Review Tahitian Princess 5/29/06

[calikak]

Here's some preliminary thoughts--will add more to this as it comes to me!

 

Ship: We really enjoyed the size of this ship, 650 passengers. We had an aft BA balcony cabin. There was more vibration than I'm used to, but we really liked the balcony (half covered and half uncovered and much bigger than normal balconies) and would happily book that cabin again. I didn't see any areas on the ship that seemed in need of repair or maintenance, other than the teak railing on our balcony which coul dhave used a coat of varnish, and I'm really nitpicking to come up with that.

 

Food: The food onboard was pretty good, not outstanding but pretty good. I did miss having the 24-hour buffet that you find on larger ships, though, especially when you've come back from port and don't feel like a sit-down meal. The variety of food in the buffet wasn't all that great either, at lunchtime they were serving the same things in the buffet that they were in the dining room. Dining room food was excellent and so were the specialty restaurants.

 

Itinerary: We visited 9 ports: Papeete (where we embarked), Moorea, Raiatea, Bora Bora, Christmas Island, Hilo, Kona (we had mechanical difficulties so we went to Kona instead of Kauai), Lahaina, and Honolulu (where we disembarked). I was glad we went to all of them, and I'd happily visit any of them again except Christmas Island. I think we saw just about all there was to see there, it's a very remote place with very little to see or do and the beach there wasn't that great (lots of algae and some folks saw a bunch of dead fish and birds on the beach). My favorite island was probably Moorea (gorgeous water, free shots at the pineapple booze factory--be sure to pace yourself!), although we also had a fantastic tour in Raiatea (if someone asks I guess I can mention who? Not sure about the new rules here), and I also thought Lahaina was a lovely town.

 

Some tips:

-We totally overpacked for this trip. Next time, I'd bring half as many clothes because it was easy and cheap to do laundry (or have it done during one of the laundry specials they offered). Laundry soap was free so you don't have to bring your own, but do bring quarters for the laundry machines.

-Don't be afraid to stay at a pension (the French word for a B&B-type place). The one we stayed at (Taaroa Lodge) was great and a lot less expensive than staying at a hotel, and you pick up a lot more local culture that way. I wouldn't recommend it for the I-must-have-fresh-towels-twice-a-day crowd, but for people who have a more adventurous spirit, it's a great option.

-Renting cars in Hawaii was easy and very convenient. I would highly recommend this option over a tour--we saw twice as much for half the cost. We were too chicken to rent a car in Papeete but I think that would have probably been OK too.

-Take a taxi from the Papeete airport to your hotel rather than booking a shuttle. Taxis are plentiful and usually the same cost as a shuttle, which you have to try to find in a huge sea of people.

-Buy yourself a guidebook. For Tahiti, we used the one by Jan Prince, which was really handy. The Moon Handbook we had for Hawaii seemed a bit out-of-date, but was mostly OK.

-Don't exchange money before you go, it's a total rip-off. Wait until you get to Papeete, or if you can swing it, until you get on the ship, where the rate is much more reasonable. The exchange place at LAX gave us a terrible rate and then charged a fee on top of that.

-Take the time to chat with the crew onboard, most of them are really nice people!

 

That's all I can think of for now--am happy to answer questions!

[Spikesgirl]

We took the Tahiti/Cook island tour when we were there, but we're toying with the idea of taking it to Hawaii next time around ('08). We have been hesitant to take a cruise of just Hawai'i because we have friends and family there, but perhaps if we tied it in with Tahiti, we could get everything done in one trip with a layover in Hawai'i.

 

We feel so much in love with the TP that was used that part of our criteria when booking our upcoming Asian cruise on her sister ship the Pacific. We totally loved the fact taht the crew seemed so willing to stop and chat with us. There seemed to be a high ratio of crew to passengers, so maybe that was why. I was sorry to hear that the food was sparkling. The TP had been our last chance for Princess to prove herself foodwise to us and she performed admirably. What was it about the food that was disapointing - offerings, plating and presentation (we didn't give them a high mark for verticality, but understood why there wasn't much). As you can tell, we're foodies. Did you eat any place on any of the shores?

 

What tour did you take on Raiatea (you don't have to give me the tour guides's name if you prefer not to)? We did a drift snorkle that pretty much ate up a lot of our time there. I agree with you on the fruit juice factory on Moorea (that's what our driver told us it was - we had some Mormon friends with us who were a little distressed after downing a glass and discovering it had alcohol in the punch). We did love the varieties of flavors and are still working on our gift packs.

 

What exactly was there to do on Christmas Island?

 

What did you do and see on the Big Island? Did you cruise past the lava or take the northern route to Kona?

 

Glad you had a good time and hope to read more about your adventures.

 

Charlie

[cozgal]

Thanks for sharing your observations and tips!!...We are booked for 8/12/07 (Tahiti/Cook) and have aft cabins 7116 and 7121...was the vibration constant or just at certain times? what about rocking motion? We booked these based on what we read here on CC but I am a little concerned about the motion.

Thanks for any feedback!

[trixie54]

I'd also like to know about the motion, esp. compared to larger ships, & aft vibration. Also, which do you think is better - cruising from HNL to Tahiti, or vice versa? We'll probably go in Sept. of '08 for our 25th anniversary; hoping my DH's heart disease allows us this long-desired trip. Thanks!

[Spikesgirl]

problem with vibrations except when the Captain was using the thrusters in and out of the dock and most of the ports are tenders. Seasickness is a good friend of mine and as long as I kept up on my meds, all was well with the world. Cook Islands have a habit of being rough, but we were able to tender in. Afternoon swells were pretty bad, but we all got back on okay and there was nary a twing of seasickness (at least with me).

 

We loved this cruise and can't wait to snorkle again in what my DH calls the bathtub aquarium of Tahiti. He loved the water temps and the huge assortment of fish.

 

Enjoy!

 

Charlie

[calikak]

Let me see if I can answer everyone's questions!

 

Spikesgirl, I think my issue with the food is partly from having sailed with Princess so many times, so the menus don't seem that exciting to me. I don't think the TP's food was of any lower quality than any other Princess ship we've been on, but the level of variety in the buffet was less than on other ships, probably just because it's a bit smaller than on other ships. There were also a few times that I felt some of the dishes were a little skimpy on their sauces, like there wasn't quite enough sauce to flavor the item being served. The seafood dishes were all perfectly cooked, though, which is something I like about Princess, I've never had a dry piece of fish on any of my Princess cruises.

 

We did Bruno's tour in Raiatea and really enjoyed it. We hadn't been able to book it because it was all full, but some friends from our roll call who had booked with him were quarantined that day, and offered their spaces on the tour to us (luckily they didn't actually have Norwalk, but the ship doesn't take chances with that). I know there's been some debate here recently about him and I know some people were really disappointed about the lunch no longer being on a private motu--it's at a motu with a lagoonarium instead. Since I hadn't been on the tour before, and since we were really lucky to even have gotten on the tour at all, I thought the picnic spot was fine. The food was delicious but if you don't like seafood you're not going to like the lunch because it was mostly seafood. Bruno's English isn't all that great but again luckily for us, there was someone on our tour who was from France, so he was able to help translate when Bruno's vocabulary failed him (i.e., at the pearl farm, that's some pretty specialized vocabulary!). I didn't do the drift snorkel because I'm not a strong snorkeler (just stayed near the boat, which was lovely for me--nice water, enough coral to look at but not to cut myself on!), but DH did and he really enjoyed it--they saw a huge moray eel and a couple of big octopi. We also had a really friendly group on the tour (all Cruise Critic people except the French guy who helped translate for Bruno)

 

There isn't much to do on Christmas Island. When you get off the tender, there's a tent where people are singing and their are vendors selling similar items to what you'd see in Tahiti, but for a lot more money. You can also send a postcard from there because the post office has a booth set up to sell stamps. The postcards themselves are $1 each, which I thought was pretty expensive for the quality they were offering, so you might want to bring the freebie postcards from your cabin instead. There were some people offering minibus tours of the island, but we decided we just wanted to go to the beach. So we walked off with some other random people from our tender towards a beach, but there was a lot of algae and a big black cloud was coming, so we just dipped our feet and then walked back to the tender...just in time for it to start raining while we were waiting for the tender back, so we got totally soaked. :) Everyone I talked to who found a beach said that it wasn't a good beach--one of the ship's dancers that we chatted with a few times said that the beach he and his friends found had dead fish and dead birds on it, so they didn't swim either. There is an internet cafe right by the tender pier that has high speed access for $6 an hour, much cheaper than the 50 cents a minute on the ship for folks who aren't Platinum yet (we are so we just use the ship's internet). It's a place I'm glad I visited but I wouldn't plan a visit to again. If I was on a ship that was stopping there, I'd probably go ashore again, but I wouldn't pick an itinerary just because Christmas Island is on it.

 

In Hilo, we rented a car and drove up to Volcanoes National Park. The car rental companies have free shuttles from the pier to the airport (about a 10 minute drive) so it's a very easy place to rent a car. We drove all around the park and then had a late lunch at a place called the Lava Rock Cafe, in the town of Volcano. Great burgers there. In Kona, since we hadn't planned to go there, we just sort of poked around the town. We did some shopping (bought all our tacky souvenirs at Hilo Hattie's) and visited the old church there and the old palace that some of the Hawaiian royalty lived in.

 

Oh, the lava...yes, we sailed around the south end of the island--since we missed Kauai, they sailed us around the south end of the island instead of the north end. We sailed past the lava at about 1:30 in the morning. DH and I gave up and went to bed before then, but some friends who stayed up to see it said it wasn't worth staying up for, it just looked like some twinkling lights on the shoreline, like a town or something. I guess Madame Pele was having a quiet evening. :) The captain said that normally they'd sail around the north end of the big island so you wouldn't normally get to see the lava on this itinerary.

 

About the aft cabin and vibration, it seemed that the vibration was there anytime the ship was moving. I'm not sure if it would be less on decks further up, since they'd be further from the engines? It was enough to make two things rattle in our cabin: the bathroom door, and the safe. So, we made sure when we closed the bathroom door, we had a bit of towel wedged in the door jam, because that stopped it from rattling. And we kept the safe unlocked at night and that took care of its rattling. Otherwise, it really wasn't something that affected our trip at all.

 

About motion, the ship seemed to rock a bit more than the big ships I've been on, but not too much more. Most of the time, when we were moving between islands, you felt the rocking but it wasn't so much that you felt like you needed to hold onto things to balance or anything like that. The two days from Christmas Island to Hilo, we had stronger winds and the ship was moving more, and on the second formal night when I was in heels I definitely found myself wanting to hold onto railings. They also had the "warning-high winds" signs posted on exterior doors, and the waves were splashing up onto the promenade on deck 5. Being in an aft cabin didn't seem to make the motion worse than other parts of the ship, but we were on Deck 6 and the motion was stronger on higher up decks--you could really feel it in the Tahitian Lounge (on deck 10) on the two rough days. DH gets motion sick but he used the patch on this trip and didn't get sick once. He didn't really have any side effects either--I know other people get blurred vision and stuff like that, but luckily he didn't. We'll definitely be bringing along the patch on all future cruises.

 

About which direction to choose, Tahiti-Hawaii or Hawaii-Tahiti, that's a tough call. I thought Tahiti was more exotic and picturesque than Hawaii, with the turqouise lagoons and heavy vegetation and jagged mountains, so maybe it's better to go from Hawaii to Tahiti, so Hawaii doesn't seem disappointing after Tahiti. But, the airport in Papeete is supposed to be a terrible place to fly out of because it's not air conditioned, and there's long lines for check-in, and we didn't have to worry about that because we flew home from Honolulu. Also, at the end of a long trip it's kind of nice to have familiar food and road signs for your post-cruise stay. Frankly, I think it's really a toss-up.

 

I think I got to all the questions--give a shout out if I missed any!

[Spikesgirl]

Appreciated you taking the time to explain everything. It did strike me as funny that you found the food blah, but we were excited enough by it to rebook with Princess - I wonder if they have changed chefs. I frequently wonder why they don't have more specialized menus reflecting the area in which they are sailing - when we were in New Zealand/Aus - they never offered lamb once - guess that's what the land tours are for.

 

You mentioned Lava Rock - we love eating there and I'm partial to the quilting store behind the restaurant, well, sort of diagaonal actually. Lava Rock also has great breakfasts and there is a Thai place to die for, but it's only open for dinner.

 

We usually get our souvenirs from Hilo Hatties as well, although the ABC Store is fun to poke around it.

 

Thank you so much for the low down on Christmas Island. There is an active thread going on the Princess site right now that also mentioned much of what you did. Some people really loved it, others not so much.

 

Sorry Madame didn't put in much of an appearance that night, but at least you didn't stay up for it! It is a crap shoot most of the time. when we were there, we hiked two miles in and didn't see any more than what was visible from the car. The time before, the plume was hundreds of feet high and we were but yards from an active flow. It caused its own little micro climate and you could literally step in and out of a rain show. it was very strange.

 

Thanks again for your time!

 

Charlie

[calikak]

Charlie, we popped into that quilt shop, it was really nice! Good non-quilting souvenirs as well as nice quilt stuff.

[Spikesgirl]

It is a nice little place and they've really expanded. I've gotten lots of quilting supplies from them over the years.

 

Charlie