LIVE! Crown Princess Hawaii/South Pacific 10/17 - 11/14

[Carolyn R]

Have you been to see Fernando? He is REALLY good. I recommend it.

[monakayk]

Hey Adelle,

I know you and Don are having a wonderful time on this cruise and know you will be reading it. So happy to have heard from you via: e-mails. Enjoying this thread!:D:D:D

Edited November 12, 2015 by monakayk

[ccrain]

Today’s weather is better. We’re hoping it gets better yet. Temperature has dropped noticeably, and it was real stormy yesterday. This morning, mostly cloudy.

 

The weather kept Judy in bed all day yesterday. The winds got up to 40 knots absolute from the NE. That made the promenade deck very dangerous, so they shut down parts of it, as well as some top parts of the ship as well. I didn’t do much of anything but run ginger ale and bitters, green apples and soup to Judy and help her to the bathroom and back. There was enough movement that she could have easily fell – which would not have been a good thing without me there.

 

So for us, absolutely nothing happened yesterday. We even missed a repeat of Italian dinner last night with Paul and Elizabeth. Darn. Of all the dinners to miss, this is one we didn’t want to, but when you are on a ship for 28 days with a bunch of people from around the country, you are bound to be exposed to a lot of different germs and viruses.

 

However, as a fill-in, I have figured out how to use messenger and how to get on the internet when others can’t. First of all, I’m using a Surface Pro 3 with a pretty recent chip set, so that might help. Secondly, I do not log into Crown Princess automatically, I do it manually. I always first go to “crown.princess.com” first. Then I use the button at the bottom to get to the internet. Then I always open a new window in Edge, the new browser, and use a favorites tab to go the site I want, not a history tab. In most cases, I go right in, but rather slowly. There are cases when I get a can’t connect window. In that case I close the window, open another and go back to the site using a favorite tab again. So far its worked reliably for me across the pacific.

 

Now for messenger. Every person’s account is assigned a unique alpha-numeric messenger number. You have to get that number from the upper right hand corner of your messenger page. So whomever you want to message via the messenger account, you first have to get their number, search for them using the search function in messenger, then their name will pop up and you can then use their actual name in the messaging TO field.

 

I could not find an explanation of this process anywhere on the intranet pages. Why they don’t just simply allow us to message a cabin or actual person, I don’t know. But the process works once you get it set up right.

 

So let’s look at the patter for the last real day at sea – sans packing day. And it is chock full of stuff I want to see and do – and won’t be able to do it all either – and there are some really interesting topics. Like HUH? I just wish Kelvin had spread some of this out over the past couple of days. Well, here we go.

Four lectures and what looks like a seminar. Hawaiian Myths, Cop TV programs, Charles Lindbergh, and one by Joe that I really wanted to see, but there is a conflict – 25 amazing dates that shook the world. (As a teaser Joe told me that his #1 single even date is the defeat of the Spanish Armada. Very interesting choice.) There is also a seminar I’ve never seen before – Sexuality for Seniors. Nuff said? The outlet sale is on today. Neville’s giving a service etiquette demonstration in the Piazza. Arts and Crafts is a Colorful Fish Magnet. Bingo. A pub lunch in Crown Grill. Ballroom dance class. Spelling bee final. Ping Pong is the Princess Heptathlon event. An origami class. The MUTS afternoon movie is Thor the Dark World and a Discovery Space Trivia.

 

Tonight is busy, busy, busy. Its formal night. The Avengers – Age of Ultron is on at MUTS. The show is “Disco – Blame it on the Boogie”. Jamie has his own cabaret show in Explorer’s. There is another Liar’s Club and a balloon drop party. And a farewell cocktail party.

 

This is going to be difficult to schedule….Later!

[Therese S.]

ccrain - Thanks so much for your daily travel log. We hope to take this cruise possibly in 2017. Especially enjoyed reading about your port days and all the fun you're having, you made it come alive for me.

[ccrain]

Friday the 13th. I wonder what the iceberg forecast is. It’s mostly clear, a lot chillier for sure, much less wind, lower swell. Going to be a beautiful day. Too bad its spoiled by packing day!

 

Judy felt much better yesterday. Her sinus headache was gone and that was contributing a lot to her nausea, along with the motion. Yesterday was much calmer. Yesterday was a scheduling nightmare. Too much stuff piled into the last real day at sea. Guess we didn’t have enough sea days prior to do some of this stuff!

 

We started off with Neville’s Service Etiquette presentation in the Piazza. It was a real hoot, but I now know how to signal the wait staff that I am done with my meal or just catching my breath. What was real funny was the back channel conversation happening behind me before the presentation. A lot of whining and complaining about rude people blocking people’s view – and then Erno shows up in the middle of the presentation (he’s a head waiter) dressed in civvies but carrying a Princess tote bag and I hear, just before they recognized him, from behind – ‘look at that, he’s trying to find a seat in the middle of the show’! That was funny!

 

After Neville’s show, no we did not go to the ‘Sexuality for Seniors’ presentation, we grabbed some lunch in the IC. I had a Bolognese pie, a meat pie basically, that was really excellent. In the afternoon we hit the backstage tour in the theater. I’d never been to one before. It was a treat to talk to the dancers. Boy is it an organized mess back there. It reminds me of one of those abandoned storage shelters people buy at auction. At 1400 we were going to the boat competition instead of Joe’s 25 most important dates in history lecture. But the pool was empty. Unbeknownst to us, they moved the competition to the aft pool and didn’t announce it – funny, the art auction guy has easy access to the PA system. So we missed the boat regatta and did the lecture instead.

 

Last night was simply a night you couldn’t do dinner except for fast food. We had to skip Ultron on MUTS, hit the early show of Disco – Blame it on the Boogie, grab a bite in the IC, hit Jamie’s show, then Liars Club, then the balloon drop, then drop by and say hello to Carmen in Skywalkers. We missed the Captain’s cocktail party.

 

The Disco show we’ve not seen before. Great music from the 70’s, great choreography and dancing. Lots of costume changes. Still like the Party show better as far as dance synchronization, musicality and presentation. The dance troupe has done a lot of good stuff on this cruise. The shows have been good and the Disco party and Thriller presentations were really good. I just wish TPTB hadn’t scheduled so much stuff in the last night.

 

We then did Liar’s Club and it was really funny. A lot funnier this time than last. Fernando moderated, Nicole, Sasha and Matais were panelists. We had some familiar words from previous shows and got 3 out of 4, but another team got 100%.

 

After Liar’s Club was Jamie’s cabaret show. Jamie did a great job. He is one fantastic singer and entertainer. Who else can syncopate his bottom cheeks with the music! Now you have to understand, counting this cruise we will have spent 90 days at sea with Jamie, including a 51 day Ruby B2B2B2B in the med, with a transatlantic, in 2013. In that cruise, when he sang during the International Crew show, Judy threw a pair of Samantha’s purple sexy panties on the stage. (Of course then I threw a pair of white boxer-briefs to Colin during the ‘If I Were Not Upon the Sea’ skit.) In June, Jamie did not sing on the Golden, but we were prepared for Ally to throw a pair to him. This cruise we came prepared with a pair of fluorescent pink panties especially for Jamie. So in the middle of Jamie’s show he came down and took Judy on stage to dance. Of course she took the panties in one hand with her. He actually left her on the stage doing a cha cha while he sat in the audience and sang. Her revenge, upon his return, was to dab his fore head with the panties and then put them in his hand and walk off the stage. That got a lot of hoots and hollers for sure. And the best thing was I got the whole show on HD video.

 

The balloon drop was next – very busy night. Although there was a major malfunction of the balloon drop mechanism in that it didn’t zipper and drop all the balloons at once. They kind of came out piecemeal.

 

We did make it to Skywalkers to talk to Carmen for a while before getting to bed rather late.

 

So the patter for the last day. The Culinary Demonstration is on this morning. Arts and Crafts is a Scallop Shell Tote. Zumba is this morning, but I am skipping it. Bingo. A BONUS ART AUCTION! WOW! Navigational chart auction. Mystery of the Black Dahlia, British Aviation and a US Presidents lecture. The theater movie this afternoon is Jurassic World. Princess Pop stars final, a final Hulu, Ukulele and Line Dance classes.

 

Tonight’s headliner is vocalist Christopher Riggins, MUTS is Terminator Genesis. Stargazing is back. A couple of trivias, and that is about it.

 

I will summarize and wrap up the cruise when I get a chance tomorrow. Hope you’ve enjoyed riding along.

[juniper berries]

Reading your post every day has been great. Thankyou for taking the time to do this. Now i really want to do this cruise. Can you tell me if the arts and crafts that you have been mentioning every day if there is a cost and what time of day they are held.

Thanks again

Safe travels home and where every you roam.:)

[greenie082756]

Thank you for taking the time to let us in on your adventure.

 

This is the cruise that I hope that my DH and I will be doing when we both are retired. Unfortunately, we still have a few years left :mad:

 

This has been informative and entertaining. Again, thank you!!

[traveling1969]

Hello from the Crown,

 

Well, packing day is here. This is when we find out if all the goodies we've picked up will make it back home with us. We were right on the money with weight on the way here but we also brought a ton of books with us and since we'll be leaving those here, hopefully we'll be OK.

 

A big thank you for all who have taken the time to post on this thread. A special salute to CCRAIN who has carried this thread and without whom this thread would be indeed be threadbare! I will be posting an extensive review of the cruise once we hit the home of FREE minutes.

 

Coming up this afternoon is the Princess Pop Star finale. Wish me luck as I go for the Grand Prize of a free around the world cruise for two:D. Yeah, right! More like a few trinkets and for the victor, a bottle of bubbly. Of course, it's all in fun and I wish all my fellow competitors good luck.

 

The sun is shining and the seas are much calmer than they have been for the past few days. We had a really bumpy couple of days but meclizine smoothed them out for us.

 

Today we'll be saying goodbye to all the great crew members who have made this trip so memorable. Kudos to Edward and Ping from the Elite lounge and our excellent wait staff Esmael and Vladislav. Our cabin steward, Leopoldo has been taking good care of us as well. We have found the entire crew to be friendly, helpful and efficient.

 

I may have a few minutes left after printing boarding passes and if so, will try to post a brief Aloha tonight.

 

Harry

[caribill]

We started off with Neville’s Service Etiquette presentation in the Piazza. It was a real hoot, but I now know how to signal the wait staff that I am done with my meal or just catching my breath.

 

Please share this "how to" with us.

[bcnvcanada]

Thank you to ccrain and all the others who gave us a wonderful

travel journey. Your holiday brought back many memories.

Thanks for taking the time to take us along. Safe travels.

[ccrain]

Reading your post every day has been great. Thankyou for taking the time to do this. Now i really want to do this cruise. Can you tell me if the arts and crafts that you have been mentioning every day if there is a cost and what time of day they are held.

Thanks again

Safe travels home and where every you roam.:)

 

A few of the arts and crafts did require a fee. The patters are packed so I will have to look back over. Most of the classes did not require a fee, like basic lei making, ribbons, napkin folding, etc. Even the shell related stuff sometimes did not require a fee.

 

I'll let you know in the next few days as we decompress and unpack...

[ccrain]

Please share this "how to" with us.

 

.."dining etiquette utensil placement". The images show the various placements and that is how they train their wait staff - to recognize the clues in utensil placement.

 

Its pretty cool...

[ccrain]

Thank you to ccrain and all the others who gave us a wonderful

travel journey. Your holiday brought back many memories.

Thanks for taking the time to take us along. Safe travels.

 

Hope you all enjoyed the travel log and hopefully it will help you in future cruises.

 

I will summarize the trip on this thread later in the week and post a detailed review later as well as scanning the patterns and posting them on-line...

[Dietemann]

.."dining etiquette utensil placement". The images show the various placements and that is how they train their wait staff - to recognize the clues in utensil placement.

 

Its pretty cool...

 

They probably show the European way - if you are not finished eating you cross your knife and fork. If you are done, lay knife and fork side by side.

[RetiredNTraveling]

They probably show the European way - if you are not finished eating you cross your knife and fork. If you are done, lay knife and fork side by side.

 

Before our first cruise, we checked it out on the net and quickly found both ways. We tend to follow the "tines down with the knife beside" and it hasn't failed us yet.

Just Mike

 

 

Oh yeah! Welcome back! This has been an interesting Live From.

Edited November 14, 2015 by RetiredNTraveling

[Cruisin Sal]

Judy & Charles,

 

Safe journey home.

 

Sally

[soccergang]

Have been following along with CCrain and Traveling 1969. We would like to do this cruise in 2017, when my husband retires from teaching. I really have enjoyed reading all the posts.

[L&S80]

ccrain.................I've jotted down interesting things you told about so that I can make sure & look for them next year when we do this cruise.........it's nice to know what to look for in the Patters...........

 

 

 

 

Sharon

[traveling1969]

Home safe and sound and things could not have went any smoother. We were the very first ones off the ship!!!!. A first for us! Wait, what am I so happy about? Better to celebrate being the last ones off the ship;).

 

Nonetheless, it was another great cruise with Princess and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Disembarkation was a piece of cake. Our Prime time shuttle was waiting even though we were almost an hour early. We had to wait a few minutes for the last of our shuttle group to arrive but made it to LAX with lots of time to spare. I had booked the 7 passenger van for $70 then posted on our roll call for participants and garnered 4 takers within a few hours.

 

Our flights (Delta) were on time and stress free. TSA checkpoint at LAX was well staffed and there were no lines. With the situation in France, we didn't know what to expect but there were no problems or delays.

 

After being met by our friends at the airport, we finally walked in the house at around 10 pm. Our kitties were waiting and after lots of petting and ankle bumping and hand feeding we mixed a up a couple of GIANT Beefeater martinis and plopped into our comfy chairs and just chilled.

 

As promised, I'll try to get right to the first installment of my review of our cruise tomorrow or Monday.

 

We hated to say goodbye to the Crown but we have our upcoming TA on the Ocean Princess to assuage the pain. So long for now.

 

Harry

[ccrain]

Since our flight was not until 1800 we opted for a slow Princess transfer to LAX. Got TSA pre-check, which made things much easier. Had a great lunch in Terminal 7 and then just chilled. Flight to COS was on-time. Cabbed home and slept in our own bed.

 

This morning the ship, she is still moving! No Latte! No Zumba! No breakfast sandwich and we will have to make our own bed and do our own laundry (that little blue card in the door isn't working)!

 

That sucketh!

[chamima]

Since our flight was not until 1800 we opted for a slow Princess transfer to LAX. Got TSA pre-check, which made things much easier. Had a great lunch in Terminal 7 and then just chilled. Flight to COS was on-time. Cabbed home and slept in our own bed.

 

This morning the ship, she is still moving! No Latte! No Zumba! No breakfast sandwich and we will have to make our own bed and do our own laundry (that little blue card in the door isn't working)!

 

That sucketh!

 

 

If you're referring to Mal de debarquement - I get it also.

It really sucks! :(

Meclizine helps a lot.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mal_de_debarquement

[BLJBLJ]

Since our flight was not until 1800 we opted for a slow Princess transfer to LAX. Got TSA pre-check, which made things much easier. Had a great lunch in Terminal 7 and then just chilled. Flight to COS was on-time. Cabbed home and slept in our own bed.

 

This morning the ship, she is still moving! No Latte! No Zumba! No breakfast sandwich and we will have to make our own bed and do our own laundry (that little blue card in the door isn't working)!

 

That sucketh!

 

Welcome home everyone... Thanks for taking the time to blog and letting all of us follow along. Brenda

[machineknitter]

Thanks, Harry, for arranging the Prime Time Shuttle. Sorry we made you wait for us.....it was extremely hard to catch an elevator down from 14th floor with our luggage. Glad you made it to your plane on time! Getting to the airport early made it a breeze for us to get through check-in and security. I heard from others that getting there by 10 or later meant they had long lines to get through.

 

I started the laundry this morning. As I held the laundry basket I said to Frank,"I have a job for you. Itemize these and put them in the paper bag for the laundry!"

He said, "But I am Elite!"

I said, "It will take many days, as 100% of the passengers on this ship are Elite!" <G>

 

Oh, well. It's great to be home. We are looking at the ads to plan our next cruise.

[TwoBadKnees]

This was the first Princess cruise that I do not ever remember seeing French Onion Soup offered in the MDR. Usually it's on the same menu as escargot. I thought on a 28 day cruise, it would come around twice.

 

I missed the chocolate covered strawberries on formal night.

 

28 days went by pretty quickly. My wife enjoyed the arts & crafts almost every sea day.

Edited November 15, 2015 by TwoBadKnees

[ccrain]

This was the first Princess cruise that I do not ever remember seeing French Onion Soup offered in the MDR. Usually it's on the same menu as escargot. I thought on a 28 day cruise, it would come around twice.

 

I missed the chocolate covered strawberries on formal night.

 

28 days went by pretty quickly. My wife enjoyed the arts & crafts almost every sea day.

 

We got some French onion soup on the last night. Just had to special order it through Elizabeth's and Paul's waitress, BUT, it wasn't as good as the FOS in the Crown Grill...