Live From Regal 1/19/2020 E. Caribbean

[Reader0108598]

1 minute ago, Steelers0854 said:

Well it’s the day no one every wants to see, the day of disembarkation. Fort Lauderdale was it’s usual quite port. 
 

 

 

We got up and ready and headed to breakfast in the MDR about 6:45. It was darn near empty. Always love breakfast in the MDR vs the circus in the buffet  

 

After breakfast we headed to the room to gather our things. We went to the Vista lounge for the P/E disembarkation lounge and it was also almost empty. Not sure if people don’t pay more attention but I saw plenty of Platinums in other locations around the ship waiting. Oh well more room for us! lol. And let me tell you the other lounges/waiting areas were packed!

 

We had Cream 3 and were called around 8:15, walked right off and grabbed our luggage. Terminal 21 has a Global Entry line and we had our cards so we walked right up to the customs official. To be honest the other line was relatively short and you maybe had a 5 minute wait, maybe. 
 

the hardest part of the process was getting a Lyft to the airport. There were so many people in port that cell service was terrible so it was hard for the app to connect, I had 2 drivers cancel on me and it ended up taking longer to get a ride than the entire disembarkation process. I think next time I will just do a taxi to the airport. So keep this in mind when planning your departure. 
 

I will post some final thoughts sometime in the next day or so but we had a really wonderful trip. 

Thanks for taking us along 🙂 Hope you have safe travel home! 🙂

[Steelers0854]

Here are some final thoughts I’ve been working on, and thanks for taking the time to read along with our adventure!

 

-MedallionClass. Love it or hate it it’s the way of the future. TBH I loved it. My door opened without fail every time I walked up to it, no fumbling for cards, it just worked. The OceanNow part was hit or miss. It’s pretty cool and I think as the technology matures it will get better.  I honestly don’t care if Princess knows where I am, and based on my experience in ordering a drink, they cant track you THAT well.  So they generally know about where you are.  In the end all that data is just going to make things better.  And if it improves what they want to sell me that’s fine, better than the 30,000 pieces of paper I get about the Spa, Casino, and Port Shopping I already get.   Plus its really cool when they randomly greet you by name.

 

-Princess has the best buffets (Royal class ships and newer, although I hear the Caribbean Princess’ is pretty good too). Hands down, no questions. The food quality, variety and hours make everyone else look terrible. It’s never closed during the day and you can walk in and get something from 5am-11pm. Most other lines have limited hours during meal times. While I wish for DW they would adopt the food allergen labeling that Celebrity has, they are still number 1.

 

-Entertainment has been outstanding. While I love the comedy lounge on Carnival ships, no one does the quality and variety quite like Princess. Disney is a close second but Princess does such a good job with live music in a variety of locations, combined with their main shows. It was just wonderful.  My only recommendation is that I love me a dueling piano, so if they want to throw one of those venues onboard sign me up!

 

-They handle food allergies best. Compared to experiences on Carnival and Celebrity, Princess did the best job with DW’s allergies in both responsiveness and creativity. Kiddos to Princess!

 

-Service was good not great, I think they were ironing out some wrinkles having just come out of wet dock.  It wasnt bad, don’t get me wrong, but compared to past sailings everything felt a bit sluggish.

 

-This Cruise reminded us why we love Princess, so we booked an 11 day British Isle cruise for next year.  Can’t wait!

 

-MedallionNet (Internet). Internet connection speeds were hit and miss onboard.  Here is a breakdown of some speed tests i ran.  TBH, not really noticeable if your doing cruise critic, social media kind of stuff etc.  Yea sometimes it took a little longer to upload a photo etc, but it was always about the same and that’s to say mediocre.  Royal ships have blazing internet, and if this is meant to complete with that good luck,  You’ll likely never stream a movie from Netflix on MedallionNet, atleast not with the experience I had onboard.   

 

 

[polmcs]

On 1/23/2020 at 8:35 AM, voljeep said:

while I agree on some of those points … I am not a foodie and can scroll thru those and the patters pretty quickly

 

I appreciate ALL photos and the narrative … if I do have a pet peeve, it's when someone has posted 20 pictures ( that's not the peeve ), it's when one or more posters feel the need to "quote" the post - all pictures / etc. are -re-posted - then the posters only comments are something like 'beautiful' / thanks / following

 

sorry

Yup, that is my main pet peeve about these forums too. Those that simply re-quote posts with multiple pictures and add nothing to the thread, except “looks good”, “wonderful”, “thanks for posting”, etc. get set to blocked status pretty quickly. Those that do add to the thread content Whilst doing the re-posting do have a longer leash, but keep doing it too many times and that too results in a user block. It does help to restore my enjoyment of these types of threads by not having to unnecessarily scroll past redundant content.  

[oatbagg1]

you'll L O V E the British Isles. We took Caribbean Princess and it was lovely. Do your research--Cruise ports aren't near the cities you'll cruise to. But there will be plenty of very nice tour guides outside the port -(Honest, clean, buses, well informed guides) that will drive you all around for mere pounds.  Don't miss Guernsey. A delightful port.

 

[jtjosh02]

Thanks for the live and review! We are on in March, so we enjoyed following along and picking MDR nights! 
 

By chance, do you recall who the bartenders are at Crooners? Also, I asked in another thread with no response. Did you see any hard seltzer on board (i.e. White Claw, Truly, Etc.)? DW keeps asking.

 

Go Steelers!

 

Josh

[Coral]

1 hour ago, oatbagg1 said:

you'll L O V E the British Isles. We took Caribbean Princess and it was lovely. Do your research--Cruise ports aren't near the cities you'll cruise to. But there will be plenty of very nice tour guides outside the port -(Honest, clean, buses, well informed guides) that will drive you all around for mere pounds.  Don't miss Guernsey. A delightful port.

 

What do you recommend in Guernsey?

[philv]

Thank you so much for your postings Steelers0854. We are doing this cruise on Regal March 1 and your preview was delightful. Happy sailings to you!

[mickeygirl78]

Thanks for a great review, I’ve enjoyed reading this as I’m going on Regal on 2/9. 

[Steelers0854]

2 hours ago, oatbagg1 said:

you'll L O V E the British Isles. We took Caribbean Princess and it was lovely. Do your research--Cruise ports aren't near the cities you'll cruise to. But there will be plenty of very nice tour guides outside the port -(Honest, clean, buses, well informed guides) that will drive you all around for mere pounds.  Don't miss Guernsey. A delightful port.

 

 

Thanks for the tip, we are excited as well.  

 

1 hour ago, jtjosh02 said:

Thanks for the live and review! We are on in March, so we enjoyed following along and picking MDR nights! 
 

By chance, do you recall who the bartenders are at Crooners? Also, I asked in another thread with no response. Did you see any hard seltzer on board (i.e. White Claw, Truly, Etc.)? DW keeps asking.

 

Go Steelers!

 

Josh

 

Unfortunately I don’t, while we spent a lot of time up there I didn’t interact with the bar all that often. 

 

Hard Ciders yes, I don’t recall any hard seltzer’s.  

[CruiseVA]

On 1/25/2020 at 10:25 AM, Paula_MacFan said:

We are currently in an aft cabin on Dolphin deck and have had bars of soap all week long.

I've got about 5 Princess bars of soap left, guess I'll bring one to make sure. Hope they have them in our cabin, if not, I'll ask my steward if he can get us some....

[CruiseVA]

Are those oysters at the seafood buffet?

[CruiseVA]

7 hours ago, Steelers0854 said:

-MedallionClass. Love it or hate it it’s the way of the future. 

-Princess has the best buffets (Royal class ships and newer, although I hear the Caribbean Princess’ is pretty good too). 

-Entertainment has been outstanding.

-This Cruise reminded us why we love Princess, so we booked an 11 day British Isle cruise for next year.  Can’t wait!

-MedallionNet (Internet). 

Thank you so much for this Live From, we will be boarding in a week (2/2/2020), you made it feel like I was aboard for an extra week! Watch for a Shared Group Live From next week! I'll start it, but, do hope that many other cruisers will chip in, otherwise it will be pretty boring 🙂

The above - I totally agree, I can't comment on the things I didn't quote.  Medallion Net is way above any other Internets at sea, I think that if it has to fall back to the old Sat connection, that's when it's slow.  I believe that we're on the same cruise this fall, we're leaving from Le Havre to Rome, You may be boarding in Southhampton?

Oh, and, yes the Caribbean Princess has an excellent "buffet" area after the refurb. She's still and awesome vessel. Took her last summer Fort Lauderdale to Quebec City - that was when we had the group Live from.  I highly recommend that cruise, it was in the top 2 cruises (did a Med cruise , that was most likely #1, depends on the mood I'm in).

[Familycruzer11]

We are on board now. LOVING it

despite some hiccups with embarkation. I’ll get an answer about hard seltzer and Crooners bartenders. Had the blue cheese olives thanks to this thread.   Stay tuned. 

[Paula_MacFan]

1 hour ago, CruiseVA said:

Are those oysters at the seafood buffet?

Yes, there were oysters, mussels, crawfish, shrimp, and crab.  They also had many prepared seafood cocktails with shrimp, scallops, mussels, and other items.  My husband enjoyed it all 🙂 

[Daniel A]

53 minutes ago, Familycruzer11 said:

We are on board now. LOVING it

despite some hiccups with embarkation. I’ll get an answer about hard seltzer and Crooners bartenders. Had the blue cheese olives thanks to this thread.   Stay tuned. 

What kind of hiccups?

[rentlady]

Thanks for the great reviews. 👏👏do you know if there was a long line for the shuttle back to the original departure pier , I believe it was #2?our car will be in the parking decks where we boarded .

[MissP22]

4 hours ago, rentlady said:

Thanks for the great reviews. 👏👏do you know if there was a long line for the shuttle back to the original departure pier , I believe it was #2?our car will be in the parking decks where we boarded .

There wasn't if you left the ship early at around 6:30 AM or so. I imagined it must have been more crowded later on..Actually not many people drive to the ship as you might think. 

[Croptop]

8 hours ago, Daniel A said:

What kind of hiccups?

The scuttlebut amongst the in-transit passengers was that the large number of ships in port (8 including us) was wreaking havoc with with the Wi-Fi networks and guest check-in/embarkation was delayed. I don't know if that's actually true but I did overhear some newly boarded passengers grumbling about the delay.

 

On the upside, US customs didn't make us (the in-transit passengers) get off the ship this time. We just congregated in the Princess Theatre and they examine our passports on the way out. Nice.

 

The hour and a bit whe nthere was only 550(ish) of us on the ship was a period of tranquil bliss.

[Familycruzer11]

Hiccups:  we were told as reported above that due to the high number of ships there were issues with the WiFi and they could not check guests in. Then there was an issue with the gangway. While we breezed through at 10:15 am we sat in the terminal

till almost noon. There were no seats.  Yet everyone was patient and seemed happy to be starting their vacation. We survived.  
 

our room was ready when we got on board But the other hiccup was our safe didn’t open. It was easily rectified. 
 

No evidence of any spike seltzer on board. 
 

Crooners bartenders are Jason and Benny

 

every person we’ve encountered have been exceptionally nice and friendly.   We seem to all be happy to be here. I know I am . 
 

they are handling my husbands dietary restrictions amazingly.  
 

if you are reading these posts because you  have a Regal cruise booked, you are lucky and in for a treat. 

[CruiseVA]

Funny story about the safe in our cabin once. I would always program it with the same code to make it easy to remember. One time we put all our stuff in it & my wife out the code in.  When I tried to open it later the code didn't work.  I asked her what code she put in, she said she followed the directions on the front and entered any 4 numbers in, as in ANY 4 numbers. She didn't know which 4 numbers she put in because they were ANY 4 numbers LOL. 

[NJCruiser23]

Thank you for a great review and the details about your wife's dietary issues.  This will be our first cruise on Princess and it was great to hear such good things about their handling of food.  

 

Your review was very detailed and informative and I enjoyed reading it!!! 

[oncruisecontrol]

On 1/26/2020 at 11:45 AM, Steelers0854 said:

Well it’s the day no one every wants to see, the day of disembarkation. Fort Lauderdale was it’s usual quite port. 
 

 

 

 

 

We had Cream 3 and were called around 8:15, walked right off and grabbed our luggage. Terminal 21 has a Global Entry line and we had our cards so we walked right up to the customs official. 
 

 

For disembarkation you docked at Terminal 21?  Isn't that a different terminal than what was used for your embarkation?

[Steelers0854]

12 minutes ago, oncruisecontrol said:

For disembarkation you docked at Terminal 21?  Isn't that a different terminal than what was used for your embarkation?

 

Yes, we embarked at terminal 2

[oncruisecontrol]

25 minutes ago, Steelers0854 said:

 

Yes, we embarked at terminal 2

Yikes.  We board the ship this Sunday 2/2/20, and are planning on parking at the port.  We don't want to park at Terminal 2 for embarkation only to disembark at Terminal 21---how would we get back to our car?  Do you know if the different Terminals for embarkation/disembarkation was just for your sailing?

[Steelers0854]

Just now, oncruisecontrol said:

Yikes.  We board the ship this Sunday 2/2/20, and are planning on parking at the port.  We don't want to park at Terminal 2 for embarkation only to disembark at Terminal 21---how would we get back to our car?  Do you know if the different Terminals for embarkation/disembarkation was just for your sailing?

 

I wouldn’t worry about it, from what i gathered this was an unusual situation and had something to do with the very high number of ships that happened to be in port that day.  We were notified via email the day before the cruise of the change so you could plan accordingly.  Of course those that don’t get emails once they leave home are at a disadvantage so best to keep tabs on it if you can.