Sun Princess - Why such negative reviews?

[chamima]

On 9/28/2024 at 10:59 AM, louden said:

Sept. 28.  The back portion of deck 18 is closed including two spa tubs

 

 

Isn't the back portion of Deck  18 the Sanctuary?

I wonder how those who paid for Suites feel if they can't use that area?

[ivanp91]

On 9/29/2024 at 4:49 AM, daydreamer16 said:

What about the American Diner?

 

This is considered and treated as if it were a Main Dining Room. Included in the cruise fare.

[rhobbkf]

One positive about the Sun that I haven't seen anyone mention is the LNG.  There is no smoike!  You can watch stars at night without a big smoke plume going by.  It's really nice.

[bstrauss3]

Just to get one of my pet peeves out there:

 

 

 

The bridge cam sucks.

 

 

 

It's a 1080x1920 upscale (badly) to 4k and it's not video, it's one frame updated every 2 or 3 seconds. 

 

 

 

[chamima]

5 hours ago, rhobbkf said:

One positive about the Sun that I haven't seen anyone mention is the LNG.  There is no smoike!  You can watch stars at night without a big smoke plume going by.  It's really nice.

 

 

What is LNG?

[d9704011]

3 minutes ago, chamima said:

 

 

What is LNG?

Liquified Natural Gas.... used as a fuel.

[daydreamer16]

19 hours ago, ivanp91 said:

 

This is considered and treated as if it were a Main Dining Room. Included in the cruise fare.

Thank you!

[daydreamer16]

19 hours ago, ivanp91 said:

 

This is considered and treated as if it were a Main Dining Room. Included in the cruise fare.

Thanks!

[Lord Revelstoke]

Being a long time Princess cruiser, I've been slightly disappointed with the Sun Princess.  We're currently on the Trans-Atlantic cruise, and the Internet is not as promised.  It's slow (download 1 mbps) and spotty.  It was supposed to be the fastest internet on the seas. We're Elite and disgruntled that we no longer received free internet, but we paid for the internet because it was supposed to be new and improved. It's highly disappointing. We just came off the P&O Iona and the internet on there was about 60 mbps.  Don't waste your money.

     There is no doubt that Princess' biggest asset is their staff.  Everyone from your cabin steward to the officers are friendly and personal, much better than the Iona.  We were on the Iona for a week and never met our room steward other than a chance meeting in the hallway. On Princess, we hadn't even left the port and the steward arrived at our suite, introducing himself and giving info on how to contact him if we require his services.  We see him at least once every day.

       I don't know if the dining rooms are understaffed, but usually, the food service takes forever.  We arrived in the dining room before 0700, with our tour leaving at 0815.  We ordered our food, and waited. eventually, after 0800, we had to get up and leave for our tour, just as our food arrived.  We had to leave without eating.  The same with dinner.  We have 5 PM dining, and the shows in the Arena usually start at 7 or 7:30.  There have been evenings where we didn't know if we'd make the show or not.

     As for the Arena, it seats over 900 people, yet it fills up early.  You have to get there at least an hour early to get a decent seat and be able to sit together. One evening, we had to seat on the extreme right side of the stage, which is actually behind the performance, and we were watching the production crews setting up the props and staging. 

         On the whole, we're enjoying the ship, but it's evident that improvements could be made in its ability to handle the large number of passengers.  

 

[bstrauss3]

I just tested, SpaceX to Gran Carina at 7.57Mbps down and 2.00Mbps up. 

 

We're not show people, but even 3 settings in a 900 pax theater won't cover 4500 pax. Thats a deliberate decision by P. All of the venues feel undersized.

 

However, today 1st of 8 sea days we had no trouble getting loungers where we wanted them!

[ldubs]

Sun Princess - Why such negative reviews?

 

I just read another thread about Sun Princess receiving a Condé Nast Readers Choice Award for best mega ship.  

 

I think there are a number of reasons.  Some of them might include the following.  It is a new ship that is still ironing out the wrinkles.  A lot of folks don't like change and this new design strays from the Princess template.  People are more prone to complain on forums than otherwise.   Negative people need to be negative.  

Edited October 1 by ldubs

[bstrauss3]

It feels different.

 

To scale up, you either scale each traditional Princess venue. Or you try something different- scale horizontally.

 

For 3k pax you have a 1.5k theater and run two shows to have 3k capacity. For 4.5k pax, the theater needs to seat 2.25k and it sits empty 2/3 of the day. You need 50% more bartenders and barstaff.

 

Or you make multiple smaller venues to offer multiple entertainments each night.

 

Given the lines at peak times in the MDR and for the shows, they haven't figured out how to make this work. Yet. IMHO, they will end up 90% or 100% reserved ticketing through the app.

[ldubs]

28 minutes ago, bstrauss3 said:

 

We're not show people, but even 3 settings in a 900 pax theater won't cover 4500 pax. Thats a deliberate decision by P. All of the venues feel undersized.

 

 

 

This is not unique to Sun Princess.  I doubt there a single Princess ship with a theater that will sit even half the passengers.  Mega ships of every cruise line have theaters that will seat an even lower percent of the total headcount.  

[IndyKid]

We didn't bother going to any of the shows aboard the Caribbean Princess last December, frankly there was plenty of other stuff going on that we enjoyed more. We'll wait and see what they have aboard the Sun Princess when we sail her next May.

[MamaStang]

We are booked on the Sun in January and have been reading all the negative comments also.  It seems crazy that a brand new ship has had total failure with the Park 19 concept and is already having to move all of its restaurants around to make them work better.  We are not traveling with kids so the Park 19 issue is not a big one for us but we may have participated in something there. Having said that, we are looking forward to the new class of ship within Princess and will make the best of the time we have on her.  Are planning some dinners earlier than we would usually do so that we have plenty of time to get seating for any shows we want to see, but other than that will go with the flow.

[Oceansaway17]

3 hours ago, ldubs said:

 

This is not unique to Sun Princess.  I doubt there a single Princess ship with a theater that will sit even half the passengers.  Mega ships of every cruise line have theaters that will seat an even lower percent of the total headcount.  

I agree. On you tube a fellow on the ship right now says arguments and issues with trying to see the shows in the dome are becoming out of control.  only 250 people can see the show and they have it twice so that makes 500 out of 3k.

Lucky it is just aerials which other ships do have. But the dome is really for day time not night so much. Seating is supposedly odd as well with 3 rows per level meaning heads are in the way.

 

check out You tube for the fellow from Canada and first letter in name is D.

[Oceansaway17]

On 9/20/2024 at 10:03 AM, Globaler said:

I hope the Sun appeals to you. We didn’t like the Piazza. It now has a large screen which was a little tacky and they are trying to make that area a central entertainment zone. However; it lacks an atmosphere. We missed a vibrant piano bar and the other cocktail bars were pass through or were drowned out by the music in the Piazza.

oh boy sounds like this ship is trying to be like the newer NCL ships. They too have a central area several stories and very noisy.

[bstrauss3]

Just now, MamaStang said:

It seems crazy that a brand new ship has had total failure with the Park 19 concept

Almost certainly a 3rd party vendor that over promised and under delivered. It's not really P's fault they bought a nice slide deck. Knowing when to pull the plug and when to push ahead a little more is a sign of a mature organization. 

 

 

[bstrauss3]

Just now, MamaStang said:

is already having to move all of its restaurants around to make them work better.

Tough decision - do you fine tune based on a season in the Med, when the Caribbean may be totally different? Or do you tough it out?

 

Some is an easy lift &shift. They didn't do a lot of unique wall decor. But Sabatine's has a dedicated display pasta kitchen in the front corner.

 

Whomever decided to put two of the four ultra high end restaurants in the cafeteria (yeah, table cloths doesn't overcome "hey this is where we had lunch") (The Catch was very good 2 nights ago) is an idiot.

 

And three separate ship-within-a-ship concept is nuts.

 

 

 

[555]

39 minutes ago, MamaStang said:

 Are planning some dinners earlier than we would usually do so that we have plenty of time to get seating for any shows we want to see, but other than that will go with the flow.

From what I'm reading, even an early DR seating in order to see the show might mean waiting hours to get into late show. 

Unless things change and they start issuing tickets

we might have to change our routine to first see the early show before dinner. 

[FLAlaska]

4 hours ago, ldubs said:

 

This is not unique to Sun Princess.  I doubt there a single Princess ship with a theater that will sit even half the passengers.  Mega ships of every cruise line have theaters that will seat an even lower percent of the total headcount.  

Right. Celebrity Edge Club only fits 260 and the theater is only 900. 

[MsSoCalCruiser]

I’ve read complaints about The Catch having a smaller menu on the Sun Princess but the other day I saw a post that listed a larger menu (now I can’t find it). I wonder if that person just did a screenshot of a menu or if they actually posted a menu from the Sun Princess. Does anyone have a recent menu? 

[reedprincess]

7 hours ago, FLAlaska said:

Right. Celebrity Edge Club only fits 260 and the theater is only 900. 

And Edge is only 2900 at capacity., with a theater for 900. And while the Club has seating capacity of 261 seats, there's plenty of standing room available.... It was a struggle for sure during the first season of sailing for the Carousel show and such, but died down after a year or so as people saw it and were done .

 

 

While Sun is  4300, at double occupancy.

With a theater that seats 990.. and Dome seats 250.  

 

Apples and oranges, somewhat, given the major difference in ship and capacity size between Edge class and Sphere class...

 

9 hours ago, Oceansaway17 said:

I agree. On you tube a fellow on the ship right now says arguments and issues with trying to see the shows in the dome are becoming out of control.  only 250 people can see the show and they have it twice so that makes 500 out of 3k.

Lucky it is just aerials which other ships do have. But the dome is really for day time not night so much. Seating is supposedly odd as well with 3 rows per level meaning heads are in the way.

 

check out You tube for the fellow from Canada and first letter in name is D.

 

Sun double occupancy is 4k +. Not 3k.

500 out of 4000+ can see a Dome show on a night...

Remarkably small venues . 65 more seats in Sun Arena over Regal? For approximately 800 more people in capacity?  .

And still, only two shows a night?  

Well done Princess...

[dides]

3 hours ago, MsSoCalCruiser said:

I’ve read complaints about The Catch having a smaller menu on the Sun Princess but the other day I saw a post that listed a larger menu (now I can’t find it). I wonder if that person just did a screenshot of a menu or if they actually posted a menu from the Sun Princess. Does anyone have a recent menu? 

From our visit to Catch on the previous cruise - embarkation night -14th Sept

 

:

 

 

[bstrauss3]

Three nights ago we had the same menu.

 

Catch was a choice between

 

Sea Bass

Red Snapper

or

Dorado