Ocean Princess British Isles Cruise Review -Disney Sheep Go Rogue

[Disney Sheep]

Once we were back on the ship and sitting in the Panorama Buffet and munching on pizza, we noticed an expanse of beach on one end of the Milford Marina. There did not appear to be anyone on the beach, but if we had noticed it before we had tendered back, we probably would have walked it. Reading the brochures that I had picked up from the volunteer tent in the morning, there are apparently several walking paths that are accessible from Milford Haven, or at least from the local train station.

 

We enjoyed our afternoon back on the Ocean Princess. First up was the Panorama Buffet and lots of drinks.

 

 

 

Since it was such a beautiful day we checked out decks 9 and 10 and found them to be quite busy <gasp> for this cruise anyway. It seems like the sun and relative lack of wind brought everyone outside!

 

 

DH even decided to check out his (greatly underused) golf skills.

 

 

And we followed that up with afternoon tea and gluten free scones of course.

 

 

And finally, once the 'crowds' had disappeared from the pool and the hot tubs, we headed for our afternoon mocktails, pool and hot tub routine.

 

 

Although we chose to make Milford Haven the equivalent of a 'modified sea day' and we enjoyed it for what it was, there is a part of me that thinks that the review that I read might just have got it right.

 

On the the hand, our table mates chose to take a taxi with another couple to the town of Tenby in order to just explore it at their own pace, and they absolutely loved it. A taxi round trip fare cost 80£ and since they split the cost with that other couple, each couple only had to pay 40£ for their 'DIY Tenby excursion'. Overall they felt it was a much better deal than what Princess was charging for their Tenby excursion.

 

And during some 'hot tub discussions' we heard good things about the Princess excursions both for St David's and for the 8 hour (!) nature walk, although I can not remember the details now, just the impression I received at the time.

[ontheweb]

Once we were back on the ship and sitting in the Panorama Buffet and munching on pizza, we noticed an expanse of beach on one end of the Milford Marina. There did not appear to be anyone on the beach, but if we had noticed it before we had tendered back, we probably would have walked it. Reading the brochures that I had picked up from the volunteer tent in the morning, there are apparently several walking paths that are accessible from Milford Haven, or at least from the local train station.

 

We enjoyed our afternoon back on the Ocean Princess. First up was the Panorama Buffet and lots of drinks.

 

 

 

Since it was such a beautiful day we checked out decks 9 and 10 and found them to be quite busy <gasp> for this cruise anyway. It seems like the sun and relative lack of wind brought everyone outside!

 

 

DH even decided to check out his (greatly underused) golf skills.

 

 

And we followed that up with afternoon tea and gluten free scones of course.

 

 

And finally, once the 'crowds' had disappeared from the pool and the hot tubs, we headed for our afternoon mocktails, pool and hot tub routine.

 

 

Although we chose to make Milford Haven the equivalent of a 'modified sea day' and we enjoyed it for what it was, there is a part of me that thinks that the review that I read might just have got it right.

 

On the the hand, our table mates chose to take a taxi with another couple to the town of Tenby in order to just explore it at their own pace, and they absolutely loved it. A taxi round trip fare cost 80£ and since they split the cost with that other couple, each couple only had to pay 40£ for their 'DIY Tenby excursion'. Overall they felt it was a much better deal than what Princess was charging for their Tenby excursion.

 

And during some 'hot tub discussions' we heard good things about the Princess excursions both for St David's and for the 8 hour (!) nature walk, although I can not remember the details now, just the impression I received at the time.

 

I do not remember exactly what we paid for our excursion that included Tenby, but I do recall it was relatively inexpensive compared to most excursions offered by Princess. It did include Welsh Love Spoon making before we got to Tenby, and we very much enjoyed the demonstration, and bought two love spoons. IIRC, there are 4 beaches by Tenby. We spent our time on the South Beach. The only time we actually spent in Tenby itself was getting off the tour bus and getting back to wait for its return. Actually while waiting for the return, we did observe a glass blowing demonstration at one of the stores.

 

We did enjoy this port. It was a nice break from the "there is so much to do ports" of Edinburgh and Dublin while still providing us with entertaining things to see and do.

[Craving A Cruise]

Yvonne, (Disney Sheep)

 

I am thoroughly enjoying your review!! It has brought back a lot of fond memories. :)

 

Love, love, love your photos also. :D

 

keep writing!!

~~~~~~~

Karen is Craving A Cruise

[Kewz1]

We're one county northwest of Orange county (West Point and Newburgh). We have been to Mount Saint Mary College once. We attended a wedding. The bride (she was our school superintendent and I was on the school board) had not only graduated from Mount Saint Mary, but was also a member of their Board of Trustees.) I also drive DW to Newburgh (actually just outside of Newburgh) where she ice skates. We have also been to West Point.

 

 

Small world!

 

Kristen

[Kewz1]

Hi Kristen,

 

I have to admit that Milford Haven was not my favourite port, however our table mates took a taxi to Tenby (sharing the cost with another couple) and they absolutely loved their visit there. As well, for Harry Potter fans, there is Freshwater West Beach 'nearby' I believe (not walkable I am thinking) which is where they filmed the scenes from The Deathly Hallows that took place at Shell Cottage with Dobby.

 

It was just not intuitively obvious to us how to get out of Milford Haven without pre planning.

 

And showing my geek side, we would have loved the opportunity to visit Cardiff, since I believe they have the Doctor Who Experience! :)

 

 

If we had planned better for our time in Cardiff I'm sure we would have enjoyed it. We spent some time at the St Fagan's Museum of Welsh Life (I may have botched that name) and thoroughly enjoyed that.

 

Sadly, I have only seen 1 episode of Doctor Who. It is on my "Must Binge Watch" list so I hope to get to it soon! We are big Harry Potter fans so Tenby/surrounding area sounds delightful. Next time, right? ;)

 

As always enjoying your report!

 

Kristen

[ontheweb]

Small world!

 

Kristen

 

Yes, small world indeed. Since we started this mini-discussion within this thread, DW has had a painting accepted for an art teacher art show in NEWBURGH, NY. The show will run in December and January. Her painting is a watercolor of a scarecrow. We will have to bring her painting there during that weekend after Thanksgiving.

[Kewz1]

Yes, small world indeed. Since we started this mini-discussion within this thread, DW has had a painting accepted for an art teacher art show in NEWBURGH, NY. The show will run in December and January. Her painting is a watercolor of a scarecrow. We will have to bring her painting there during that weekend after Thanksgiving.

 

That's so exciting! Congratulations to your wife!

 

Kristen

[Disney Sheep]

I do not remember exactly what we paid for our excursion that included Tenby, but I do recall it was relatively inexpensive compared to most excursions offered by Princess. It did include Welsh Love Spoon making before we got to Tenby, and we very much enjoyed the demonstration, and bought two love spoons. IIRC, there are 4 beaches by Tenby. We spent our time on the South Beach. The only time we actually spent in Tenby itself was getting off the tour bus and getting back to wait for its return. Actually while waiting for the return, we did observe a glass blowing demonstration at one of the stores.

 

We did enjoy this port. It was a nice break from the "there is so much to do ports" of Edinburgh and Dublin while still providing us with entertaining things to see and do.

 

Glad you enjoyed this port. I believe that the basic Love Spoons excursion to Tenby cost approx $80US per person.

[Disney Sheep]

Yvonne, (Disney Sheep)

 

I am thoroughly enjoying your review!! It has brought back a lot of fond memories. :)

 

Love, love, love your photos also. :D

 

keep writing!!

~~~~~~~

Karen is Craving A Cruise

 

Glad to have you reading along, and thank you for your kind words. Unfortunately I have been fighting a rather nasty bug lately which has slowed me down! But I am now back at it :)

[Disney Sheep]

If we had planned better for our time in Cardiff I'm sure we would have enjoyed it. We spent some time at the St Fagan's Museum of Welsh Life (I may have botched that name) and thoroughly enjoyed that.

 

Sadly, I have only seen 1 episode of Doctor Who. It is on my "Must Binge Watch" list so I hope to get to it soon! We are big Harry Potter fans so Tenby/surrounding area sounds delightful. Next time, right? ;)

 

As always enjoying your report!

 

Kristen

 

Doctor Who definitely needs to be on your must watch list - and then Cardiff will be more intriguing since they film in Cardiff.

[Disney Sheep]

Unfortunately for us, the ventilation gremlins were once again active in our cabin overnight. Fortunately since they had fixed the baffle, the fog horn noise had been reduced to the equivalent of a car engine revving continuously, but the time span remained the same, from 2-3 am in the morning. And once it woke me up I had a very difficult time getting back to sleep.

 

What really frustrated me however was the response of the ship's maintenance crew the next day. Although they responded to my report of the issue fairly promptly, this time they couldn't find anything broken to fix and essentially I felt like the veracity of my complaint was being questioned - no, it was not just in my head! Granted the responder from engineering was probably as frustrated as I was that he couldn't solve the problem, but he was lucky that I chose to take some Tylenol Nighttime later that evening, since I had promised to call him between 2 - 3 am if the ventilation gremlins woke me up again - but at that point, sleep and my sanity were more important than proving a point!!

 

We did manage to get up and moving on time, however I was basically in a fog and therefore slower than normal. What this meant for us, was that even a delay of 10-15 minutes resulted in us arriving in the lounge at 9:15 am, rather than earlier as we had planned and therefore not making the first couple of tenders, granted we probably wouldn't have anyway since the first tender or two were probably mainly filled with passengers who were on Princess excursions, but this definitely meant that we had 'missed the boat' both figuratively and literally.

 

In fact the tender process at St Helier caused a lot of consternation for many of the passengers. First, our time in port was only scheduled from 9 am - 2 pm, so it appeared to be only 5 hours to begin with. And then according to the Patter, tenders were only available starting at 9:15 am. And then Princess announced that the last return tender was at 1 pm, so time in port was reduced to approx 4 hours. Since it took a good 20 plus minutes to tender to shore once the tender was operational and loaded, even those on the first tender probably did not arrive on shore until roughly 9:30 to 9:45 am, and that would have required everything to work extremely efficiently. And then the tender had to let everyone disembark and return and get set up to receive more passengers again. And it also appeared that they were only using one or two of the available boats as tenders since they still had to have boats available as lifeboats. All that to say it felt painfully slow.

 

We probably arrived in the Cabaret Lounge at 9:15 am, at which point tender tickets up to number 30 or 40 had just been called to the tender. While we waited although everyone was generally pleasant, there was a lot of grumbling from a fair cross section of passengers over the situation especially since it was close to 10 am when the next tender was available for boarding. When our tender tickets were called, we just barely made the next tender (ticket number 110) and arrived on shore at roughly 10:40 am (because there would also be the unloading of the tender to wait through) which left us with 2 hours and 20 minutes ashore at the maximum. And since I knew my DH would want to be in line before 1 pm - as opposed to the running down the dock at the last minute concept - that did not leave us a lot of time to explore St Helier. And as we found out, St Helier really deserves a lot of time to explore!

 

[Disney Sheep]

Our plan had been to visit the Jersey War Tunnels Underground German Hospital, essentially a museum, as both DH and DS are interested in WWII history. Since it would take roughly 20 to 30 minutes each way there and back, and then recommended time to see the museum was 2 hours, we realized we did not have enough time left at this point and decided we needed a plan B. In my research I had noticed that St Helier has numerous outdoor statues or sculptures as they refer to them, so we stopped in to the Tourist Information Centre near Liberation Square and picked up a map of St Helier. We also lucked out and picked up a brochure which identifies statues/sculptures and lists addresses where they are located.

 

Our first stop was just around the corner from the TIC and Liberation Square where we found the Liberation statue, which includes figures of 'townspeople' raising the union flag to celebrate the end of the war. Side note: I had read somewhere that originally the sculptors had the 'townspeople' releasing birds, but given the lack of food at the time people argued that if there had been birds the starving townsfolk would have eaten them, so they changed it to a flag. This may just be 'urban myth', but it does sound plausible :).

 

 

Since the Liberation Square statue was probably the most representative of St Helier, we asked a passerby to take a family photo for us, which they did - however we got photo bombed by a little girl who wanted to play with the statues. We waited patiently for the girl and her mom to move on, but they were clearly oblivious of anyone else and although the mom moved off to a seat on the side, she even appeared to tell the girl to just stay and play with the statues. We just took our picture and headed off. When we passed the same spot 20 - 30 minutes later, the little girl was still playing with the statues, the mom was still oblivious and other tourists were still waiting patiently for the little girl to move out of their photo. Just things that make you go hmmm. We are simply happy that we have a photoshop program, and teenagers who know how to use it :).

 

[Disney Sheep]

DH checked his map and we headed off towards the location of the next statue - and at that point I saw a Costa coffee shop and diverted us inside. Although I don't usually drink coffee (other than Tim Horton's coffee with lots and lots of milk), I was definitely still in a fog. We ordered Café Americano for me and DH and got DS tea.

 

DH paid in cash using a UK £20 bill, and the change that he received was in St Helier tender.

 

The coffee was very strong from my perspective, and after a few sips I went back to the counter and asked for and received more milk. At this point I started to play with the foam on top of the coffee, and I made it look like a heart...ok, I tried to make it look like a heart, but DH and DS found it very funny and suggested my 'art work' looked more like a bum!

 

 

DS then poured a spoonful of sugar into the cup, and well the sugar made a hole, and at that point we were all giggling. And then DH fixed our artwork into a heart. Ok, yes there was teenaged boy humour there, but sometimes when you all manage to be laughing together at nonsense, those are the best memories. Side note: although the coffee shop advertised free WiFi, their router was apparently broken.

 

 

Since the coffee seemed to do its job, we headed off to find our next statue. Our goal was the Jersey cows, but on the way we spotted the Jongleurs, or a statue of three musicians. We continued up 'Rue des Trois Pigeons', essentially a street on a hill. In English, the sign read Hill Street. To misquote Sheldon on The Big Bang Theory TV program, in what universe does Three Pigeons Rd translate to Hill Street? Apparently that would be the St Helier universe :). But yes, Hill Street may have been a more accurate description from my perspective :).

[Disney Sheep]

DH next lead us to the statue that was farthest to the east that we were interested in seeing, La Vaque de Jerri, or the piece that celebrates the Jersey Cow.

 

 

Given that we were on Jersey Island I thought it very apropos. And we once again got photo bombed by a small child, but this was a very respectful small child who ran straight out of the viewfinder as soon as he realized he had run into our photo op. We just giggled and got out of his way as quickly as possible so that he could spend quality time with the cows too.

 

 

And the joy of 'following the statues' was that it lead us straight into 'Shoppers Paradise'! At this point we discovered a long pedestrian shopping street that was lined with an amazing variety and number of stores and shops.

 

 

It was very busy at this point, so clearly a lot of our fellow passengers had also found this street. We actually ran into one of our table mates enjoying a cool drink at an outdoor table while he waited for the ladies to finish shopping. Smart man.

 

 

I even found a teapot that really struck my fancy and it almost came home with me. However the logistics of carrying a large china object around for the rest of our sightseeing day and then getting this teapot home via buses and planes etc was an issue. As well, the price point combined with DH and DS looking askance at the flowered design resulted in me leaving it behind. Heavy sigh. A little later we discovered a Marks & Spencer and could not resist picking up our usual gluten-free cookies and pop for a picnic, which made DS very happy.

 

 

I probably could have spent the rest of the day checking out the stores in this area and not have seen all there was to see, but DH was ready to move on to the next statue - he probably figured it would be less expensive that way. Down the street we came across a frog statue.

 

 

Seriously, in the middle of the street there was a, 'island' of sorts with a column (pedestal) with a frog on top. It is called Le Bouan Crapaud and represents a common toad which occurs only on this island. Yes, it is strange to find a 'frog on a stick'. And even stranger is the fact that colloquially the people of St Helier are supposedly known as 'Crapauds', according to the brochure we picked up. See, we learned stuff by playing 'Where's Waldo' but statue style.

[ontheweb]

Glad you enjoyed this port. I believe that the basic Love Spoons excursion to Tenby cost approx $80US per person.

 

Sounds right. I believe it was $79 each.

[ontheweb]

We also had one hour less scheduled time than was on the original itinerary for St. Helier. The explanation we were given was because of tides, we had to get to Dover one hour earlier than our original scheduled time. But, we did not end up leaving the port that hour early. It seems some of the Princess excursions got back late. The captain did not seem pleased by the delay.

[Bimmer09]

Thanks for the photos from St Helier-looks like a very pretty town. I've never been there even though I lived in London for 13 years.

 

I was on the Ocean a few months after you. Wonderful ship.

 

Norris

[Disney Sheep]

We also had one hour less scheduled time than was on the original itinerary for St. Helier. The explanation we were given was because of tides, we had to get to Dover one hour earlier than our original scheduled time. But, we did not end up leaving the port that hour early. It seems some of the Princess excursions got back late. The captain did not seem pleased by the delay.

 

We definitely did not leave St Helier early - somehow I think we were even later than we were originally scheduled to leave. How did the tendering process work for you since I don't believe that you were on a Princess excursion?

[Disney Sheep]

Thanks for the photos from St Helier-looks like a very pretty town. I've never been there even though I lived in London for 13 years.

 

I was on the Ocean a few months after you. Wonderful ship.

 

Norris

 

Glad to have you reading along. I would have loved to have spent several days in St Helier.

[Disney Sheep]

Moving along we headed to the mostly 'westerly' statues we wanted to see (thereby covering as much of the town as we could) and we headed for the Queen Victoria statue in the Queen Victoria Park.

 

 

Although we did not have time to explore the area properly, the statue of Queen Victoria was surrounded by beautiful flowers and grass.

 

 

DS decided to fall on the ground 'exhausted' from all of our walking around town.

 

 

 

Yeah right, he wanted us to let him eat the cookies to sustain him. Nearby was a pedestal with a granite Jubilee crown on it.

 

 

 

And even better, searching out this statue lead us to an amazing beach!

[Disney Sheep]

At this point we crossed a fairly busy road to a spot with excellent views of Elizabeth Castle and the Ocean Princess.

 

 

 

I spotted a vendor on the beach with kayaks to rent and I was sincerely sad at that point that we did not have enough time left in our very short day for me to run down to the shore and rent kayaks and explore the coastline, but it was not to be.

 

 

DS however headed straight for the water, shucking his shoes on the way along.

 

 

Somehow DS just could not resist playing in the waves, despite the cold temperatures of the Atlantic Ocean (later he complained that it felt like it 'burnt' his skin - was it the cold, or the salt or something else in the water?. No matter, he had lots of fun.

 

 

[Disney Sheep]

Given that we were rapidly running out of time, DH headed us back towards the dock area, and at that point we realized that we still had about £11 in St Helier tender. I checked in to a nearby shop or two, but nothing struck my interest to buy. I then headed back to the Costa we had visited an hour or two before and asked the same clerk who had given us the change in the morning if she could change our money into GBP. We were very pleased when she made the exchange without any issue, and we headed for the dock. At this point I spotted one last statue, that of a replica of a Ship's Figurehead that is mounted on the Maritime Museum.

 

 

Overall, although our day did not go as planned, searching out statues gave us a great overview of the town of St Helier, and allowed us to learn a little about what was/is important to the people of the island. The brochure that we picked up actually lists over 50 pieces of 'Public Art in St Helier', so clearly there was lots more to see. I am pretty sure that i could have happily spent a couple of days in St Helier and still not seen and done all I would have liked to do. While waiting for the tender a gentleman from the UK had commented on how easy it was to use public transport to get around the island to see it - if we had sufficient time that is. Just after we got in line for the tender, several busses pulled up with Princess excursion passengers. I am pretty sure there was a really long line behind us.

 

Back on board the ship a little while later, we joined almost everyone else on the ship grabbing lunch in the Panorama Buffet. We actually ended up joining a couple of young men at a table out on the deck since trying to find a table was like playing a badly organized game of musical chairs! They had used their time in St Helier to visit Elizabeth Castle and had really enjoyed exploring it - they had simply taken a boat out to the island.

 

 

 

Lots of people commented that they wished that the length of time in the port had been longer. Some even mentioned that it would have been ideal if they could have swapped port times at Milford Haven and St Helier - and we agreed wholeheartedly.

[Disney Sheep]

We did not pull away from St Helier until well after 2 pm or even 3 or 4 pm, which is probably why Princess scheduled the last tender at 1 pm, since they knew it would take a while to get everyone back on board. The only good thing about having such a short port day is that it left more time for packing up to prepare for the long trip home!

 

We still managed to attend afternoon tea, this time at Sabatini's again.

 

 

We then followed that up with hot tub and mocktail time :). We are definitely creatures of habit when we find something that we enjoy :).

 

 

We used the early evening (after showers and before dinner) to pack up our suitcases and put them out in the hallway. So even though the evening show was on early tonight and we could have made it before supper, we were too busy packing and preparing for disembarkation, even though we had heard that David Copperfield (the comedian not the magician) was really good.

 

We had a great last supper and enjoyed our meal with our table mates, they had truly added to our cruise experience.

[ontheweb]

We definitely did not leave St Helier early - somehow I think we were even later than we were originally scheduled to leave. How did the tendering process work for you since I don't believe that you were on a Princess excursion?

 

We got a number, and I was wondering where all the others were from our private excursion. I was under the impression that we could not get a tender before all the Princess excursions. But, it turned out you could, and although I thought we got about the first available number, everyone else on our private excursion was already off the ship and waiting on the tour bus.

[ontheweb]

We did not pull away from St Helier until well after 2 pm or even 3 or 4 pm, which is probably why Princess scheduled the last tender at 1 pm, since they knew it would take a while to get everyone back on board. The only good thing about having such a short port day is that it left more time for packing up to prepare for the long trip home!

 

We still managed to attend afternoon tea, this time at Sabatini's again.

 

 

We then followed that up with hot tub and mocktail time :). We are definitely creatures of habit when we find something that we enjoy :).

 

 

We used the early evening (after showers and before dinner) to pack up our suitcases and put them out in the hallway. So even though the evening show was on early tonight and we could have made it before supper, we were too busy packing and preparing for disembarkation, even though we had heard that David Copperfield (the comedian not the magician) was really good.

 

We had a great last supper and enjoyed our meal with our table mates, they had truly added to our cruise experience.

 

We skipped the last show also. We had seen David Copperfield (not the magician) the first night, and found him obnoxious.

 

We did enjoy the singers and dancers and musicians who were featured in the shows. Two of the dancers also doubled as instructors for the dance classes we took. They also in their role as assistant cruise directors conducted the trivia contests.

 

We did enjoy the shows with the electric fiddler. The featured singer who did a show was also good.

 

We also enjoyed rhumba jazz, the duo, a male keyboard player and a female singer, who played around the ship. I had the opportunity to talk to the male member of the duo. I also got the chance to speak to a couple of the dancers. I found this one of the perks of a very small cruise ship.

 

We took one more Princess excursion. We took their excursion to Heathrow with a tour in Canterbury. We were driven around Dover and Canterbury before being dropped off at the Canterbury Cathedral. We really enjoyed this. The tour guide was excellent.

 

There were even folks on this tour who we knew. There was another couple from our cruisecritic roll call who were also celebrating their anniversary on board. They also had their 2 college age daughters with them. (So 6 out of the 14 on this excursion were actually from our roll call.) We actually also saw the 4 of them at the airport, and we all had a "I haven't seen you in a long time" laugh.