gnatz007

In Fuerte Amador did you have to tender in?  Or did you use the new cruise terminal and pier?

Just out of curiosity, are they repeating menu's every 7 days?  Or do they mix up for you?

2 hours ago, atobols said:

We're planning for our 10-day Alaskan cruise in a couple of months.  My kids are platinum level but they're staying in their grandmother's cabin, she's gold level.  My husband and I are also platinum and in our own cabin.  Will Grandma be able to join us at any platinum/elite events or in the lounge for embarkation/disembarkation?  

We never had a problem taking our kids who are Ruby.  But we rarely attended.  We did take our kids with us for Embarkation and they never said anything.

I have sent 4 emails to shoreexcursions@princesscruises.com since mid December, trying to get a price match for an excursion on our April 2nd cruise and have not received any responses.    We have tried calling our cruise rep at princess.   Nothing seems to work.   Wondering what others experience has been recently.  Super frustrating that we can't get an answer anywhere.

Thanks!

Just off the Sunshine Sunday.  My son and I did the "behind the fun tour" on Saturday (last sea day) and the "listing" issue came up while we were in the engine control room.  The engineer that was presenting was obviously embarrassed that the question came up (you could tell, they were very proud of their jobs, and this was not a proud moment for them).  He was emphatic that it was NOT due to the stabilizers, and when nudged as to the 'why', he immediately said that it was under current investigation by those outside of Carnival, and they were not allowed to say anything more.  It was a little humorous that every engineer knew the exact date, time, etc.   The engineer that was speaking was also on watch that night, and you could tell it personally affected him.

No other information than that was given, nor do I expect anything to be said, unless they allow information after the investigation is completed.

As a side note... everything went flawless on our cruise... with the exception of the Melting Cake being overly cooked (more like a brownie).  The food was for the most part very good, the crew was outstanding, we especially liked Mikey, and the time we spent on the bridge with the Captain, who was cordial, funny, and very engaging and we didn't feel particularly rushed to leave.  I even snuck some time chatting with the officer on the watch who was very informative about what their time on the bridge is like and then also took a sit in the Captains chair...

Thanks Cwwayne!  we are long time princess cruisers, and taking the sunshine on the 10th of November as our 2nd carnival cruise.  Curious where your room was located?  And do you have a simple list of things you didn't like about the ship?  is it in comparison with other ships you have been on?

Thanks!

I think the first embarking is this afternoon.  would be cool if someone did a live video this afternoon 😉  We board the Nov 10th sailing, so interested to know of any changes / condition.

Port Canaveral map shows she berthed last night at port.

Following. We will be on her November 2.

Take care of her... We will be on the Nov 10th.

Thanks for the review! We will be on the Sunshine a couple of weeks after the dry dock (Nov 10). Hopefully they will replace all the carpet, and she will look more new-ish.

Quick question, how do request Self Debarkation? We don't need assistance and will be looking for a quicker exit to drive over to Kennedy Space center. For my 15 year old space freak, that will be one of the highlights for his trip.

We rented snorkel gear just outside Paradise, close to Bananarama

We were on the Victors "Private" tour, so we were on our own to do what we wanted. We stayed for about 20-30 mins because we were all pretty excited to hit the beach.

We just got back from our cruise and we used VB while in Roatan. it was BY FAR our favorite stop of the trip. The monkeys were a highlight of the trip! they have a small gift shop, but no other shopping near by. If she doesn't want be with the monkeys she can just watch outside the cage. They really are cool just to sit and watch. My wife wasn't excited about going in at first, but warmed up quickly to them. You also get to hang out with their birds, and they now have two sloths that were awesome also.

At first we were nervous about using VB, only because we had our 2 kids with us, and we didn't want to risk getting back to the ship on time etc. But we would use him again in a heartbeat and can't say enough good about their service. Our driver was "humor" (sp?) and he was awesome! Our kids absolutely loved him. We had mentioned we loved mangoes and he pulled over at his favorite fruit stand and picked us up a fresh mango. While we were with the monkeys he went and washed and prepared the mango, and had it there for us when we were done. It was awesome!

Good review. You need to get to work and finish it before tomorrow night ;) We board Sunday!

Thanks!

We are on the sailing after yours... take care of her for us, and wave as you get off and we get on.

Thanks all! Great suggestions, and much appreciated!

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Thanks all. I think we will try and have the taxi / lyft / uber drop by Publix and snag sunscreen there. I will be glad to take pictures of the Crown. We were on the Ruby in July for an Alaska cruise and I think they are identical.

Going on the Crown Princess April 2 and we are planning on just taking carryon's. We can get away traveling pretty lite especially on a 6 day cruise with only 1 formal night. Had a question maybe someone can answer.

I sunburn pretty rapidly, so I bathe in sunscreen before I leave the room ;). What do other carry on travelers do for sunscreen? I want to take a bigger amount than I can travel on an airplane. Do you stop in at Publix / another grocery store (incurring the extra taxi / uber wait time), buy in the airport, buy on the ship?

Any other lite travel tips?

Also debating doing another review... but can't decide since the Crown takes off for Europe I believe after our cruise and don't know how much information will still be relevant or wanted... you guys decide...

We did it for the Belize river rafting tour. They were quick and painless about it.

Can't wait for the rest! We board the crown in April.

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I see why you didn't like your cabin. R4 is at the BOW of the ship, not the AFT, so you were probably in the wrong cabin for the whole cruise! :eek:

Seriously, I've had those BOW cabins in the past, and they are NOISY!

 

"SKY"

haha I just meant the level... we were in R244

And despite the things we didn't care for, we still had a great time. Anytime on the water, with 80 deg temps when its 15 at home, is a great time! We loved swimming with the Stingrays (a first for us) and Paradise Beach on Cozumel. The other passengers were very friendly, we had great table mates, and those that we met around the ship were fun, easy to get along with, and had a great time with them.

For us, we were just use to a higher level of service on a ship that we were hoping would be on this ship.

Can you say more about "horrible in design and the way people move around". I find that class ship easy to navigate.

 

She is old and in need of a refurb worse than anything. Had a terrible room steward once on her. I swear my ccabin was his last every day even when I asked for early as I was staying on the ship in GC. "Sure, you'll be first." By noon it still wasn't done and I had no ice except for what I got on Lido.

The morning that we tried to go to the elation dining room for brunch we were on the wrong side. In order to get to the right side, we had to go up one floor, over past the atrium to the middle stair wells, down one floor, back past the atrium to get to the correct entry doors. That was just kind of weird.

In the "USA" lounge, they always had a guitar player that was really quite good. But there was no place to sit to watch and listen to him, other than the couple of bar chairs, and the one or two chairs close by. He was rather popular, so people ended up standing in the walkway because there was no other place to stand, creating a traffic jam when you are trying to just get down the hall.

The lines for the grill and the wok both created traffic jams when you were trying to get back and forth from the lido buffets to the swimming pool.

Sure, after a little bit (I suppose like all ships) you got used to the layout of the ship, and you knew which stair wells ended at floors that you wished they went higher, etc (IE the horrible middle stairwell problem on the Royal Princess, etc) but to me they are design flaws, not something you should have to get used to.

We are also non-smokers, and it seemed Carnival wants you to have to walk by the areas where smoking is permitted (all-though they weren't enforcing any smoking areas at all it seemed... smoking was everywhere, especially vaping)

As a side note... we were not fans of the dancing and singing during dinner. I thought it lessens the experience. The other dining mates of ours that were seasoned carnival cruisers (18+ cruises) didn't like it either. When our waitstaff would walk by, they were not having fun, and it lengthened our dining experience 15-20 mins, more often than not making us rush out from dessert to try and grab a show.

So I wasn't sure if it was even worth posting a review of our recent Paradise cruise (Dec 10-15) but then figured why not, maybe it would benefit someone else.

Up to this point we have only cruised on Princess. We are now Platinum with them, so while we are not seasoned cruisers like many, we aren't complete noobs either. For us, this cruise was one of convenience. I was attending a tech conference in Clearwater, and this cruise was leaving Tampa just as the conference was ending, making it an easy decision to jump on, especially considering the very low price. (I should have reminded myself, you always get what you pay for)

Rather than do a bunch of yammering I'll just list some of the things we found that were positive, some things that we think could have changed, and some things that were just downright bad.

Positive

+ Social Internet. This was fantastic. $18 for the whole week to get facebook, instagram, etc, we loved this. Not that we are huge social networking people, but it allowed us to use Facebook messenger and keep in contact with our kids and post a couple of pictures.. Princess you need to learn from Carnival here! Princess Internet is terribly expensive. This was reasonable and a great service.

+ The Grill. I loved the hamburgers and thought they were fantastic. Right in line with what I would have wanted and expected.

+ Lemonade and the ice cream machine... Mix those two together for an awesome redneck shake and we were in heaven around the hot deck.

+ Chocolate Melting Cake! Other than the Princess Pistachio Dome, this has to be a close second to my favorite all time dessert. Fantastic. I had it every night... see comments below...

Not totally awesome

- The flow of the ship. This ship is horrible in its design and how people move about.

- I was surprised with how bored the crew seemed. Our room steward didn't ever call us by name, nor did the MDR wait staff. They were just going through the paces. I used both of their names.

- The MDR food was decent, but the menu was boring. I wish they had more options.

- the MDR dessert menu was the same. Very unimpressive. I ordered the chocolate melting cake every night because there just weren't any other options that sounded decent, and the menu didn't change from night to night other than maybe one item.

Downright bad

- When we get to our room, we always do a wipe down of the switches, remote, bathroom, etc, just to make sure its clean. When we both looked at our wipes they were BLACK. Its like the room had never been cleaned before. It was disgusting!

- We were in the absolute worse room on R4 at the back of the ship. We know we know, this was our fault for letting them pick the room for us, etc. The noise is pretty bad. We slept through it fine, UNTIL the last night. from 12:30 am until we docked around 7:00 am right below us sounded like a smash up derby. I think they were moving luggage carts around and not being too gentle about it. Whatever you do, do not pick or use a room on R4 towards the aft.

- speaking of noises... where the wall and the ceiling met, there was a terrible creak the first night. I used a washcloth to jam into the crease and that stopped the creaking. I showed our steward, the problem and the fix, and it was obvious that he knew about it, as he laughed and just said "good fix".

- Twice at the MDR, the table cloth was soiled. like someone spilled soy sauce on the table cloth and they decided to use it anyway. We were first seating, so it wasn't like someone had used it before us. they set the table that way!

- We went to brunch one morning and the service was horrible. Slow, bringing us the wrong items, etc. Other sitting close by were really upset about it (they were carnival frequent cruisers). it probably took close to 2 hours for the whole process.

I know this is one of their oldest ships, and we shouldn't judge carnival based on this ship, but its hard to get excited about ever booking with Carnival again.

Just my random thoughts...

We just got back from Cozumel two days ago, and went to Paradise Beach. The Taxi fair is posted on a sign right as you exit the port area. It was $15 each way. We loved it. Not crowded, excellent staff, and alot to do for not much money.

Thanks. We have a pretty full day planned on GC but our daughter will be pretty upset if we don't get her an ornament.

We just got back two days ago, and like others have said, you will have zero problems finding ornaments just inside the tender area. A short walk out of the gates will give you even more options for finding them.