Debrief: 8 lovely days on Crown Princess (12/1-12/9/17)

I just disembarked yesterday from a very lovely 8 night Southern Caribbean cruise on Crown Princess with my wife. I don't plan to do a comprehensive review, but here's a quick run-down:

Food: Nothing to complain about here. Aside from one or two things tasting a bit stale toward the end of the cruise (hard to avoid when you're at sea) the food was generally quite good. The only real misses were the Curtis Stone dishes in the MDR, but I think that subject's been done to death here. We ate most of our meals in the MDR and mostly shared tables. In general our fellow passengers were good company, although there was one particularly demanding lady in the MDR at dinner one night (you could tell she was the "never satisfied with anything" type) that we mostly ignored.

Weather: Pretty good. Got rained on briefly a couple of times in the ports and our plans for the day in Fort Lauderdale after disembarking were rained out, but the crossing between FLL and the ABC Islands has been rather choppy the last couple of times I've done it. This time it wasn't bad at all, and the last sea day was one of the calmest I've seen on a cruise.

Activities: We made it to a number of the production shows on the cruise, and those were about what you would expect from Princess (my wife was particularly impressed with the soprano from the opera\theater themed show.) As usual, the theater filled up fast and we generally had to go 30-45 minutes ahead of time to get seats to the early performance. My dubious accomplishment for the cruise was winning a trivia prize for being only the second person in three years to know the answer to a particularly difficult trivia question.

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Itinerary: The main reason we chose this cruise was for the itinerary, which visited all three of the ABC islands. I particularly looked forward to the opportunity to visit Curacao again, as I enjoyed it the first time I went. The specific ports we visited:

• Curacao: Here we took a bus over to Mambo Beach, where we visited the aquarium and spent several hours hanging out on the beach. Not a bad day. but it felt a bit too touristy for my liking. Not sure I'd do this again.
  

• Aruba: Here we splurged a bit and did the day pass at Barcelo Aruba. This was also quite nice, but this was rather pricey for what amounted to a day of sitting by the pool (a very nice pool mind you) and eating food and drinking. The value proposition for an all-inclusive day pass geta a bit iffy if you don't drink alcohol, but we still enjoyed this. We mostly just chilled out and watched people get drunk and sunburned.
  

• Bonaire: We had no formal plans here, but I think this was my favorite stop of the trip. Bonaire is much less touristy than the other two ABC islands, and a lot more laid back (they don't even have a Diamonds International, for crying out loud!) Mostly we just wandered on our own here. After my wife returned to the ship for an afternoon nap I walked about a mile to the Van den Tweel supermarket to pick up some Dutch stuff to bring home (mostly Hagelslag and peppermint candies). It was kind of interesting to see the less touristy parts of the island, even if it wasn't exactly a great day to be walking two miles in the sun and humidity...
  

All in all this was a very lovely trip. I admit that I had some reservations about booking Crown Princess again after the last time I sailed her had some problems (I was on the cruise before the one in 2012 that had to turn around and go back to port due to a massive Noro outbreak) but within the first couple of days any doubts I had about the ship were long gone. The ship is a bit rough around the edges, but it is only a few months away from a scheduled drydock.

Did the orchestra play "Goldfinger" ? the guest soprano was good- would have liked to have heard more or the orchestra and less of the Princess singers... 11/13 Crown:cool:

Thank-you for the well-written trip report.

Last month on the Ruby they decreased the price for SHARE to $29/pax. Did this happen on the Crown as well?

We have been to all three ABC islands but not on the same cruise. Indeed we found Bonaire to be the least touristy and more laid back. We saw the flamingos on the island and many were white which we found out is their original color. We have never been impressed with the rock (aka Aruba) but did love Curacao. We will be visiting Curacao as well as Aruba next year. We liked watching the swinging bridge but hope to do more this next time. Thanks for the review.

Love what you did in Bonaire. We love going into grocery stores and into markets in the places we visit. You get a small idea of what life is like living there and are with the locals vs. other tourists. There's always interesting foods to see too.

Welcome home and thanks for the mini-review.

In Bonaire, if you like to snorkel you can just walk along the road, to the left off the ship. When you come to a spot that you like the looks ok for your feet , you can clamber into the water and snorkel. Amazing what is right there just off the sidewalk!

In Bonaire, if you like to snorkel you can just walk along the road, to the left off the ship. When you come to a spot that you like the looks ok for your feet , you can clamber into the water and snorkel. Amazing what is right there just off the sidewalk!

Bonaire is a premier scuba diving spot in the Caribbean for the reason one can shore dive not needing a boat to take you out to the good dive spots. Great spots are all along the shore. It would make sense that snorkeling would offer the same spots.

Also enjoyed our b2b on the Crown last March. We liked the food but didn't try the Curtis Sone dshes. Your itnerary is one of our favorite destinations. Glad you enjoyed them.

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Thanks so much for your time to report back!

Glad you enjoyed Bonaire as much as we always have! :D

Thanks for the run down.

Enjoyed your report and glad you enjoyed the cruise.

Keith