Live From the Sapphire Princess - Jan. 29th Sailing

[Bugslyboo.com]

....Well we're not quite on the ship yet, but made it to the LAX Marriott last night. Jet lag has us up at this early hour (late hour?)...not sure which way is up at this point.

 

After the cliff hanger of a nearly aborted departure in London yesterday due to the fuel tanks being over-filled and "something leaking from the wings", once we did make it to LAX we were greeted by a two hour wait in immigration/customs last night. The international terminal at LAX looks to be a couple sizes too small for the amount of passengers trying to pass through there.. That's the understated version.

 

After the mind numbing waiting, we did eventually make it out of customs and were greeted by a very friendly Princess representative who escorted us out to the hotel shuttle area and waited with us there until our shuttle bus arrived. With the crowds milling about, along with fatigue from 11 hours flying, it was a really nice to have somebody help us find our way. Check-in at the hotel was a breeze and our wine from the online shop of the same name that I had shipped here was waiting for us. At check-in we were handed a flyer with the details for later today: Leave luggage in the room near the door by 8:00 am and it'll be picked up by the bell hops. Shuttle service to the ship is due to start at 12:30 (but we're supposed to check with the Princess rep. for up-to-date details).

 

Impressions: LAX Marriott is good: Cookie cutter type hotel, clean and good service. LAX international terminal is a zoo. Wow, I travel a lot worldwide and haven't seen it this bad for a long time. British Airways Club World (business class) was great - as usual.

 

Bb

[Dena]

Thank you. Please let us know if you decide to have lunch in MDR on embarkation day. Also if you have anytime dining, how is it working out? Are reservations allowed between 7 and 8 pm.

[gingera]

I hate LAX, but it is always so nice to see the Princess rep waiting for us. Am looking forward to your posts...have a wonderful cruise!

[aloisia]

A 2hr wait in customs...:eek:.

 

I also look forward to reading your posts. Have a great holiday.

[Caribbean Sunsets]

Looking forward to following along.

 

Have a great cruise!

[lkclossen]

Bb,

Aloha and Bon Voyage! Looking forward to your "live" as we are on the Feb 26th sailing and hoping to live the cruise in advance through you!

Linda

[scopewest]

Have a great time and looking forward to the details!

[Pixie Dust 2]

Bon Voyage! Enjoy and keep the live posts coming. :)

[Piperpals]

We are on the March 19 sailing so I am looking forward to hearing about your cruise. Would love to hear about the entertainment especially the lounge singers in the Crooner lounge as we tend to spend alot of time their.

 

Hope you have a great time, do you know if you are skipping Mazatlan on this sailing?

[kath00]

I love live threads! And I love the sapphire. Don't be surprised though if you have no internet during sea days. Have a great cruise. K

[Pam in CA]

Glad to hear you made it safely. You're going to have a cool (65-degrees) sailaway but it's nice and sunny. The LAX Marriott is a good deal as a pre-cruise and particularly after traveling for hours and hours; it's nice to have someone take care of you when your mind is numb.

[2fercruzin]

We are on the March 19 sailing so I am looking forward to hearing about your cruise. Would love to hear about the entertainment especially the lounge singers in the Crooner lounge as we tend to spend alot of time their.

 

Hope you have a great time, do you know if you are skipping Mazatlan on this sailing?

 

I believe this is a sailing to Hawaii, not the MR.

But, we're also taking the Sapphire to MR on 4/30 and can't wait! Only time will tell if we call Mazatlan, but we'll be on the ship so all will be well. :D Patti

[NotWthOutablcony]

I'm right here with you. Have a wonderful cruise and I will be following your adventure with you. Want to know how the CD is on this ship and shipboard activities. BON VOYAGE:D

[srpilo]

Thanks for taking the time to post.

 

 

 

 

Have a great cruise

Srpilo

[IECalCruiser]

Thank you. Please let us know if you decide to have lunch in MDR on embarkation day. Also if you have anytime dining, how is it working out? Are reservations allowed between 7 and 8 pm.

OP stated that the shuttle to San Pedro starts at 12:30 p.m. so they will not make the Sapphire in time for the 12:00 to 1:30 MDR Embarkation lunch.

[avalong]

Thank you. Please let us know if you decide to have lunch in MDR on embarkation day. Also if you have anytime dining, how is it working out? Are reservations allowed between 7 and 8 pm.

 

Good luck with that on the Sapphire. Just got off her today. We were denied entrance to the open MDR for lunch on embarkation day. We were told it was reserved for those on the Bon Voyage Experience. I insisted, but got nowhere. Certainly started off our cruise on a sour note.

[fairsky1984]

We got off the Sapphire last Saturday (Jan 22) after a b2b for 17 days. We'll be following you as you cruise to Hawaii since we're interested in doing a LA-Hawaii, but have always wondered about the ocean crossing.

 

So please include how the seas are and anything else about the actual sailing itself since we know lots about the Sapphire after 17 days :).

 

Thanks for taking time to post, good luck with internet access, and have a wonderful cruise!

[cruz chic]

Good luck with that on the Sapphire. Just got off her today. We were denied entrance to the open MDR for lunch on embarkation day. We were told it was reserved for those on the Bon Voyage Experience. I insisted, but got nowhere. Certainly started off our cruise on a sour note.

Yeah, they seem to not want to accomodate pax in the dining room. I was on the Dec.29/10 sailing on the Sapphire. He asked me if I was in transit and I said yes:o. He really didn't want to let me in. I really don't care for the lido and I wasn't about to go up there and face the zoo.

[Bugslyboo.com]

Not sure how I should put this delicately....but man do I feel young! My wife and I (late 40's early 50's) feel like youngsters on this cruise. Waiting in the lobby at the hotel for our bus to the ship we were surrounded by the biggest gathering of young@hearts that I've seen in quite a while.

 

We were told to be in the lobby by 12:15 for our bus. They had issued everybody with color coded cards and boarded the buses by these colors. I'm guessing they had at least 5-6 buses going over in 15 to 20 minute intervals. We boarded at somewhere around 1:00 and were over at the cruise terminal at about 1:40. We were in our stateroom, unpacking, by 2:00. It was nice to see our bags already waiting for us outside our stateroom when we got onboard. The whole embarkation process was a breeze. Well done Princess, although the bus thing back at the hotel could have been handled a bit snappier.

 

The drill was at 3:15 and we were back in our room at just after 3:30. Our steward had two glasses of bubbly waiting for us in our room: Clever fellow. We managed to snag the one of the coveted E-deck mini-suites and are very happy with it. The balcony is just great – the room, a standard mini-suite.

 

We had all intentions of going to the CC meet & greet, but hunger and jet lag got the best of us. Not having eaten since breakfast, we headed up to the buffet at about 4:30 (great time to go by the way – it was like a ghost town up there...). Had a nice meal and I was able to find plenty of vegan options, including an excellent vegtable curry with rice. Small snafu with the pasta dishes where the bolognese pasta was labelled as vegetarian and vice versa. S....tuff happens.

 

Our departure was delayed by NCL, berthed around the corner from us with her “snout” blocking our exit. We had to wait for them to get under way before we could leave. I'm guessing it was 5:30 or so by the time we actually got under way. The most spectacular singing contest between Sapphire and Queen Elizabeth then followed (I have it on video and will upload to youtube when I get back). Shouts of “See you in Hawaii” were exchanged between the ship's passengers, as we left QE tied to her berth. It was the most interesting fog horn concert that I've ever heard! And, my, what a deep voice QE has. It was really a memorable event.

 

That was it for our day. No CC meet (sorry, we would have loved to have met everybody), no dining room, no show – just blissful sleep. The jet lag from our 9 hour time difference has really hammered us hard on this trip. Seems like the more we travel the worse it gets....We should be able to get somewhat on track today.

 

Impressions: Sapphire is a nice ship. Here and there she's showing signs of her age, but she is in very good shape. The layout is good and I do like it better than Grand (not sure why yet...just feels better). The Princess hotel program was great, being met at the airport, good price/performance ratio, baggage handling excellent, information excellent. The only big fat minus point being the busing. That could have been carried out more efficiently. I think they tried way too hard to space the buses out and spaced them out too far – over-thinking the logistics. When we arrived at the terminal it was empty and one could say way overstaffed (half of the staff were not doing anything, but waiting). I think they would have had no problems processing two buses simultaneously with excellent speed. Princess was too careful, creating an uncomfortable environment back in the hotel. The buffet was excellent as usual. Staff encounters have been nothing but stellar so far. Friendly and helpful, all the reasons why we keep coming back to Princess.

[ladyco4]

We just got of the Sapphire January 22 also. Everyone we met were cheerful and most helpful. If you have a chance to eat in the Vivaldi Dining room around 8:15 ask to be seated in Jansen and Antok's section. They pampered us our entire trip.

I look forward to reading about your travels as we are looking forward to cruising to Hawaii soon.

 

Ruth

[Bugslyboo.com]

We realized this morning shortly after the sun came up that it was on the wrong side of the ship. According to that we we were heading north! We went outside and noticed that we weren't actually moving. A few minutes later we started to move and started to turn, putting the sun back on the correct side of the ship. An unusual in cabin announcement at around 8:30 am from the Captain let us know that we are experiencing problems with one of the propulsion systems and in order to facilitate repair, we needed to go slow. It would appear that they have things repaired as channel 35 is showing us proceeding at 20.6 knots, which should be about normal.

The other announcement this morning was an alpha team (it was alpha something..not team, but don't recall the exact term) call to the passenger gymnasium (was about 8:45 or so). I seem to remember seeing somewhere on the boards that that call isn't a good one. Anybody who knows what exactly that means, I would appreciate the info.

Otherwise it's a bit chilly and bouncy, with the the rocking and rolling seeming to get worse along with the weather.

More later!

The crew seems excited about going to Hawaii....Maybe that's a positive versus the Golden?

[Bugslyboo.com]

We are on the March 19 sailing so I am looking forward to hearing about your cruise. Would love to hear about the entertainment especially the lounge singers in the Crooner lounge as we tend to spend alot of time their.

 

Hope you have a great time, do you know if you are skipping Mazatlan on this sailing?

 

We're on our way to Hawaii, so I'm pretty sure we'll be skipping Mazatlan :)

[kath00]

The alpha team is usually the "code blue" equivalent ie a medical emergency. I think some ships have separate response teams for the medical emergency teams and the fire teams. In that case, there are 2 different code words, one for fire and one for medical. But if they have 1 general emergency team, then they use "Alpha" for both medical and fire.

 

99% of the time it's a code blue medical code. That rare 1% of the time I suppose it could mean a fire (think Splendor, where John Healy's blog said they called out a code alpha when the fire first started).

 

Hope you are on your way again! Don't let anything happen to "my" ship!

 

Katherine

[ASeaPrincess1]

On Mariner, we heard the Alpha call twice to Chops Restaurant.

It turned out a man had choked, but they were able to do the Heimlich maneuver and save him.

The second Alpha was because another patron in the restaurant had fainted due to all the excitement at the other table.

Both parties recovered nicely.

Bravo is the term used for fire.

 

PS...have a great trip. I will be reading your LIVE thread daily.

I did the Hawaii trip on Golden, so I am interested in seeing what is different, and what might be the same.

[seacrystal]

Enjoy your cruise! We loved this on the Golden last February for Valentine's Day. You will be blown away with the whales in Maui:D.

 

The best part of the trip was the Hawaiian music by Elua. It really sets the mood. Their cultural events are wonderful. We bought their CDs and I am listening to one right now while it is raining in Huntington Beach but my mind says I am sailing to Hawaii;)!!!

 

Aloha