2013 Christmas Cruise on Royal Princess - A Photo Review!

[TorontoTL]

Definitely, the Mr. Sexy Legs contests aren't new, I've seen too many to count in past Princess cruises.

[slc22]

Subscribing. ....

 

Just found this Thread. Wonderful….I have a lot of catching up to do. This is fun. . .

Edited January 7, 2014 by slc22

[bjtomko]

Beautiful pictures, and may I say beautiful people as well.

 

Was the aft balcony very windy, or did you get enough blockage from the dividers? Also, we you in direct sun all day, or again, did the dividers help protect you?

[Emperor Norton]

I love that feature on Flickr!

 

I read Bryan Peterson's Understanding Exposure, and after trying manual mode, I've never gone back. I do shoot in RAW so that I can tweak things later. I keep my ISO low whenever possible. When I'm shooting outside, no matter how sunny, I put my WB in cloudy (but since it's RAW, I can change it later). And sometimes I intentionally underexpose things because it's a lot easier to bring up the exposure than recover blown highlights (though you don't have to worry about that so much in RAW). I post-process in Adobe Lightroom. Now I'm trying to get the hang of that exterior flash!

 

Get it off camera on its own stand:D

[LBumb]

excellent job

tons of great photos

[JF - retired RRT]

[quote name=LittleMissMagic;4118406

 

 

12.27.13 by vshingl' date=' on Flickr

 

 

This looks like the casino is open to the Piazza...is that correct?

If it is, how is the smoke handled? Noticeable?

[LittleMissMagic]

Beautiful pictures, and may I say beautiful people as well.

 

Was the aft balcony very windy, or did you get enough blockage from the dividers? Also, we you in direct sun all day, or again, did the dividers help protect you?

 

I didn't find the balcony to be very windy. Since it was the aft, we were pretty well protected from the wind by the ship itself. As for sun, our balcony was only partially uncovered. About half was always shaded from the balcony above.

[LittleMissMagic]

This looks like the casino is open to the Piazza...is that correct?

If it is, how is the smoke handled? Noticeable?

 

It's open to the floor above which is adjacent to the atrium. It's the gift shop area. You can't smell the smoke in passing, but if you stand by the railing, you can catch a whiff.

[LittleMissMagic]

The reason that we wanted to leave dinner early was so that we could go to the Princess Live theater to watch the Marriage Match Game Show. This is a very popular event, and there was a line out the door. Very quickly after the line started moving, it was standing room only. I honestly think that this is a bad venue for this event. I understand that they wanted to film it for the cabins and perhaps there isn't always this much interest in the show, but it really belonged in a larger area - perhaps the Vista Lounge or even the Princess Theater.

 

12.27.13 by vshingl, on Flickr

 

12.27.13 by vshingl, on Flickr

 

If you've never seen the show, it's like the Newlywed Game Show except they play it with three different generations of couples - the just married, married for a while, and married forever. Every cruise line seems to have their own version of this show. They get really personal really quick with these questions, and it can start to make you uncomfortable. It's definitely not a show for the easily offended, and they warn you in the beginning that they have no control over what anyone could say. You might be able to take your children, because I know that when I was a child, I was too naive to understand what any of the questions meant (I know this for fact because although I did not go to the show, I found it rather easily on our stateroom TV when we sailed the Radiance of the Seas when I was only 9 years old).

 

For our show, the younger couple always seemed to make it super awkward. The in-the-middle couple actually did a really good job. I thought the man talked way too much and gave too much detail in everything, but they were actually really really in sync with the way they thought and answered the questions. I was impressed. And then the longest married couple did okay - they were funny. If they were actually tallying the points, I think it would have gone to the couple in the middle for sure. However, when they announced the winner, it was the longest married couple in first place with the other two tied for second (yeah, right). Of course, the prize is the same for everyone - a bottle of champagne!

[LittleMissMagic]

After Marriage Match was The Quest. Now, I am a Quest Champion on Royal Caribbean, so I knew that I liked their game, but I had no idea what Princess's was going to be like. The concept was similar, but the things that they had us doing were completely different.

 

This is (in my opinion) really not a game for children. People will do crazy things when it's late at night and near the end of vacation. The clothes just fly off. They made several announcements at the beginning of the show that this game was rated PG-13 and that children may only be there if they are accompanied by their parents.

 

There were a lot of kids. There was one team comprised completely of children. It was five boys all under the age of 12 and a cute little girl who was four-and-a-half. We know this because at one point in the came, the host asked her age. Well, she was the only girl on their team, so whenever they asked for a woman, they sent her up. And she always seemed to get extra points because of her cuteness. While most people laughed about this, there were some people who were visibly annoyed that children were playing. The children also had a major advantage because although the teams were limited to six people, they had their parents there giving them things, and they just ran up with them. It was really like a team of 12.

 

I can understand why someone would let their four-and-a-half year old play a game where men put on bras and women put on men's pants (it is way dirtier on Royal Caribbean, but I think that the hosts on Princess may have been tailoring it to the very young audience) - she's young. She probably won't remember it. And this is really funny to watch. (But it is kind of weird that one of the little boys who was around 8 years old put on his mother's bra.)

 

On the other hand, I can completely understand why there were some adults who were not happy about kids playing. It is listed as an adult scavenger hunt. It is held at a late hour (11:30). They wanted to come and have a tipsy good time, and the game was completely taken over by children. There are very few organized activities for adults. An adult can't just walk into the kids club and be like, "Hey, I came for holiday crafts!" They would be told to get the heck out because that's not allowed. One of the only activities that is actually intended for adults was overrun by children - I see why some adults were annoyed by this.

 

In addition to that, the kids were cheating. They would cut people off in line or get on the stage before they actually had their item, and they got away with it only because they were cute kids. The hosts were actually being really strict on other people and wouldn't give them the point for things like bringing up four pairs of shoes instead of three or coming to the stage when they weren't dressed.

 

The team of all kids won a bottle of champagne for their parents (who were really playing and sending their kids up on stage). They should have given them a bottle of sparkling grape juice instead since none of the kids were legal.

 

12.27.13 by vshingl, on Flickr

 

This guy was struggling....

 

12.27.13 by vshingl, on Flickr

 

If you cruise Royal Caribbean and wonder how the games compare, I'm not going to tell you everything we did so that if you ever do go on Princess, you'll have a nice surprise. Just know that there is a lot of running around the ship and really no need for a cheat bag.

[LittleMissMagic]

December 28, 2013 - At Sea

 

Today, we got up early and sat in the pool chairs which are on risers. We were able to watch The Proposal on the movie screen.

 

12.28.13 by vshingl, on Flickr

 

I couldn't get close to the ice carving demonstration, and I never figured out what they were making.

 

12.28.13 by vshingl, on Flickr

 

12.28.13 by vshingl, on Flickr

 

I'm fairly certain it was that giant family of 23 whose children were playing The Quest. Rachel said they had two family t-shirts made for this cruise. The other looked like a Scrabble board. I'm really hoping that those numbers are for the entire group together which would mean that each of them average about 6.5 days per cruise... perhaps the young ones didn't go on all? The math is funny. Anyway, a day didn't go by when I didn't see this t-shirt.

 

12.28.13 by vshingl, on Flickr

 

12.28.13 by vshingl, on Flickr

 

12.28.13 by vshingl, on Flickr

[dmwnc1959]

This looks like the casino is open to the Piazza...is that correct?

If it is, how is the smoke handled? Noticeable?

 

The mini-atrium of the Princess Casino opens up to the Deck 7 shops above, and to the Deck 6 part of the main Atrium near Bellini's. I was aboard Royal Princess for two weeks and I never, ever noticed the smell of cigarette smoke in the shops area or on the main Atrium/Piazza.

[LittleMissMagic]

12.28.13 by vshingl, on Flickr

[LittleMissMagic]

In the afternoon, our shares became shaded. We were relaxing and reading on the deck when there was an announcement from the captain that we were approaching storms and should take cover. That's all I needed to hear to get up and take my camera bag under cover. We got burgers and hot dogs from outside but had to take them in to Horizon Bistro to eat for lack of tables outside due to everyone taking cover from the rain.

 

We were sitting at a table inside when a large group of teenagers comes and sits at the table right beside ours. Horizon Bistro was practically empty, and they choose the table right beside us - WHY? Well, one of the boys (clearly their leader) pulls a chair from another table and places it at the end, with its back to our table and completely blocking the way of traffic. "That's not going to work," my dad said, "you're blocking the traffic and the wait staff isn't going to be able to move through here." The boy turns around and says something to us in another language. It was probably dirty. "Oh, that's really funny," Rachel told him. This guy proceeds to carry on conversations loudly in English with his new friends.

 

Groups of teenagers on cruises are quite typical. There is a group of them (sometimes several groups), anywhere from 5 to 9 teens. They're all loud and obnoxious, but there is one who is more loud and obnoxious than the rest, and he or she is their leader. They follow this person around and laugh at his jokes because he is nice to them and makes them feel good about themselves. And because the leader makes them feel awesome, they think that they are awesome and that everyone cares about what they are saying and thinks that they're really funny. So they talk really loud so that everyone can know what they're saying because everyone cares about what they're saying and wants to be them. And they do disrespectful things like block the staircases and sit down in the elevator and sing as they ride for fun and not to get somewhere because they're really cool and everyone thinks they're hilarious.

 

I don't know this type of teenager because I used to be one of them. No. Quite the opposite, actually. I was the shy, nerdy teen who would rather hang out with her sister and parents than meet new friends. Or maybe I just really wasn't good at making friends. I remember walking into the teen club once on the second day and realizing that everyone had already separated into cliques on the first day and that I was out of luck. And then our next cruise, I was sure to go to the teen club on the first day, and I still didn't make any friends. Teenage years were very bad for me, but that's okay. Because I don't think many people look back to when they were 17 and say, "Dang, I was awesome. I wish I could redo high school all over again."

 

After our terrible encounter with the obnoxious teens, the rain had stopped, so Rachel and I managed to squeeze ourselves into a hot tub... which more people managed to squeeze into. The guy beside me was way too close for comfort (like we were shoulder to shoulder... when his arm accidentally grazed my leg, I had had enough). We went back to our room and read on the balcony. Dad came over around 6:00 and told me that he just got some really great photographs of the fountains. That's when I remembered that I never got the long exposure photos I wanted of the blasted fountains.

 

I assembled my tripod and raced to the top deck.... to catch the very last seconds of the fountain show. Not on camera.

 

For a while, I was super annoyed. But then I figured that I might as well take some shots while I was up there and had my tripod out. Enough people had seen me with my tripod that I didn't care that they thought I was a complete freak (this is why I never had friends).

 

12.28.13 by vshingl, on Flickr

 

12.28.13 by vshingl, on Flickr

 

12.28.13 by vshingl, on Flickr

[LittleMissMagic]

And I'm really glad that I came up there because I had so much fun with the Skywalk.

 

12.28.13 by vshingl, on Flickr

 

12.28.13 by vshingl, on Flickr

 

12.28.13 by vshingl, on Flickr

 

12.28.13 by vshingl, on Flickr

 

12.28.13 by vshingl, on Flickr

 

12.28.13 by vshingl, on Flickr

 

Okay, I've been waiting until now to ask you guys......

 

Does anyone else remember in those promotional videos of the Royal Princess when they announced the Skywalk/Skyview that they said at night it would turn into an adults-only club? Because this NEVER happened and I would like to know why. Was this an idea which they deemed impractical, so it was never realized? Or did they try it on some of the first cruises and have it turn out a failure? I know that somebody reading this thread will know the answer!

Edited January 8, 2014 by LittleMissMagic

[LittleMissMagic]

12.28.13 by vshingl, on Flickr

 

12.28.13 by vshingl, on Flickr

[dmwnc1959]

Okay, I've been waiting until now to ask you guys......

 

Does anyone else remember in those promotional videos of the Royal Princess when they announced the Skywalk/Skyview that they said at night it would turn into an adults-only club? Because this NEVER happened and I would like to know why. Was this an idea which they deemed impractical, so it was never realized? Or did they try it on some of the first cruises and have it turn out a failure? I know that somebody reading this thread will know the answer!

 

I actually do remember that announcement, but it was The Retreat that was going to turn into the adult-Only 'Chill Lounge' at night. Not sure why it never materialized, but it would have been nice especially in the Caribbean.

[carib]

You got some really neat night shots of the Sea Walk. Don't be self conscious about your tripod. The end justifies the means.

[chamima]

I actually do remember that announcement, but it was The Retreat that was going to turn into the adult-Only 'Chill Lounge' at night. Not sure why it never materialized, but it would have been nice especially in the Caribbean.

 

I remember that, also!

[TorontoTL]

I actually do remember that announcement, but it was The Retreat that was going to turn into the adult-Only 'Chill Lounge' at night. Not sure why it never materialized, but it would have been nice especially in the Caribbean.

 

I was wondering why I hadn't read any reports on this. I too thought that this was a great idea, it would have been very Miami!

[westendgirl]

I actually do remember that announcement, but it was The Retreat that was going to turn into the adult-Only 'Chill Lounge' at night. Not sure why it never materialized, but it would have been nice especially in the Caribbean.

 

I guess that went the way of the dueling glass pianos! ;)

[LittleMissMagic]

I actually do remember that announcement, but it was The Retreat that was going to turn into the adult-Only 'Chill Lounge' at night. Not sure why it never materialized, but it would have been nice especially in the Caribbean.

 

Ahh, that was one of the things that I was the most excited about!

[Aruba]

I am loving the photos! This has been one of the most enjoyable ship reviews I've ever read. Thanks!:)

[jcarlisle]

Victoria:

 

Your pictures are amazing. We will be on the Royal in July. I am curious about your tripod. You call it a travel tripod. Can you tell me what make / model it is and where you got it? I am looking for something light and easy to carry for our upcoming Baltics trip.

[LittleMissMagic]

Victoria:

 

Your pictures are amazing. We will be on the Royal in July. I am curious about your tripod. You call it a travel tripod. Can you tell me what make / model it is and where you got it? I am looking for something light and easy to carry for our upcoming Baltics trip.

 

Thank you!

 

My tripod is a MeFoto Backpacker, and I actually do not recommend it because it only extends to five feet tall. This works for me because that's right at my eye level. Assuming that you're taller than five feet, you're going to want the MeFoto Roadtripper. The MeFoto travel tripods are good because they're sturdy and fold up small, but they actually take a bit of time to set up because you have to twist out four joints in each leg. If you're looking for something quicker and taller, Tom Bricker of The Disney Tourist Blog recommends the Velbon Luxi L III.