Ugarte

Who knew that the reverberation of an anchor repeatedly slamming into the port side of a cruise ship would sound just like the strike of an orchestral timpani in C, and that the concordant slam of its mirror on the starboard side would be a perfect major third lower in pitch. Never a dull moment on the Sky Princess.

I've also had the creaking problem in my cabin. It's more like a loud snapping; like someone dropping a marble on to a glass table top every 3 or 4 seconds. I'm very glad I brought my silicone earplugs. I'll try leaving the balcony door ajar with a dinner roll tucked into the corner by the closet for any avian quest who may call. Pilot strikes, dropped ports, 20 hour delays for medical evacuation, and a tropical depression brewing in the Caribbean. Not bad so far for a first cruise.

With a tropical depression currently brewing in the southern Caribbean and moving north as it strengths, the dodgy loss of the Azores may be just the tip of the proverbial iceburg.

My uneducated guess is that Princess, as a business model, has decided to deal, in part, with the inevitable disappointed generated by the unmet expectations of 4000 odd guests due to overcrowding and scarce-by-design resources in two ways: 1. Implement the compulsory use of a dining reservation app that is unreliable and inadequate and designed to thwart the attempts of its guests to the end that the quest can now be blamed for his or her own dissatisfaction and not the Company (you, guest, failed to understand the functionalities and limitations of our app and are therefore to blame for the absence of reservations and not Princess Cruises), and 2. Generate a stream of revenue over and above the base fare by offering onboard products and services design to alleviate the anxiety generated in tactic number 1 (Reserve Dining, The Sanctuary, Specialty and Casual Dining, the dozens of other things that require an additional fee). Both the disease and its cure, so to speak. Dis-satisfaction in a seller's market is the way to maximize profits, not satisfaction. But this is all conjecture, I admit. As I sail shortly on the my first cruise onboard a Princess ship I look forward to the lived experience required to report back candidly and honestly and ruthlessly.

Thanks very much for the warning. I'm on the TA leaving Southampton on 10 November and have struggled to place a private table reservation on the Sky in any MDR at a reasonable time. The earliest same time every day private table reservation in any Main Dining Room was 8:30pm. The earliest individual reservation in any Main Dining Room for a private table is 5:30pm (2 nights), 7:10pm (1 night), 7:30pm (4 nights), 7:50pm (5 nights), 8:10pm (2 nights), 8:30pm (1 night), and I just now read that I should be prepared to wait even with a confirmed reservation! I chose this particular ship and itinerary because as I had always wanted to cross an ocean on a ship and had read that repositioning cruises were in many ways undesirable and therefore generally uncrowded. It looks as though Princess has found a way to force me to sail whilst hungry, angry, and standing up.