CyberVenus

Who’s on the ship today? Anyone see 5-Skies? I thought it was fantastic! ✨ I’ve always been pretty well impressed with Princess’ shows, especially considering the limited space, logistical challenges, and physical circumstances (unstable floor mainly as we’re at sea) of being on a cruise ship. worth noting I can’t give a good comparison to other cruise lines, I’ve heard good things about Royal Caribbean, especially the Oasis class, and Disney, with regards to their shows. But I haven’t actually seen them in person (or at all) to compare. also, anyone else see the guy being escorted back by a ship’s officer an hour after all-aboard time? 😂 people up on our deck and the adjacent Carnival Dream were cheering him on as he came down the pier 😂 Side note, I’ve decided one potential tech advancement Princess could use in their new app launching in January, a semi-public chat system for the entire ship. So onboard guests can anonymously chat with each other, instead of just with specific individuals. Probs have some preset collection of “channels” for different topics, and some sort of banned word filtering to keep it family friendly. But I think it’s a good idea.

So today, at Mahahual, Mexico / Costa Maya, Mexico I noted the Patter (which isn’t actually labeled “Princess Patter” anywhere anymore, and is now shrunk down to just one single double-sided page) did indicate the Wake View Bar, behind the buffet at the back of the ship, opened at 6:00 AM. Which helps the early morning drink desires, but I’m confused why today is 6:00 AM, when it’s been 7:00 AM up until now on this cruise. Wonder if it’s possible the Patter just has a mistyped time on it, there’s other bits that are misspelled. The schedule on the stateroom TVs matches, so either they get times from the same system automatically or it’s not a mistake. Hm…

The idea of keeping a couple cans in the cabin makes sense, I’ll be doing that from here on, but I did like knowing there was a 24 hour bar available for that sort of thing at the early hours. I guess I don’t recall specifically the others, I’ve only been on Princess and Norwegian and Carnival, of which Carnival was incredibly subpar (but it was also a much older ship, which apparently means it’s also where the new staff most often do training before moving to newer, bigger ships). Princess is by far superior in my opinion, Norwegian I think had more kid oriented aspects, better for a family with kids probably, but as that’s not me or anyone in my immediate family, Princess is my preference usually. Though I am thinking I want to try Royal Caribbean next time.

That sort of plays into my thoughts that the only reason it’s there is because either (or both) someone was lazy and couldn’t be bothered to redesign the layout, instead just copying the past couple of ships when building it, or because the restaurant being there at all was sort of an afterthought, like someone thought “how can we generate a bit more revenue in the same space” so they squished another restaurant in. It’s clearly not a restaurant designed area, it feels kind of weird being there, that and Alfredo’s, just really doesn’t feel like it should be a restaurant space. Maybe a corner counter that serves food and there’s a lounge space where guests can sit, but a full table-service restaurant feels out of place in my opinion.

That guy directed me back to the bar behind the buffet upstairs, who then went and got a drink, I guess he took pity on me at that point as it had been my third stop at that bar on my “search for soda in the Sky”.

Yes, that is one of the places I checked, they don’t do soda apparently. Which seems odd, but I guess if they don’t have the stuff for it right there then they can’t do it. unfortunately the reason for checking there was because I was directed to by someone at a bar. It does seem like not many staff anywhere know much about how things work outside of their little area. At least not those people, some of the higher staff may, and it’s possible there are some issues with understanding due to language differences, but that’s the impression I’m under, just that not very many people are actually fully aware of everything beyond their space.

I will say, I’m enjoying the entertainment and activities. So, while there are some things minority bothersome compared to past experiences, overall I’m enjoying things and so is the rest of the group, so while I am disappointed with some aspects compared to the other cruises I’ve gone on, it is nice to finally get back to a cruise after several years without.

So I’ve noticed some additional things, unfortunately I have to say they’re both a minor degradation of the overall experience. despite additional restaurants, it seems no place has drinks anywhere until the bars open at 7:00 AM. So, not looking for alcohol that early, but soda isn’t available anywhere either. After being directed around to various parts of the ship and then being eventually told the only way to get soda before the bars open is to essentially order room service, which I can do to any place on the ship, but having to pay for that seems like it makes the “soda package” sort of useless during certain times of the day. In the past on the Regal and Royal Princess the bar located at the back of the ship behind the buffet, I forget what the bar was called, was open 24 hours so the early morning soda was easily accessible. After being directed by different staff around to different locations and ending up at that bar 3 times, the bartender there did eventually go grab one, guess he felt bad for the literal runaround of the ship in search of a soda. also, the motion activated lights that can’t be completely turned off, in the staterooms, is really bothersome getting up in the middle of night. The bedside table lights are low to the floor and easy to block, but the light on the ceiling near the bathroom is bothersome. I’ve tried sticking different things to cover the sensor, but everything I stick up there keeps falling off.

So I just got on the Sky Princess today, having previously been on the Royal and Regal Princess, with a similar design, I must say this one feels much more… like a lot of spaces were an afterthought. Like they copied the layout of the other ships for the decks, and then decided what to actually put in the spaces. Especially the extra dining areas around the plaza space on decks 5-7. It seems like they took what was otherwise a sort of lounge space and squished a restaurant in. Multiple times. It feels a little disappointing honestly, just because it seems like the design wasn’t thought out all the way, like they got lazy and copied the deck plans, but wanted to fit in more places for people to spend money so they put more restaurants in to places that aren’t designed for restaurants. also,it’s been several years (since pre-COVID) since my last cruise. But I swear the full digital photo set was like $150 or something before, now it’s $170 for 10 photos… what if I have more? Seems I could get unlimited photos before for less, and that was when a human had to scan them, and put them on a flash drive, now it’s all automated with facial recognition and I download them in the app, no paid humans involved, should be cheaper now in my opinion since it’s more automated, isn’t that the general idea behind automating things? Cheaper for them, so cheaper for me too? Also, I seem to recall I used to have access to Apple services without paying for internet, so I could use iMessage to communicate among my group, also access the App Store, Apple Music, email, iCloud, etc… none of that works now, although weirdly I can still go to Apple’s website without paying. I always thought that a nice perk of the “MedallionNet” service. I had always intended on paying for one device, and obviously I did since I’m posting here, but was hoping to not pay for everyone in my 5 member group, especially since that’s one device past the 4 device package… it sits in that weird middle area of “I don’t need this enough to pay for it” but also “not having this is highly inconvenient” so it honestly degrades the experience somewhat since there’s no way for the 5 of us to communicate. the Princess app’s “chat” feature is basically useless since you have to manually open the app and navigate through the app to the conversations list to see if there are unread messages, no notifications or even anything on the front “home” page of the app, so… that’s not useful, being able to locate everyone seems to work well, much better than the last cruise if I remember correctly, but it’s not a substitute for actually chatting. Maybe it wouldn’t matter if I hadn’t been assuming it would be the same as before, but going in to the cruise, I was expecting we would all be able to chat from anywhere on the ship without an issue. also some people are having issues with the app, which I was able to resolve once by reinstalling the app, but now I can’t do that since we left port, unless I want to pay for internet access, because the App Store seems unavailable. I’m also not sure how I could register a device for access without the app on that device, but I assume there’s some way to do that… also, as someone who doesn’t use it, I was a bit pleased to see the casino on the Royal and Regal Princess was smaller, not an enormous section of the deck like the older ships, but this ship it’s bigger… not as big as before, but still bigger. Also, I’m thinking this ship was originally designed for a European market primarily, I seem to recall the Regal and Royal Princess each had more US standard power outlets in the room, this ship has 2, plus one in the bathroom, for a standard interior room anyways. I could be mistaken about the other ships, and luckily someone else in the group thought to bring a power strip, so that’s helpful. And I guess I can’t fault them for this, because most hotels still do this too, but the lamps have USB-A ports, and literally all of my Apple products, all the things they make for a couple years now, come with USB-C chargers, so the USB-A ports on the lamps are not helpful, I don’t keep up with it that well, but I imagine non-Apple products mostly come with USB-C chargers too. Feels like it’s time for an upgrade, but also they probably sell USB-A charging cables in one of the shops, so… revenue source… luckily I brought one USB-A cable to use in a rental car on an earlier portion of this trip, so it’s not entirely wasted, just the same, it’s disappointing to see, same as any new cars I see with it, like, new car, but literally none of my devices for a few years now can plug into it, so it’s brand new and also outdated. all that in mind, I acknowledge the ship launched in 2019 so some of my issues with the USB ports were not really a thing back then, especially if we figure they probably bought the tables with the lamps earlier in the construction phase, but the overall design seems more focused on squeezing money out of people and generally not as nicely designed with the layout seeming a bit like an afterthought, or just someone got lazy and couldn’t be bothered to redo the actual deck plan and just repurposed some spaces from the last couple of ships. I do like that the design isn’t an exact replica, the Regal Princess and the Royal Princess did feel like clones, even the artwork in the stairs and the hallways was identical and in identical positions, which disappointed me a bit because that means they’re also not original art pieces, at least they can’t both be since they had identical artwork. The Sky Princess here has new artwork at least, and my brief looking today I do like the way the shops are layed out, and so far I’m liking the Princess Live space being more of an open lounge area, rather than the closed in actual television theater space it was on the other two ships, mostly because it’s more accommodating for our 6 person group, one of whom is a child just over a year old. so, mixed feelings about the cruise so far, I’ll admit I was very into cruising before and was going regularly once or twice a year for 9 or 10 days at a time, while this cruise doesn’t turn me away from it, it isn’t impressing me enough to make me want to get back into it that regularly. Noting I stopped going regularly partially because of COVID but also because I moved to Iowa from South Carolina, so now I have to fly to the cruise not just drive 8 hours, so that makes it somewhat more expensive to go.