LIVE from the Emerald Princess -- previewing your upcoming cruise pleasure ! !

How wonderful to be here at sea on the magnificent Emerald Princess on an Eastern Caribbean sailing roundtrip out of Ft. Lauderdale. The Emerald is an over 3,000-passenger sister to the Crown Princess (but then, isn't everything becoming a sister to the Crown?) and neat and elegant from stem to stern.

It's a singularly delicious feeling to drop my bags inside a familiar-looking Princess cabin to begin a holiday at sea. Isn't this like the familiarity you feel about one kind of car, and if you rent the same kind that you drive at home, then the dashboard looks pretty much the same. And there's the "new bed program" with comforters instead of bed spreads. Travel getting here was delightfully uneventful considering what interesting times we live in, and the heightened airport security experience which I'll tell you about later in this thread.

And important good NEWS to share: the Flu Protocol in the Horizen Cafe and elsewhere does not seem to be in place, which would probably indicate that the ship has been moderately free from stomach-flu diagnoses for the last few sailings and you can pour your own coffee and spoon out your own dishes in the buffet, and squirt the hand sanitizer yourself.

Here's the list of Cruise Highlights and I'll add more as we go along.

1 -- Embarkation -- Smart Casual -- Showtime with Comedian

2 -- Princess Cays --Smart Casual -- Comedian and also a Magician

3 -- Sea Day -- Formal Night -- Production Show : Motor City

4 -- St. Maarten -- Smart Casual -- Comedy Show

5 -- St. Thomas -- Formal Night -- Production: I Got Music

6 -- Grand Turk -- Smart Casual -- Production Show: Boogie Shoes

7 -- At Sea Last Night -- Smart Casual -- Comedy Show

It's such a joy to be onboard such a lovely ship. It's been a little cool and rainy, but on the other hand, that probably means it will change and be sunn y and hot for YOUR upcoming cruise.

Enjoy and thanks for posting live!!

I will be looking forward to more reviews. It will be my first time on the Emerald March 28.

Do they have a seafood buffet on the Liddo deck one evening?

Thanks for taking the time to post "live" - and keep it coming - we sail on the 17th (and our last cruise was on the Crown:))!

Thanks for posting. Which night is "Island Night"?

Thanks for your post and would love to hear more! Sailed the Emerald last year and had a fantastic time.....enjoy:)

Love the Quote!

"It's a singularly delicious feeling to drop my bags inside a familiar-looking Princess cabin to begin a holiday at sea."

Have Fun!

Thanks for the great information! We will be traveling in four weeks at the end of January on this cruise. This is also our first cruise so all information is greatly appreciated. I will be coming back to this site to look for updates.

Have a good trip!!

Beverley

Bless you, this just might be the only thing that gets me through this last week at work before we sail as you disembark.

Enjoy your cruise and keep the updates coming.

Enjoy the Emerald. I was on it Christmas week and had a wonderful time!

Thanks for the information!

Please feel free to pack-up the cool and rainy weather when you disembark on Sunday.

Thanks for putting the ship through its paces before we board at the end of the month.

By the way, what temperature does "cool" mean?

Keep the info coming. We are first timers on Princess. One question, did they upgrade the mattresses during the drydock??

Steve

The Emerald is truly a beautiful ship, I really enjoyed our cruise last year on board the Emerald. Have a wonderful cruise.

We sail on February 7th! I will def. be logging in daily to check this post!!! The only Princess ship we have been on was the Crown and we loved it. :)

I am soo excited to read all your posts, as we too are cruising on the Princess on January 17th! So I greatly appreciate your time and all information you can give us.

I do have a rather specific request for you. We plan to rent a car for the day when we're at St. Maarten.

Many other posts have stated that there are several car rental companies right at the end of the dock. If you happen to catch the name of any of these companies or any other information from them & post it, we'd be so grateful.

In addition to that, I like someone else's question regarding a seafood dinner night. I'm really hoping they have crab legs.;)

We too will sail the Emerald once again in May. I'm really looking forward to your "live" post.

Thanks so much!

Thanks for the post. Leaving at the end of the month on our first Princess cruise and just now finally letting myself get excited!

Karen

We too will sail the Emerald once again in May. I'm really looking forward to your "live" post.

 

Thanks so much!

They have lowered the price on the May 16th sailing by quite a bit.

I look foward to your posts about the Emerald.

Diane in Music City

Enjoy your cruise! Looking forward to hearing more!

VKMcCarty, would you do me a huge favor? I need to know if E512 and E514 have doors right next to each other OR are paired with different cabins? My daughter has booked these two cabins in August for her family of 6 and she wants to be able to go in and out efficiently (and unobtrusively) to tend to her kids. Keeping my fingers crossed that they are neighboring doors!

Thank you so much for your help!

Eagerly awaiting your future posts--we'll be embarking on the 24 th of this months after 7 days on the Crown and 1 day in FLL waiting for the Emerald--Emerald is one of the few Princess ships we haven't sailed--looking forward to the experience. keep us well informed

Thanks

Nancy:D

Well, it was cool and windy enough that I thought about not going over by tender to the Princess Cays, but, oh! it was such treat. The Cays are looking really smart-looking and colorful, and it seems like the barbarque areas are even more built up and there are more bright red cabana roofs hither and yon.

And it was a pretty turbulant tender ride, but Oh! what fun it was to swim in the ocean with these really big waves. I had one of those silly pictures taken of me just so I could remember what a lark it was. Usually I swim right out to the ropes, but this time I stayed closer to the shore and just enjoyed being buffeted about in the waves. Often it's fun to feel the waves created by the tenders coming in, but this time the real waves were bigger.

As I'm typing this, the most amazing music has come on in the central lobby and there's a young gymnast in a little Vegas outift doing the most amazing performance with hullahoops. That looks so silly to type, but I kid you not! and actually last night when I as typing there was truly wonderful Dixieland music with the most jazzy solo riffs and cheering from the crowd, so I think they building up their Lobby venues in an exciting way.

And of course the good news is that YOUR cruise will have warmer sunny weather

Steve -- My hunch is that we didn't get new mattresses durin the drydock, but rahter more substantial upgrades; although the ship isn't that old and I sure remember the days when Princess mattresses were so thin. There is the "new bed program," but I think the Emerald started right out with it: comforters with little strips of bedspread along the bottom and 2 throw pillows and beautiful stripy jaguard soft sheets.

Blue Daisy -- Let's see if I make it out of the ship at St. Maarten -- often it's way too hot, but maybe this will be the year and if I see car rental places I'll try to remember the names

Those two cabins -- I'm thinking that any 512 and 514 would be across the hall from each other rather than next to each other, but you could check on Princess.com, where they've got all the deck maps. And I'll check if I can remember the numbers in my holiday haze

Can't remember if the first big show is tonight -- I likie Vegas shows and will report back.

The Caribbean Feast was for dinner last night, and quite by accident walked in on a Mexican speciality thing going on in the Caribe at luncgh-time today - everything was fresh fresh fresh.

If you can check on E512 and 514, I would appreciate it. They are definitely next door to each other, obstructed oceanview cabins on Emerald deck. So if you're going down that hallway please take a quick look! Thanks again!

Odd numbers on one side even numbers on the other

If the ship still has the carpet with red border on the side on one side of the ship the other will have the blue border again odd or even

I think that the carpet on the Pacific was blue on both sides--oh well--small ship easy to find where you're going

Nancy:D