cougaraz

5 minutes ago, judyjudy56 said:

Thank you for all the menu and food pics!  I have a question about tipping in club class.  If you tipped, did you tip separately to Giovanni and to each server?  I'm assuming you didn't have the same waiters at each meal.  We are so looking forward to being on the Grand October 13th!

Thanks,

Judy

Judy, obviously tipping is a very personal and sometime controversial decision.  For us, we chose to tip Giovanni and each of the servers.  We had different waiters at every meal, but over the course of ten days had a pretty even distribution among the team that was working in Club Class.

Dinner 16 August

Dinner Menu

Crab and Monterey Jack Quiche

Duck and Pork Rillettes

French Onion Soup

Birthday Celebrations

Lobster Tail with Baked Potato

Shrimp and Polenta

The Princess Chocolate Celebration Dessert

Bananas and Pineapple Flambe

New menu and signage for the Salty Dog.

Lunch 16 August

Calamari

Lamb Stew

Special Pasta with cream sauce and smoked salmon

Blueberry Roulade

Quick note, the blueberry roulade was an absolute smash hit, strong contender for best bite of the cruise!

Breakfast 16 August (Melissa's Birthday)

Daily Special Menu

Eggs Benedict

Mushroom and Cheese Omlete

Waiting for Axe throwing in the Princess Theater

Dinner 15 August

Dinner Menu

Mushroom Tart

Pasta with Tomato, Herbs and Shrimp

Chicken and Leek Pie

Club Class Special Shrimp

Dessert Menu

Souffle

Lunch August 15th

Lunch Menu

Split Pea Soup

Club Class Pasta (Tomato, Garlic, Chile and Herbs)

Rice Pudding

Okay everyone, thank you so much for your patience.  Hard to believe we have been home over a week.  I walked into the work buzz saw on Monday morning and it was a non-stop week for sure.  However, I promised more photos so here we go.

Breakfast from Thursday August 15th.

Breakfast Menu (The same everyday)

The special side of the Breakfast Menu (different everyday)

Mexican Omelet (made in the galley)

Ham and Cheese Omelet (made by Giovanni table-side)

18 minutes ago, Wishing on a star said:

I had posted to correct my comments....  but it must not have gone thru!

I meant 'green' slop with the lobster,  not 'great slop'.  (darn auto-correct????)

And, about the Green Goddess dressing,  Sounds the same as the fruit green tea, which is no longer, and is now like $3.00 or whatever, for nasty 'Kool-aid'.

There was no real dairy butter onboard on the Regal a year ago.  And it was hard to even find actual sugar to sweeten my tea.  

I about poisoned myself when I first boarded and put a packet in my tea, assuming that white meant sugar.

Took a while to figure out why I was feeling so bad....

Everything was so fake, over processed, over salted, and over cooked, that it really impacted the entire cruise.

 

Been sailing Princess since the 90s, just off the Grand, never seen a dinner table without real butter and sugar available at every meal and the buffet.  Watched the Grand onload her stores in San Francisco last week, lots of fresh produce, meat and raw ingredients. Perhaps your negative views would be of more value in a thread where folks weren't trying to be positive and talk about their favorite foods. 

12 minutes ago, Tickled2Trvl said:

Goat Cheese Souffle, they do still do this don't they????

They sure do and it is D E L I C I O U S!!!!!!!!!!!

I am sorry, but the question is so what?

Your wife was served undercooked chicken, recognized it, told waitstaff, they agreed and replaced the meal, I am assuming with apologies for the inconvenience. 

Why does it go any further than that? Every organization makes mistakes, nobody, not even NASA is perfect. Sounds like Princess acknowledged the problem and corrected it on the spot and the story should end there. 

Sure, I might have asked for a glass of wine to compensate me for my trouble, but after that, let it go. It was a mistake and no harm was done. 

As for your assertions that Princess doesn't care, they serve tens of thousands of meals per week, per ship, millions per year and their business is dependent on that service using good food safety practices. Across those millions of meals, there are bound to be mistakes, when they happen, an on the spot correction is made, an apology issued and life moves on.  However, given their profitability and loyal customer base, it does not appear that food poisoning their customers is a big, or even small, problem on Princess. 

Sure, they shouldn't have promised to contact you and not, but why did it ever elevate that far anyway?

Undercooked food identified, reported, acknowledged, food replaced, apology made, what time does the show start?

10 minutes ago, jbeth said:

were you able to find out if Giovanni will be still on the Grand in January

Remember: "Mr Frank" and Julie 

I am so sorry, I kept meaning to ask and I forgot to get it done.

We are just off 10 days on the Grand Princess and sailed 12 days on Queen Mary 2 in December and January.  I think that overall the food is fairly comparable.  We enjoyed some smash hits and few misses on both lines.  Generally speaking, the service on Cunard is more formal and less friendly.  That isn't a fault, it is by design.  However, we have found on both of Cunard cruises that the dining room staff is there to provide excellent service, not excellent conversation.  Cunard tends to employ fancier descriptions of their dishes, preferring a fair amount of French description as compared to a preference for simpler,  English based terminology on Princess.

Both lines offer a broad selection of entree choices in the main dining room, anywhere from 8-10 choices on any given night.  We found that while we strongly prefer sit-down service in the dining room, the buffets on both lines are also very good.  Queen Mary 2 does have a far superior physical buffet layout compared to the Princess Grand Class ships, but on par with what you would find on the new Royal Class ships. 

I do not think I could easily choose one or the other as superior or my personal favorite.  Rather, I would say that both offer excellent food, served by professional staffs in very pleasant surroundings.  Each individuals preferences and delights will vary depending on the menu, the day and their personal preferences.   I will say that if you are happy on either line, you are likely to find the other to also be pleasing.

Lots of branding to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Princess sailing to Alaska

Dinner 24 August

Wine

Crab Cake

Fettuccine Alfredo

Cucumber Yogurt Soup

Roasted Pork

Prime Rib (Very small cut) 😂

Flour-less Chocolate Cake

Dinner 24 August Menu

24 August Lunch

Avocado and Shrimp

Ravioli 

Salmon

Souffle

Cantaloupe Frozen Yogurt

Here is the embarkation day (Wednesday the 24th) menu for lunch in the Da Vinci dining room.  Also, when boarding we were handed the small card about stateroom availability and dining venues.

15 minutes ago, indygirl99 said:

Last time I looked Alaska was still part of the United States of America. AND they do have hospitals there so no need to transfer to a Canadian hospital. Plus their health insurance pays quite well for procedures in Canada hence the reason they have EDL.

The assumptions some people make are astonishing.

The closest hospital to Skagway is in Whitehorse, which is in Canada.  On the Grand Princess sailing three weeks ago a patient was airlifted off of the ship via a Canadian helicopter to a hospital in Canada.  On the most recent Grand Princess sailing, an ambulance was waiting for a passenger as soon as we arrived in Victoria to transfer a patient to a Canadian hospital.

It doesn't matter how good your health insurance is, if you have a broken leg, a broken arm or a heart attack and end up in a Canadian hospital without a passport, whether for a day, a week or a month, you will not be able to fly home until you get one.

Again, passports are cheap and easy to obtain.  Why take the risk?

Sunday, 25 August, Not on the Ship        

Well, loyal readers, eventually we had to reach this point.  The weather in San Diego this morning was very nice, temperatures in the mid-60s, climbing near 80 along the coast today with abundant sunshine!

Our disembarkation morning yesterday could not have gone any smoother.  We woke up very early, around 5ish, and were able to watch the ship sail under the Golden Gate Bridge.  We have been on several cruises out of San Francisco, but this was the first time we have actually gotten up to watch the inbound transit under the bridge.  It was still very dark, so we could just see the navigational lighting until we were pretty much under the bridge.

After a quick shower and putting on our travel clothes, we headed down for breakfast.  Breakfast for everyone had shifted to Botticelli on the final morning.  Based on what we observed in Da Vinci right at the very end of our last night’s dinner I surmise that this is to allow for an extensive deep cleaning of the dining rooms.  Just as we were walking out on Friday night, we were among the last in the dining room.  I observed that the waiters on the far side were taking the doors off of the service stations and were starting an extra thorough cleaning.  Given that lunch isn’t served in Botticelli on embarkation day, there is a solid window to conduct a similar effort there following breakfast.  It is difficult to measure based on one meal, but Botticelli may also be bigger than Da Vinci or Michelangelo.  Nevertheless, our usual Club Class team was waiting for us and swiftly seated us for breakfast.  We both opted for the James Beard French Toast, which was crispy on the outside and moist inside.  Unfortunately, it was also pretty greasy and as such sat VERY heavy in my stomach for the morning.  Given the opportunity to rewind the clock, I think I would have opted for a bowl of cereal and the smoked salmon a bagel, but no worries.  The room was in a surprisingly jovial mood and after eating, we said our goodbyes to the staff and waved to our fellow travelers.

We returned to our room to retrieve our bags and Jimmy had already been in and made up the bed for the next guests who were lucky enough to embark.  We made it down to the Vista Lounge, the designated Platinum Disembarkation Lounge, and found some seats just about 8AM.  By the time we arrived they had already called all of the walk-off disembarkation guests.  Announcements were frequent and informative and the disembarkation proceeded smoothly and ahead of schedule.  We had Red 2 tags, which indicated the early airport transfer group.  In fact, we had cancelled our transfer during the cruise, but the paperwork hadn’t quite caught up.  We were not fussed enough about it to make a change to our tags to early independent though.  We were called about 8:45 and proceeded out the port side doors from Vista, onto the Promenade and forward to disembark.  One last scan of our cruise cards and we were headed ashore.  After stepping off the gangway and into the terminal, we presented our passports for a very brief inspection and then headed down to the luggage hall.  Our bags were presented and nicely clustered for easy collection.  It was then a moderate walk through the terminal and out to the curb.  Honestly, it was a smooth and seamless operation.  Once at the curb, we found a taxi easily enough and were on our way with no waiting.

Our decision to forgo the transfer in lieu of a taxi was driven primarily by the fact that we depart on a Saturday morning.  We knew from experience that this would mean a reduced driving time to the San Francisco airport as compared to a weekday where substantially heavier traffic could be anticipated.  By 9:30 we were checking our bags at the airport.  The cost for 2 Princess transfers was $58 and our taxi ride to the airport (with a nice tip for helping with our bags) was $60.  For us, it was worth it, no waiting on anyone else, guaranteed to be the only stop at the airport and personal service the whole way.

We have been fortunate enough to have several very smooth disembarkation experiences including every time we have been in Brooklyn and some not so smooth days, Rio de Janiero, and yesterday was among the smoothest and easiest.  It is always very nice when things go smoothly and it certainly leaves a much more pleasant taste in your mouth about the cruise than when you really struggle and fight to get home.  Our flight was on time and we were at home on the couch with our loyal hound by a little after 2PM.  Soup to nuts, it was a great cruise and we had a wonderful time.

I will get busy posting pictures, probably will go chronologically, including all of the menus.  Video will take a little longer as this work week starts pretty aggressively and editing video is not a quick process.

Thanks for reading!

9 hours ago, indygirl99 said:

And again you have given incorrect or at least not complete information.

 

I crossed the boarder just today and did it WITHOUT a passport, passport card or NEXUS card. The border agent wished me a happy day and said he would see me in a few weeks.

 

I cross semi frequently both by car and by ferry and do it with my EDL, never have had any problems.

 

One of the ladies at church was complaining to me about how she read on Cruise Critic that they had to have a passport to cruise to Alaska only to find out when great grandma misplaced her passport and found out her EDL was acceptable at check in in Seattle that they were given miss information.

 

They had a family reunion on the Ruby and had 10 family members that paid for a company to do their expedited passport based on information from this site. 6 of those 10 family members are in their 70/80's and have no desire to travel abroad and have no need for a passport so they could have saved a good deal of money.

 

Now I know the OP was about the Caribbean cruises and I have no experience with that. I do know an EDL is good for Canada and Alaska unless you plan to fly to/from Canada.

Being in your 70s and 80s and traveling to Alaska without a passport is even riskier.  I can't imagine making that trip without a passport.  One slip, one trip and you have a broken bone, you are evacuated to a Canadian hospital and now stuck in the morass of administration required to get a passport so you can fly home to the United States. 

I simply do not understand the continued intransigence about getting a passport.  They are inexpensive, easy to obtain and should you find yourself in a foreign hospital and desperate to get home without one, you would be willing to pay 10 times what it costs to have one in your hand.  Or, should someone at home unexpectedly become ill or pass away and you wish to rush home to be at their bedside or funeral service, you will be out of luck, for not obtaining a passport that basically costs about $1 per month.

Saturday, 24 August, in port San Francisco

This morning weather conditions arriving in San Francisco were exactly what one would expect, low clouds, fog and cool conditions in the mid 50s.  We had little to no sea state as we slid quietly underneath the Golden Gate Bridge and made a smooth approach to our berthing location.

Yesterday was a perfect and very relaxing final sea day for this voyage.  Everyone cruises for different reasons and everyone has a different plan.  Some people want to maximize every minute and participate in every activity offered, some love to spend time outside, some like to nap, rest, recuperate and still others like a blend of all the above.  For us, relaxation and rest were high priorities.  We enjoyed another fantastic breakfast in the dining room with Giovanni cooking omelets to order, ham and cheese for Melissa and ham, cheese and mushroom for me.   Both were served with the usual side offerings and, of course, all the fresh pastries and coffee one could ever want.  After breakfast, we were out on the Promenade for a couple miles of walking.  We did well with walking on this cruise, each of us missed our 10,000 step goal just once and we had a high in the mid 18k range on Victoria day.  The sun was bright on the eastern facing (port) side of the ship and by the end of the walk, I was down to my shirt sleeves and wishing that I had some shorts. 

After our walk, we went to the culinary demonstration featuring our head chef Joel and Maitre d’ Joachim, along with the Cruise Director Steve were there.  In the end, the demonstration was short on culinary technique  and instruction and very long on humor.  There was a great rapport between Joel and Joachim and the result was really a comedy show about food.  The show went on much longer than any of the other culinary demonstrations we have been to, well over an hour.  However, it was fun and enjoyable.  At the end, they brought out a representative group from the front and back of house staffs and it was obvious the deep affection, respect and personal relationship that the big bosses had with even the lowliest staff onboard the ship.  I have spent my entire working life studying, practicing and being fascinated by leadership on ships at sea.  It is no exaggeration to say that the present leadership on Grand Princess is the best I have seen on any cruise and rival some of the finest teams that the US Navy has put together in the last two decades.  The ship was immaculate and getting better daily, the crew were friendly and engaged, the food and drinks were excellent and it was plain to see at every turn that was because senior officers, mid-level managers and front-line supervisors were engaged.  I saw countless moments of training and mentorship over 10 days and I can’t remember ever seeing more senior officers out and about on any ship.  When Joel and Joachim finished their routine, we had an opportunity to tour the galley.  I always love seeing the acres of clean stainless steel, gleaming in their anticipation of the work to come.

Of course, after a galley tour, one would be remiss if they didn’t take the opportunity to have some lunch in the dining room.  The lunch offering was tempting, I started with the bruschetta and then joined Melissa in trying Giovanni’s special lunch pasta.  He made penne with garlic, olive oil and shrimp.  He was a little heavy handed with the olive oil, but it was still delicious.  Melissa had a cheeseburger and I went with the Paella.  Given another chance, I would give the Paella a miss and go with something else.  It wasn’t bad, just a little pedestrian and forgettable.  What wasn’t forgettable was the dessert of a banana split featuring three flavors of homemade ice cream, real whipped cream and a fresh banana…can you say DELISH?!?!?

After lunch, we retired to our room for some reading time and a nap.  After obtaining a cup of coffee, we resigned ourselves to the unpleasant task of packing to depart.  Honestly, it wasn’t that arduous and we made quick work of it, probably no more than 30 minutes to complete the chore.  That gave us time to relax, change for dinner and then head to the Wheelhouse Bar for our traditional pre-dinner cocktail and Perrier.  It was a little bittersweet as we had another great set of cocktails and music, but had to say goodbye to some great staff.  Bon and Anthony are staying onboard, but it was the last night for Gladys before she heads home today.

Dinner was in the dining room with Arnold as our main waiter, assisted by Kamlesh.  As we were expecting, the service was fantastic and so was the food.  We don’t like to rush dinner, it is a great opportunity to savor the food, the wine, the atmosphere and the chance to spend time together.  There are plenty of cruisers that don’t prefer the dining room or that want a shorter experience, but for us, 2 hours over dinner is the highlight of the day.  For starters, I had the sweetbreads and Melissa had the seafood soup.  I love sweetbreads, they are so decadent and quite honestly I wouldn’t even know where to look for them on a menu back home.  The chef’s execution was right on and the puff pastry vessel they were served in was perfectly executed.  The pasta last night in Club Class was a farfalle mare e monti, seafood and mushrooms in a tomato-based sauce.  This is what I would refer to as graduate level pasta dining.  The flavors were strong, complex, rich and not for the faint of heart.  Honestly, it was super delicious, rich and intoxicating, but I can easily see how many people would not have preferred it.  For our mains, I opted for the pork belly and Melissa had the mussels.  Both were very nicely executed and little was left on the plates when we finished.  For our final dessert, neither of us could pass up the Baked Alaska accompanied by an Irish Coffee.  It was a fantastic way to close out our last dinner of the cruise.

After dinner, it was back to the room, into our PJs, bags out into the hall and then off to bed for us.  However, the good news is that there is still more to come.  I will be posting a summary of disembarkation, an overall review and lots of photos and videos.

I want to extend a special thanks to The Mikado for contributing and perhaps pioneering the idea of a collaborative “Live” with more than one poster!

We are sitting near our gate at SFO...couldn't have been a smoother morning. Will work on yesterday's summary momentarily. 

We are finishing our 10 day Alaska cruise in Club Class on Grand Princess today and it is hard for me to envision planning any future cruises without booking a Club Class mini. Your individual mileage may vary, but for us the dining room experience was nothing short of sublime. 

Stanley is ready to go.

Shhh, don't tell anyone, he is a blue card, but hanging out in the Platinum and Elite disembarkation lounge.