Hello! We are currently on the Caribbean Princess doing a back-to-back Eastern/Western Caribbean Cruise - We had booked a similar itinerary on the Sky Princess for March 2020 that was cancelled due to Covid two days before we were to set sail. We are finally taking that cruise! We have taken quite a few Princess Cruises - We are platinum members - almost elite - and we have cruised on other lines as well so we are somewhat experienced when it comes to cruising …
in anticipation of this cruise I started watching YouTube videos - my there are a lot of talented people out there giving us all advice - Thank you to all of those folks!
it seemed the consensus - at least from the people whose videos I watched - was that the Sanctuary was well worth the extra cost. Soooo … on embarkation day, my husband and I raced up to the Sanctuary as soon as we boarded the ship so that we could make our reservations. We were #20 and we were in the first boarding group so we were surprised so many people beat us here. Anyways, as we waited for our number to be called the person who appeared to be in charge announced that all of the lounge chairs had already been sold out for the sea days. We were then informed that they had some clam shells left - not our first choice as we love the sun and were hoping for loungers on the deck in the sunshine, but we decided to give the clam shells a try.
Today, our first sea day, we went to the Sanctuary at 1:00 pm. There were still people in the clamshell we had reserved and we were asked to wait a few minutes. At about 1:05, we were shown to our clamshell. Shortly thereafter we were handed a menu and our lunch order was taken. We each ordered a bento box and a drink. At about 2 pm we finally received our drinks - We had seriously considered ordering drinks through the medallion class app by that point. We still waited quite some time for our Bento Boxes, which were very tasty when they finally did arrive. But by that point, we were really thinking the upcharge is not worth it. No one came to ask if we wanted anything else so we did end up ordering drinks on the app and they arrived promptly, which was pretty impressive. Again we thought the Sanctuary really is not worth it. But as I started writing this, it was afternoon tea time - (I had forgotten that was served in the Sanctuary) We had a very attentive server who offered sandwiches, pastries, tea and coffee. It was very nice.
We have the Sanctuary booked already for our next sea day as well - Are we excited about that? I would have to say no. We were not able to reserve the lounge chairs we would have much preferred to the clam shells and really the service has not been what we expected.