HomelessBear

I went to be nosy and find out how folks access the Cabana deck space, and there's a door at the end of the cabana cabins on deck 9 with a pad on the wall, which presumably opens with the appropriate medallion.

Glad it wasn't just us experiencing this then! Yep you look familiar 😊

We were on Sun P for it's 2nd cruise 9th March. I'll do a full review when I get the time, but thought I'd mention a few issues we had with Reserve Dining. According to Princess: Reserve Collection Dining* is an exclusive dining area featuring expedited seating with no wait or reservations required. It also features additional menu options, dedicated waitstaff and unique-styled decor. Not on Sun Princess! On our 10 night cruise, we had a few minutes wait just twice. Wait times were usually 10-20 minutes, but we also had a number of evenings with a 30 minute wait. The worst one was a wait of 40 minutes! We went at different times but it made little difference. Also discovered that those in Reserve dining had LESS choices than the main dining room, especially for the main course. Fettucine alfredo (a favourite of lots of us) is also not available (but was in the main dining room). As the menus were on the TV, I compared them daily and felt a bit annoyed and short changed if I'm honest. The new Reserve dining room has its own kitchen, which is much smaller than the main dining room kitchen, hence the limited dishes available apparently. The staff had only been working together for a few weeks, and clearly hadn't got team working or themselves into a routine. They were also using a new hand held computer system for ordering, which some appeared to be struggling with, as many resorted back to trusty pen and paper. There clearly weren't enough staff and dinner took around 2 hours most evenings, and that didn't include the wait time to get in. Only occasionally did the waiter introduce themselves or give us menu recommendations, and on one particularly busy evening, they completely forgot one course of the menu, then brought it when we were having the main meal! We were often told on arrival that there were "no tables available" when we could see ones set up and not being used. This was probably due to a lack of staff to service them, as I noticed that they kept us waiting then filled up a number of tables in the same section, so that the wait staff could do a number of orders at the same time. I can understand then doing that, but it's not what I've experienced in Reserve / Club Class dining on other cruises. I totally appreciate that it takes time for staff to develop working together and its a new way of working on this ship, but there were a lot of disgruntled passengers who weren't getting from Princess what they'd signed up for..ie. no wait. We tried to be chilled and 'go with the flow', but must admit that it got a bit wearing not knowing what the dining experience was going to be like that day and how long we'd have to wait. Twice I was told they "don't have" decaf coffee or tea, often told they didn't have something that I'd had from the same breakfast menu many times before and regularly waited over 30 minutes between courses, which starts to irritate after a while. It was also a regular event that once the diners had left, the tables were not cleared. We often sat (as did many others) near to tables with dirty crockery, glasses and napkins. It was only after one man had some choice words with the restaurant manager that something was done for the next few evenimgs, and staff were brought in to clear tables, the left again. Few days later it was back to sitting by used tables. I'm so sorry to sound negative and I tried my best to keep up beat, but it just got me down after a while. We've had great experiences before with Reserve / CC dining and were looking forward to the Sun Princess. Hopefully with time, they'll get into the swing of things and it'll be a much better experience.

Hello. Got back from Sun Princess on Tuesday and had reserve mini suite on deck 12. Bed was near the door and sofa by the window. When in bed, you can't see the window at all, as the bed in set back and the wardrobe is between the bed and sofa. There's a kettle and tea / coffee. Balcony is small and chairs are not what you'd want to sit on for any length of time...short back and hard. Hope this helps.