Live from the Crown Princess 8/7/06

[dimondzzzz]

Hello and thx for all the info Jules !

Are you doing the traditional dining or anytime dining?

We are currently wait listed for tradional.....although it looks like that may impossible.

Does anyone have any opinions regarding this issue?

Happy sailing..........cheers ! ! !

ohhhhh one more thing.....theme nites??

[Quenby]

Thanks Jules1!

[sealegs9]

Thanks for your informative posts.

Seems like Day 6 may be the night to book the Crown Grill. Did you eat in the dining room tonight, Jules? The butterfish doesn't sound great and I don't like lamb.

When did you book the Crown Grill- the first day or later on?

Thanks.

[Princess Patches]

Jules,

 

Thanks for the information on the toiletries available in the Crown's shops. Keep up the interesting and informative posts.

[Jules1]

The satellite connection for the internet was down for extended periods yesterday at sea. I tried to post a couple of times but couldn't ever connect.

 

Re: dining. We have anytime dining. You can actually work it just like traditional if you want. You can get reservations for each night at the same table/same waiter if you want. The catch is, they only will give you reservations in the anytime dining rooms at certain times - which then makes it virtually the same as traditional dining. In DaVinci you can get reservations at 5:45 pm or 7:45 pm or in Michaelangelo you can get reservations at 6:15 pm or 8:15 pm. If you want to go at your leisure then you go whenever you want - if there isn't a table then they give you a restaurant pager and you can have a cocktail in one of the lounges or enjoy the entertainment in the piazza until your table is ready. We've gotten reservations each evening - therefore, no waiting. One thing I'd caution you about - if you want the same waiter/table then get your reservations the first night!

 

We booked the Crown Grill on embarkation day. I'm not sure that you need to do that - it doesn't seem like it's been very crowded when we've walked by. We were going to go to Sabatini's tonite, but decided to cancel. We weren't sure that we'd be up for that much food and didn't want to pass up the king crab legs in the dining room.

 

The theme nights have been pretty low key - one night the waiters were dressed in Italian attire, and the night that clearly was a theme night was the Island Deck Party evening.

 

They did have the seafood buffet on sailaway evening - I had some shellfish and thought it was salty. I haven't noticed it any of the other evenings - but we also haven't been up to the buffet to check it out, either.

 

Ice cream - free ice cream in the Horizon Court every day from 3:30 - 4:30 pm. There are 4 choices and the selection varies each day.

 

Pizza - the pizza has been great!

 

Menus: 2nd formal nite (Sunday At Sea for us) rockfish, lobster (which was excellent), pheasant and beef wellington (also great!)

 

Menu (Monday -Bermuda): Tilapia, King Crab Legs, Rack of Lamb, Chicken Kiev.

 

Bermuda - Today we went on a Segway tour of the dockyards. It was fabulous. You can walk from where the ship docks to the Segway office (big yellow double decker bus). Robert then taught us how to use the Segways - it's not hard to get the hang of it. He gave us headsets to wear and took us through the Royal Naval Dockyards for a narrated tour. We'd been wanting to try a Segway for a long time so took this opportunity to do it. It was great fun, and we heard the history of the dockyard. I'd highly recommend it! We then headed off to the Snorkel Park (had read about it on the Cruise Critic destinations page). It was pretty disappointing - VERY small beach - maybe 50 yards. They do have rental equipment - paddle boats, snorkel equipment, etc. The CC destinations page mentioned a seascooter - they didn't know anything about those at the snorkel park. I think that the seascooter could possibly be the paddleboats. We chose not to stay there very long - did some shopping and got back on the ship.

 

Friday evening we went to Sarge's show. No wonder he has such a following - it was absolutely hilarious. I can't remember the last time that I laughed that hard.

[whovous]

We took the CP's 7-29 cruise. We dined in the Crown Grill on the "San Juan" night (later the Dominican Republic) and in Sabatini's on the final night. I was also in these rooms for short periods of time on a couple of other nights. I never saw either one come close to being full. I know there is lotsa evidence to the contrary, but it looked to me like you could walk in without a reservation on any night you liked.

[figmentdj]

Is the Segway tour and independant? I didn't see it offfered on the Princess excursions.

[Jules1]

Yes, the Segway tour is independent: Segway Tours of Bermuda (Robert tele# 441-504-2581) . It is $76.00 for 1.5 hours on the Segway.

[Jules1]

The dinner menu for tonite (last night) is: Barramundi, Scallops, Turkey Or Prime Rib.

[john kaz]

Ok...I cannot find the salt shaker. I checked all stores twice. Do I need to click on items in every store? I did print the coupon off the link where the free coupon comes right up, but wanted to try and find it on my own....John Crown Sept. 30

[Jules1]

We did express disembarkation which did not begin until 8:30 am. There were plenty of cars/taxis available. We hired a car to take us to La Guardia and arrived there about 9:20 am. We were able to get an earlier flight out - 10:45 am (kept us from having to wait at the airport until our 3:40 pm scheduled flight).

[cynbar]

Jules, I just want to thank you again for taking the time to post live during your cruise -- you were the only Crown cruiser last week to do this, and it was great to follw along with you. Now that you're back, could you please give us some of your overall impressions of your cruise ?? There are some wildly conflicting reviews already posted. Were the children really overbearing and out of control ?? Any feedback will be greatly appreciated.

[njdgs]

Ok...I cannot find the salt shaker. I checked all stores twice. Do I need to click on items in every store? I did print the coupon off the link where the free coupon comes right up, but wanted to try and find it on my own....John Crown Sept. 30

 

According to my experience you need to enter each store and scroll to the bottom of the page and HOPE to find a salt shaker, as it always moves around. Good luck!

[RM]

Thanks Jules1 for the updates. I really appreciate the time you took from your vacation to do this.

[Suskies]

Cynbar, I was on the 8/6 cruise. We were told that there were 800 kids on board, including 300 teenagers, and I had/saw absolutely no problem with them (although I spent very little time in the pool areas and wasn't out late at night).

 

One of the people on our St. Thomas shore excursion was a college student from Poland who was working as one of the youth security people. He said that the kids on this cruise were fine--no problems--but on the previous cruise they had to deal with 60 drunken teenagers throwing things into the pool around midnight one night.