Croptop

The Black & Blue Onion Soup at the Crown Grill.

Wow! I've never seen a trip report get started 3 months in advance. This ought to be epic and you can bet I'll be following along.

@gottagocit Thanks for posting your thoughts about your time on the Coral. I'll be sailing on the Coral in 2021 (Buenos Aires to Ft. Lauderdale) so I've started my year long devouring of any info about Coral that I can find.

As posted in a separate thread: http://crew-center.com/diamond-princess-crew-get-two-months-paid-time Princess appears to be taking care of their crew as well as their passengers.

Solid response, Princess. Bravo. I'm happy to read that the crew will be looked after and, indeed, rewarded for their work above and beyond the normal call of duty.

No Art Auction!? I thought those were mandatory every 2 days. In all seriousness, having just finished a cruise on the Regal in an interior, I can't imagine how or where I'd have been able to do calisthenics in my stateroom. But kudos to Princess and the crew of the Diamond for doing their utmost to provide for the passengers.

The specialty restaurants don't serve lunch with the exception of Alfredo's. Alfredo's is open every day for lunch regardless of whether you are in port or at sea. Reservations aren't required and there's no cover charge.

Update as of 07:40: They just announced in the Platinum/Elite disembarkation lounge that *all* colours are cleared for disembarkation. I don't know if that applies to all passengers or just to the Platinum/Elite passengers that get priority disembarkation. But regardless, they are getting us off of the ship fast! I'm going to drop offline now and get my fat arse off of the ship. Then I just have to figure out how to kill 14 hours before my flight home. To everyone boarding the Regal today: have a great cruise. I'll be following your thread. Bon voyage.

For those of you planning to come to the port early, disembarkation appears to be going quite quickly. They just called some colour groups that, according to the schedule, are slated to disembark at around 08:00 and it's only 07:10.

When I boarded on 19 January we got into the terminal around 10:00 and were onto the ship around 10:30 or so. However, the ship was just out of wet dock so they didn't have any departing passengers to get rid of first. My disembarkation time is around 9:00 this morning. If things go as usual, though, I expect that they'll start calling us earlier than that though. I had a bunch of OBC left so I "splurged" on a Princess transfer to FLL -- overpaying with Princess' money is better than getting a deal on an Uber with my own money. So if you spot a sad looking dude in tan pants getting on the last bus out of the port, wave. That'll be me. Off to the dining room for one last breakfast. On that note, if you're in the Anytime dining room, sit in Jeffrey C's section. He is a great waiter is quick to figure out what you like and don't like. I had breakfast (and most lunches) in his section and by the end of the cruise he was pretty much telling me what I was having. I'm going to miss the pampering.

I'm sitting in the Regal's piazza having a coffee from the IC on the last day of my two week cruise. I have a very late departure from FLL tonight so I'm scheduled to be one of the last ones off of this ship this morning. So I'm going to pretend that I'm on this sailing for just one day. 😞 Everything on this cruise was fantastic. I don't want to go home now.

I didn't get an invite to the PES lounge on last week's cruise on the Regal but I did get one this week. Same cabin, same steward. Weird.

Glad I could help. Have a great cruise next week.

Just went through all of my Patters for last week's portion of my cruise and didn't find any mention of the Crab Shack whatsoever. I asked one of the managers up in the Horizon Court and she said it was on the night that we were in St. Maartin (which was Thursday). In this week's patters, the Crab Shack is listed on Wednesday night (the night that we were in Jamaica). Hope this helps.

Casino is midships, deck 6 on the Regal so you'd probably be OK meeting there. Another suggestion would be Club 6 (which is also midship on Deck 6). I've been hanging out in Club 6 quite a bit over the last two weeks and most of the time, it's empty. On days when you have to tender ashore, they sometimes use Club 6 as the place for Elite/Suite passengers to go get their priority tender tickets but even then, the club has remained largely empty. Down on deck 5, the seating area by Vines (on the opposite side of the ship from the International Cafe) also tends to remain unoccupied. If you want your group to meet in an area that's completely out of the way, you could have them meet in the Vista Lounge which is deck 7 aft. In the mornings, there's usually nothing going on in there. Lastly, just a bit forward from the Vista lounge is a lounge area just outside of the Crown Grill. That might be a reasonable spot to meet as well (although there will be a steady flow of foot traffic walking past that lounge area -- especially during the hours that the masses are heading ashore.