Sapphire Princess--what are you thoughts about this ship?

[gertz]

Escargot on French night, love it.:D

All afternoon tea does is ruin your appetite for Escargot at dinner.

There is no shortage of entertainment.

You here a lot of talk touting anytime dinning on this board. Ever wondered why there is always a waiting list 6 to 10+ months out for 1st seating in the MDR?

Jack

for the lovely but under the weather

[breezyb45]

Hi there. We went on the Sapphire last November, Thanksgiving week. If you are having anytime dinning I suggest you call for reservations for dinner at one of the resturants right away. We were with another couple and we never ate until after 8:30 at night. We learned to make reservations for the rest of the nights and stayed at one dinning room. We were in a balcony room on the Baja deck and it was great. Hope that helps.

Kathy

[sackman]

Having four smaller anytime dining rooms allows the Sapphire to convert one of them to traditional if they have more requests for traditional seating than anytime dining. This is what happened for us last February for the Mexican Riv cruise on the Sapphire. We were extremely pleased with the way it turned out.

 

Fantastic ship. I liked it better than the Emerald, which is newer. Mostly because of the four dining rooms and the indoor pool. No MUTS, but otherwise perfect.

[gargoyle999]

The one thing I didn't like about the Sapphire (went week after Thanksgiving last year) was the 4 Anytime Dining rooms. You'd have to go to each one to find out if they could seat you. Then wait if none of them could.

 

Oh..and I didn't like the cheeseburgers on Princess. And I love cheeseburgers. But otherwise the food was good and I liked the 24 hour buffet for some late night snacking.

 

Ship decor is very nice.

 

Might be sailing this year if I can convince DW! Price is $600 less than what we paid last year for the same sailing! Hard to pass it up...

[monakayk]

We were on the Sapphire from 7/4/09 to 7/18/09. It was a wonderful ship!

 

I do remember Beef Wellington being served but do not remember Escargot at all. We thought the food on board was very good. Each of the AD restaurants had there special dish. The Pacific Moon was stir fry and Santa Fe was fajitas, which were a little spicy. They will also serve you a small helping of the fetticini with your meal which was delicious. We did eat at Vidaldi but do not remember there specialty. The Sterling Steak House was also delicious!

 

Afternoon tea was served in the Pacific Moon and we were served hot tea, finger sandwiches and petite desserts. And yes there was piano music being played. All servers wore white gloves and were in their finery.

 

Luvlake,

 

Thanks for this additional info. Sounds like the Sapphire is a really nice ship. :D

[monakayk]

Escargot on French night, love it.:D

 

All afternoon tea does is ruin your appetite for Escargot at dinner.

 

There is no shortage of entertainment.

 

You here a lot of talk touting anytime dinning on this board. Ever wondered why there is always a waiting list 6 to 10+ months out for 1st seating in the MDR?

 

Jack

Jack,

 

We always have done the traditional dining on all our previous cruises. We just wanted to try out AD this time around. Hope we won't be disappointed.

[monakayk]

Hi there. We went on the Sapphire last November, Thanksgiving week. If you are having anytime dinning I suggest you call for reservations for dinner at one of the resturants right away. We were with another couple and we never ate until after 8:30 at night. We learned to make reservations for the rest of the nights and stayed at one dinning room. We were in a balcony room on the Baja deck and it was great. Hope that helps.

Kathy

 

breezy,

 

So we should make the entire week's reservations on one night instead of each evening? I am sort of confused how that works. So if you could explain more fully that would be helpful.

[CL-JW]

The other thing about the Sapphire and Diamond, is they are about 10 feet wider than all the other Grand Class versions. You can really tell the difference on the pool decks and Promanade deck.

[breezyb45]

Mona K,

We found out after the first night that people could call the matre d and request a time for the AD of your choice. Each one serves the normal food with a little speciality due to their theme. We settled on the Savoy because the matre d there went out of his way. My suggestion is to make a reservation once you are settled and try it out and then try another one for another night. It worked for us, so good luck.

Kathy

[wizard-of-roz]

Mona: Your cabin has a good location....my suggestion is to decorate your door or door handle for easy recognition. You can buy some cheapy decorations, pack them in your suitcase and tape them to your door.....You won't believe how helpful it is when you're walking down those long hallways.

If it's your "B" Day or Anniv. Princess will put balloons over your door entry.

My DH goes "nuts" for the scones and cream at the Afternoon Tea. He also loves the pizza on Princess.

The Sapphire/Diamond are wonderful ships with an amazing staff.

The Princess Theatre fills-up very fast so, if you can, arrive early to scope out your seats. Also, the Princess Theatre does not have "bench" seating, they're all "movie-type" seats with a drink holder inside one of the arms. You pull it up and place it in front of you to hold your drink. A lot of folks don't like this. We like it!

Bring a highlighter to highlight the entertainment you want to go to and, try to be there at least 1/2 hour earlier. The seating in some of the lounges fills-up very quickly and if you plan well, you won't be disappointed.

I kind of like to fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants, when I'm on vacation.....but, cruise travel teaches you to plan ahead, a bit!!!! It just makes for a more enjoyable cruise holiday.

There's lots to do both during the day and night......if you look at the Patter and pick and choose what you really want to do and give yourself time to do it......you'll have a wonderful time!!!!

[lovevacadays]

Enjoy your cruise on the Sapphire. I've been on her four times as I live in Southern Cal so it's so easy especially when there is good pricing going on. I've never had much of a problem with anytime dining but have heard others who have. On embarkation day they only let you book that night but Sunday morning you can usually book the next three nights and then book the last few nights after that. (Unless they have changed that procedure since December).

 

I love the Mexican Riviera so hope you have a great experience there and hope you really enjoy the Sapphire.

[4cats4me]

You cannot make a standing reservation on the first night in Anytime Dining, ESPECIALLY on the Sapphire and Diamond. Have been on

Sapphire 3 times, with a 4th coming very soon and the Diamond Princess

twice. It is a little more challenging to get a dinner reservation on these

particular ships since the dining rooms are so very small. But it's only

challenging if you want to eat from 6:15 to 8:15. If you go before 6:00 or after 8:15, then it's usually not a problem to be seated.

 

IF you wish to make reservations, then you must call the DINE line upon

embarking the ship. I recommend doing this ASAP, and it's been my experience now on every single cruise that they will only let you make

standing reservations for the first 3 nights, and even then, you don't really

get much of a choice. It was always 6:20 or 8:20, or some such thing.

They will give you lots of different stories, i.e., to just show up and

that they reserve a certain amount of the dining rooms for walk-ins.

That's just not true, because if you try to just "show up" at the popular

times, you'll be waiting for quite a while on normal nights, and up to

1.5 hours on formal nights trying this method.

 

Therefore, the best thing would be to call DINE line immediately, get

reservations for the first 3 nights, and then on the 3rd night they let

you make reservations for the remainder of your cruise.

 

Although the Sapphire is my favorite ship, I have always hated the

4 smaller dining rooms and the problems trying to get in there to eat.

 

We once made friends with a maitre'd and he would just wave us in

and find us a table upon seeing us.

 

I really wish they wouldn't allow any reservations at all, and simply

have a first come first served approach since that seemed to work

best several years ago on the Star. Now it's a strange 50/50.... 50 percent

walk-ins and 50% reservations. To me it just doesn't flow.

[sewingmolly]

We were on the Sapphire for an Alaskan cruise. I like the layout of the ship better than the Grand, but perhaps not as much as the Emerald. The Sapphire seems about midway on the evolution of the Grand class ship.

 

We enjoyed the four dining rooms. They feel more like restaurants and less like a hotel banquet rooms. You have four chances of getting a table and the decor has more variation than on the other grand class ships. On our cruise one of the dining rooms was traditional for the first seating and then switched to anytime.

 

I didn't notice the ship was wider and I had forgotten that it doesn't have MUTS. Since it was an Alaskan cruise, we didn't spend much time by the pools.

 

Don't miss the Wake View bar that you can only get to from the staircase in Club Fusion. Many people never find it.

 

We really enjoyed the Sapphire and I hope you will too.

[monakayk]

Wizard and everyone else,

 

Thanks for all the great suggestions! So far this will be our 3rd Halloween cruise and we love them. I always decorate our door...as you can see with the photo below:

 

[monakayk]

Enjoy your cruise on the Sapphire. I've been on her four times as I live in Southern Cal so it's so easy especially when there is good pricing going on. I've never had much of a problem with anytime dining but have heard others who have. On embarkation day they only let you book that night but Sunday morning you can usually book the next three nights and then book the last few nights after that. (Unless they have changed that procedure since December).

 

I love the Mexican Riviera so hope you have a great experience there and hope you really enjoy the Sapphire.

 

choledmom,

 

Thanks for your suggestions.

 

:confused: BTW...since you have been on the MR cruise 4 times...do you have any suggestions which island has the best snorkeling? We went snorkeling on PV the last time we did the MR cruise. It was OK, but not sure if there would be better places to go.