Grand Princess Central Stairs

[Thrak]

We have only sailed on Grand Princess once and it was back in 2014. I recall that the central stairs only went up a couple of decks and then were closed off to passengers. We have 32 days booked on Grand this fall - at least it will be fall here at home when we leave to fly to Melbourne - and have been wondering about this. Was this staircase ever opened up for passenger use?

Edited July 5, 2023 by Thrak

[cr8tiv1]

The Grand midship staircase to nowhere is still there.  Only available staircases for all decks are forward or aft.  The stairs go from Deck 4 to Deck 7.

 

So envious of you to have her to yourself for 32 days.

 

 

 

 

[Thrak]

1 minute ago, cr8tiv1 said:

The Grand midship staircase to nowhere is still there.  Only available staircases for all decks are forward or aft.  The stairs go from Deck 4 to Deck 7.

 

So envious of you to have her to yourself for 32 days.

 

Thanks. I was afraid of that but it's not really a big deal. I remember the one time we sailed on Grand we tried to go up those stairs a couple of times. The second time we just looked at each other, shook our heads, and grinned as we already knew about the stoppage but "cleverly" tried to use the stairs again.

 

I was curious because I remember that when Royal Princess made its debut it had a similar issue and Princess addressed the problem and fixed it. I was hoping they might have done the same with Grand.

 

Thanks again for your reply. 😉

[cr8tiv1]

I'm not sure they can "fix" this since there are crew quarters up in that section.

[skynight]

Slim to no chance princess will open the center stairway on their oldest ship. Here is a short story. I was on board the Royal Princess around a year after its initial sailing. There was a talk in Princess Live from one of  Carnival Corp's lead marine architects involved in the design of the Royal Princess. During the presentation passenger questions started to flow about the lack of a center stair case for passenger use. The initial response was that no one uses the center staircase. This was met with lots of response from the passengers indicating the designer's misconception about center staircases. Soon after the center stairs were re-done and opened to passengers on both the Royal and Regal.

[Astro Flyer]

19 minutes ago, skynight said:

Slim to no chance princess will open the center stairway on their oldest ship. Here is a short story. I was on board the Royal Princess around a year after its initial sailing. There was a talk in Princess Live from one of  Carnival Corp's lead marine architects involved in the design of the Royal Princess. During the presentation passenger questions started to flow about the lack of a center stair case for passenger use. The initial response was that no one uses the center staircase. This was met with lots of response from the passengers indicating the designer's misconception about center staircases. Soon after the center stairs were re-done and opened to passengers on both the Royal and Regal.

I was on the Royal’s inaugural TA in 2013 shortly after the ship’s maiden voyage and also had a presentation by one of the main architects of the Royal’s design. When asked about why the center stairs above deck 7 were not finished for passenger use he stated that CCL CEO & Chairman Micky Arison refused to pay for cost overruns. The stairways were available for passengers to use in emergencies but not having carpeting & paneling they were not available for routine use by passengers. After pushback by passengers the stairs were eventually finished for passenger usage.
 

Our speaker understood why passengers were upset & provided the reason why they were unavailable & apparently he was either replaced by your speaker or he was told to promote the company line.

 

[Thrak]

2 hours ago, skynight said:

Slim to no chance princess will open the center stairway on their oldest ship.

 

I certainly wouldn't expect them to do anything much at all with Grand Princess these days but, as I hadn't been on that ship since 2014 I was "marginally hopeful" that they might have changed things shortly after we last sailed. These days of course Princess is all about the "bigger is better" and "revenue source locations are the goal" attitude. I'm sure we will "manage" just fine with the lack of a central staircase. I can't, however, guarantee that we won't space out at some point and find ourselves laughing about once again starting up that staircase without thinking. 🤪

[Rick&Jeannie]

On 7/6/2023 at 2:33 PM, Thrak said:

I can't, however, guarantee that we won't space out at some point and find ourselves laughing about once again starting up that staircase without thinking. 🤪

Be sure and let us know if you get past the barriers....there may be something really interesting that they don't want us to see!