem was not with speed, it was inability to connect at all. Even the Intranet (check onboard account, see Patters, etc.) did not work for several days.

 

One question for you -- what were the times for early and late fixed seating dinner?

Out of 15 days, at least 100 times going on line,  perhaps twice we were unable to connect to internet.

 

Our early seating in Da Vinci was 5 pm. 

[1emerald1]

Thanks for the review. Question on the embarkation - did you drop your luggage off at the tent, then go to the small adjacent terminal for boarding?  Thanks.

[Micahs Grandad]

16 minutes ago, 1emerald1 said:

Thanks for the review. Question on the embarkation - did you drop your luggage off at the tent, then go to the small adjacent terminal for boarding?  Thanks.

As I recall (and not 100% sure I remember correctly exactly where we dropped luggage) we dropped off luggage with porter near tent and than went to terminal for processing and waiting and waiting. 

[1emerald1]

2 minutes ago, Micah's Grandad said:

As I recall (and not 100% sure I remember correctly exactly where we dropped luggage) we dropped off luggage with porter near tent and than went to terminal for processing and waiting and waiting. 

Okay, thanks.