First time on Princess - Crown Pacific Coastal with photos

[epaul78]

 

No, you can't go outside. At least not through this door.

 

 

This is why we don't do the buffet.

 

 

Come early or else.

 

 

Lots of action in the Atrium

 

 

[epaul78]

My spot at Skywalkers

 

 

 

I have seen this exact piece on Every Single Cruise I have ever been on. Still not tempted to buy it. Wish they would figure out how to showcase local artists from regions specific to the itinerary, that would be much more interesting.

[shredie]

Great pictures. Brings it all back for me. (I've done the Crown out of San Pedro several times.)

[epaul78]

As someone who cruises both like a Norwegian, and like a Princess, I think you will be pleased as experience is almost the same. You will find that Princess does not have as much on-board activities, the entertainment/shows are a higher quality, and there is much more dining options on NCL. On Princess free room service, afternoon tea on sea days, and Pub lunch are nice.

 

I hope you have an outstanding cruise! The California coast is one of Princess best in my opinion. Also if you can, have dinner in San Francisco!

You called it exactly!

[srpilo]

Great effort !!

 

 

Looking forward to more

Srpilo

[atdahop]

Really enjoying your review and pictures. We were on the Crown in February and will be on next week for the 7 day coastal. Do you remember which formal night had the lobster?

[epaul78]

Really enjoying your review and pictures. We were on the Crown in February and will be on next week for the 7 day coastal. Do you remember which formal night had the lobster?

Thanks for reading along, we had a nice and relaxing cruise. Lobster night was the second formal one.

 

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[socaljo]

My spot at Skywalkers

 

 

I have seen this exact piece on Every Single Cruise I have ever been on. Still not tempted to buy it. Wish they would figure out how to showcase local artists from regions specific to the itinerary, that would be much more interesting.

Totally agree! Would love to see artists' work from local areas! Thanks for doing the review! Our "clean hand" experience last month on the Island was totally opposite. Cheerful greeting from HC people next to the hand sanitizer, head waiter in FDR squirting each diner personally! LOVED that! Looking forward to more of your review! Thanks for taking the time to do it!

[Chelly]

Nice review and excellent photos!

Thank you for doing this for us.

I will be on Crown's April 23 sailing. Same itinerary.

[epaul78]

San Francisco

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[easyboy]

I enjoyed following your review. Felt like we were cruising with you. Thanks.

[ChiefSealthCruz]

Also if you can, have dinner in San Francisco!

 

What are some good family places in San Francisco for dinner? I have a wife and three daughters, ages 8, 9 and 16. They know how to behave in a nice restaurant; they don't have fast-food behavior.

[epaul78]

San Francisco welcomed us with fog in the morning, but it quickly cleared off for a beautiful day. There was some issue at the dock that delayed our disembarkation by about an hour but we were off the ship shortly after 8. It was a pleasant walk to the hotel where we were scheduled to pick up our rental car and then we drove over the Golden Gate Bridge to Sonoma and the Dry Creek and Alexander Valley area.

 

We usually visit the Napa/Sonoma area every two years or so and have our favorite producers to visit. In fact, the San Francisco stop was the reason we chose this itinerary in the first place. We enjoyed brunch at a favorite café and picked up a picnic to go and had a lovely day in “wine country”. We are from the Yakima/Columbia Valley area of Washington State, which may mean something to you if you are an oenophile, in which case I am happy to recommend some of our favorite places, particularly if you like big, interesting reds, but the places we like are all about the wines and not about the tourists so it might not be a good fit for a casual tasting.

 

After a lovely day we located a shipping place to send some new treasures home to the cellar and then headed back to return our rental car at the airport. Oh dear, the time really got away from us and the metro from the airport took a lot longer than expected. We had made a dinner reservation for the Crown Grill at 7:00 but didn’t even make it back to the ship until 7:45. Our first stop was the steakhouse:

 

“Are we too late for dinner or can we change our reservation?” I asked.

“No problem!” I was assured by the consummate host, “we will accommodate you!”

 

So we rushed back to our stateroom the speedily change for dinner.

 

The previous night our waiter had advised us that the dining room would be open for “anytime dining” only, which makes sense when the ship is scheduled to be in port until late in the evening. We had made reservations at both the steakhouse and Sabatini’s as soon as we boarded the ship. In retrospect, I would have made our reservation for much later or for a different day, but I was so glad they were willing to seat us an hour past our reservation time. The service on the Crown has been faultless, absolutely everyone is helpful and pleasant and we are so impressed with the quality of the crew!

 

Dinner was superb and the scallops are not to be missed! They were cooked perfectly and were delicious! We also enjoyed the various salts including one smoked with apple wood from our hometown! The Crown Grill was the perfect ending to a wonderful day!

[epaul78]

 

 

 

 

 

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[XBGuy]

San Francisco welcomed us with fog in the morning, but it quickly cleared off for a beautiful day. There was some issue at the dock that delayed our disembarkation by about an hour but we were off the ship shortly after 8. It was a pleasant walk to the hotel where we were scheduled to pick up our rental car and then we drove over the Golden Gate Bridge to Sonoma and the Dry Creek and Alexander Valley area.

 

We usually visit the Napa/Sonoma area every two years or so and have our favorite producers to visit. In fact, the San Francisco stop was the reason we chose this itinerary in the first place. We enjoyed brunch at a favorite café and picked up a picnic to go and had a lovely day in “wine country”. We are from the Yakima/Columbia Valley area of Washington State, which may mean something to you if you are an oenophile, in which case I am happy to recommend some of our favorite places, particularly if you like big, interesting reds, but the places we like are all about the wines and not about the tourists so it might not be a good fit for a casual tasting.

 

After a lovely day we located a shipping place to send some new treasures home to the cellar and then headed back to return our rental car at the airport. Oh dear, the time really got away from us and the metro from the airport took a lot longer than expected. We had made a dinner reservation for the Crown Grill at 7:00 but didn’t even make it back to the ship until 7:45. Our first stop was the steakhouse:

 

“Are we too late for dinner or can we change our reservation?” I asked.

“No problem!” I was assured by the consummate host, “we will accommodate you!”

 

So we rushed back to our stateroom the speedily change for dinner.

 

The previous night our waiter had advised us that the dining room would be open for “anytime dining” only, which makes sense when the ship is scheduled to be in port until late in the evening. We had made reservations at both the steakhouse and Sabatini’s as soon as we boarded the ship. In retrospect, I would have made our reservation for much later or for a different day, but I was so glad they were willing to seat us an hour past our reservation time. The service on the Crown has been faultless, absolutely everyone is helpful and pleasant and we are so impressed with the quality of the crew!

 

Dinner was superb and the scallops are not to be missed! They were cooked perfectly and were delicious! We also enjoyed the various salts including one smoked with apple wood from our hometown! The Crown Grill was the perfect ending to a wonderful day!

 

Loving the pics (especially, the food) and loving your reports, epaul. I am glad to see the good report on the Crown Grill. Our last two visits to the CG on the Crown Princess have been somewhat disappointing. On the other hand Sabbatini's has been consistently excellent.

 

Can you tell us the name of your favorite wine country brunch place. Also, what wineries did you visit and what wines did you buy? Dry Creek Valley and Alexander Valley are ground zero for Zinfandel in my opinion.

 

+1 on Washington reds.

 

Leaving this Saturday on the Crown with the same itinerary.

[Thrak]

epaul78 posted:

 

I do think that dressing for dinner makes it more special and part of the fun of a cruise is having the “dress for dinner” type of experience. Unfortunately (or not, I guess, depending on your opinion) the dress code was not enforced AT ALL, at least not in the Botticelli dining room. We saw adult passengers in JEANS on the Formal nights and shorts and flip flops on the Smart Casual evenings. If they are going to have a dress code they should either enforce it or do away with it or maybe offer the option of "anytime dining" with no dress code and regular dinner seatings with so that you can pick what you like?

 

I totally agree! They do have a policy so they should enforce it.

[epaul78]

Costeaux French Bakery in Healdsburg is great for brunch!

 

If you like Zin, call Unti and make an appointment for a tasting, after that be sure to visit Dry Creek Vineyards. There is a country store with a great deli counter for lunch just down the road, you will drive right by it.

 

For us no visit is complete without a stop at Ty Caton (try the Tytanium) and Muscardini. If you want an amazing Cab. visit BWise! I am in love with absolutely everything they do and their tasting room staff is very knowledgable. I am also a fan of Kunde, but that is a bit more of a drive and a little mote touristy, but a beautiful place to visit if you are only going to go to one or two wineries. You will have to post back and let us know where you went and what you loved!

 

 

 

 

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[Chelly]

Again, thank you.

So very appreciated for my upcoming CA coastal cruise on Crown.

[epaul78]

We had a beautiful sunny sea day after San Francisco, not a lot going on but a great day to relax and enjoy being on a cruise.

 

We had a tail-wind that negated the headwind from the forward motion of the ship so it was really calm on deck.

 

 

 

 

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[XBGuy]

Thanks for the ideas, epaul. I am familiar with some of them. We are going to be up in that neighborhood in late June. I'll add these to the list.

 

Here are a few of my favorites in that neighborhood that you might consider for your next trip:

 

• Mauritson WIndery--Just down the road from Unti. OK, maybe it's up the road. Very excellent "drop in" tasting room. Very excellent wines. I had a Petite Sirah (bottled under their Rockpile label) the other day that just about blew my socks off.
   
  
• Enkidu Winery--Their "drop in" tasting room is just off the Sonoma Square. T/R Mgr., Paul, is top notch. Wines are great. They source their grapes from various vineyars, and all are excellent. If you like roses, they have a Syrah example that is my very favorite.
   
  
• Good dinner place--Fig Cafe in Glen Ellen--vey informal place run by the Girl and the Fig people. $0 corkage.
  

 

I am enjoying your reports and hope that they are continuing.

[Chelly]

Pretty pretty.

[epaul78]

Thanks for the ideas, epaul. I am familiar with some of them. We are going to be up in that neighborhood in late June. I'll add these to the list.

 

Here are a few of my favorites in that neighborhood that you might consider for your next trip:

 

• Mauritson WIndery--Just down the road from Unti. OK, maybe it's up the road. Very excellent "drop in" tasting room. Very excellent wines. I had a Petite Sirah (bottled under their Rockpile label) the other day that just about blew my socks off.
   
  
• Enkidu Winery--Their "drop in" tasting room is just off the Sonoma Square. T/R Mgr., Paul, is top notch. Wines are great. They source their grapes from various vineyars, and all are excellent. If you like roses, they have a Syrah example that is my very favorite.
   
  
• Good dinner place--Fig Cafe in Glen Ellen--vey informal place run by the Girl and the Fig people. $0 corkage.
  

 

I am enjoying your reports and hope that they are continuing.

 

You have great taste - we have had Rockpile before, I don't recall the vintage, but it was good! Thanks for the tips, we are always looking for something new and fabulous to try!

[epaul78]

As promised here is my big huge peeve with this cruise:

 

The stemware is completely, horribly, awfully wrong!

 

If you don't drink (good) wine, then you don't care. But if you do drink good wine and especially if you go to the trouble of bringing your own wine onboard and paying someone to serve it to you, the least they can do is not pour it into a water glass.

 

A water goblet! Yes! That is what it is and trying to find anything else is a major undertaking.

 

Let me back up a little first before my rant gets really out of control... We brought two bottles of wine onboard with us at embarkation, knowing that we would be getting some more at San Francisco. So those two were checked in free but with no special sticker or means of tracking if we had paid corkage or were exempt from corkage or what.

 

On Royal they charge everything you bring onboard and limit how many bottles and Norwegian charges when you bring it on the ship and they put a sticker on the bottle indicating that the cover charge has been paid. It was interesting to see it done this way on the Crown.

 

So the first night in the dining room we brought our own wine to dinner and our waiter tried to pour it into the water goblet. I begged him to please not do that to our beautiful wine and ruin it for us.

 

"Please can you find an actual wine glass?"

 

Poor guy, he must have had to go all over the place to come up with the rolled rim chardonnay glasses. (For our Merlot) After all that trouble I couldn't criticize the slightly better glasses so we lived with it. But then I was watching my neighbors when they ordered wine by the glass and the waiter took their water goblet away and then brought back the same glass with wine in it.

 

The second night we went to Vines and ordered some wine by the glass and specifically asked for Ridel glasses (this is apparently the only place on the entire ship that has real wine glasses - but I only saw the burgundy glasses, I don't know what would happen if you want Chardonnay or a Pinot Noir). We casually wandered off with our drinks - absconding with the stemware.

 

Yes, I will admit that we washed the glasses in the sink in our stateroom, opened our own wine, and brought it with us to dinner in the dining room that night!

 

To our waiter's credit, he pays attention and had the previous night's slightly better than water goblet stemware at our table. From then on, he safeguarded the ill-gotten wine glasses and personally locked them up at his station every night so we would have them at dinner (WIN for the service!!!)

 

There's more to come, but first, photos...

[epaul78]

so wrong..

 

 

 

right:

[epaul78]

The grapevine wine tasting on the ship was a complete waste of time. I sort of figured that it would be and DH left me to go solo because he KNEW it wasn't going to be any good.

 

Wine glasses again! Would you guess from the water goblets that they were going to be pouring a Sauv Blanc, Chardonnay, Malbec, and Petite Syrah? The wines were not great and there was no thought or theme to the tasting and the stemware certainly did not help the wine in any way.

 

I had low expectations, but they should have been lower. But one would think that a cruise line selling wine cruises and offering wine tastings would have at least one sommelier and might think about upgrading the stemware.

 

If you want a real wine cruise, sail with Celebrity. They have a team of sommeliers, good stemware (and even offer a Ridel glass-class that is fantastic), and a cellar that is interesting enough that you don't need to bring your own.

 

As far as bringing your own though, the corkage thing on Princess was no big deal. :) We brought two free bottles when we boarded and then we brought on four more in San Francisco. They charged us corkage for two and gave me a receipt. We also had a bottle of wine as a gift delivered to our stateroom. The wait staff never pushed the corkage issue and there was no way to tell which bottle was paid and which one was free.