Ruby Princess Alaska Cruise Review May 19 to 26, 2018.

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I have a few Princess cruises under my belt, and have even been on a few Alaska cruises (this was my 5th), but I have yet to do a review on Alaska. I love to read reviews as I am anticipating a cruise, especially with pictures, so I will do my best adding them. Please be aware that I am no photographer, and all pictures are just from an iphone.

 

Alaska was not on my radar, as my husband and I have a cruise set in October for the Mediterranean, so when my dear friend called with a last minute deal we just couldn't pass up for a Balcony on the Ruby, it became front and center in my mind that a girl's cruise was in order. We only had one week to plan and get ready. Luckily we live in Washington State and our drive to port is about 5 hours.

We chanced going to catch the ship the same day as the cruise, but we armed ourselves with travel insurance just in case! We left at 5:30a.m. and luckily no problems occurred on the road that day. As a matter of fact, a good omen of this rainbow before the sun had even risen, gave me a good feeling.

 

 

Also lucky for us, her son lives about a half hour from the port so he very graciously drove us and kept her car for the week. Parking in Seattle is very expensive and very hard to come by.

 

He dropped us off about 11:15 I think. Porters were taking luggage for both the Ruby and the Eurodam so they warned us to be careful to have the right porter depending on the color of their vests warn. We went through security and visited the "we have some wine" desk. That all went smoothly and THEN we checked in. They were all so friendly and nice, BUT our check in gal disappeared for ages. Finally when she comes back she has bad news. My card was given to me, but my friend's card was missing, or never been printed.

We learned that no one is allowed to enter the ship without their card and they only can print the cards on the ship. They promised someone would print it and be right out in about 10 minutes. She motioned for us to sit in an area and wait. We realize at that point that everyone had already gotten on the ship. If we had her card we could have walked right on.

 

I am sure any seasoned cruisers out there, who know the thrill and joy of walking on the ship, will understand how awful this was. We sat and sat and sat. About a half hour later I approached a desk check-in person again. They called to find out what was going on. Well seems the machine onboard was broken down. I ask if there was anyway we could get on and enjoy the ship while we wait for it. I am again told "No one can get on without a card". Um, what if the machine is never fixed? I get a shrug. We are directed to a different area to sit. About five minutes later another couple join us as they also are missing cards. We wait another 10 minutes so total of 45 awful minutes watching everyone else get on the ship and wondering if we will be left in Seattle, and someone appears with the cards.

 

Once we were finally on, I went to the service desk to discuss our wait of 45 minutes. I will preface this with all other staff we encountered on this cruise were wonderful and our service was stellar, but this person, whose name was Iva, was not wonderful! I explained what happened, and she gave me a hard stare saying nothing. I then suggested for our inconvenience possibly a comped specialty dinner or maybe a drink coupon or two would be a nice gesture. She said I will check with a supervisor. She leaves, comes right back and says "sorry, no we don't do that." Then stared me down again.

Wow, there could have been so many things happen that even if the end result is a "no" it would have felt better.

I did not feel the need to waste more time on pursuing this with anyone higher up and we headed for a bite to eat.

 

It took a long time and this yummy drink off the back of the ship to help things feel good again.

 

 

Here is our view during lunch. Looks like they were doing a little railing work.

 

 

A shot of the back swimming pool.

 

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On our last cruise in January was our first encounter with having to wait on public deck for the rooms to be opened. They always do that on Celebrity, but Princess is usually a "go right to room" ship. This was another time we had to wait for the room. They gave the all clear and we went to our wonderful guaranteed Balcony B235. Here is our view off the balcony before we left Port 91 in Seattle.

 

 

 

This is me, loving how great our assigned room was!

 

 

Walking out on deck we see the Eurodam parked beside us.

 

 

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I did not get a lot of photos from the ship as I have been on the Ruby a few times. I will share ones through the review, but there are not a lot.

 

This is the play area for children off the back of the ship.

 

 

 

This is West Seattle in the background. My son lives over there, so had to take a picture or two.

 

 

Downtown Seattle from the back of the ship.

 

 

We later went to our muster station in the Princess Theater. Lucky you if you get that muster station. A lot of

places to sit and no cramming in. Afterwards we headed to our balcony for sail away. My friend is toasting

to a fabulous cruise. One of the wines may have been mine, then again, maybe not.

 

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following!

 

Welcome siginalot! Thanks for reading along.

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We had overcast skies for sail away, but it was beautiful. This is Elliot Bay! I can't even imagine how they get all those boats/yachts in there.

 

 

Goodbye Seattle! I am sure we will meet again TOO soon!

 

 

Looks like some rain ahead...

 

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We both liked to dress up for dinner, but that is definitely up to the individual. There is all kinds of attire

in the dining room. I don't think anyone could get turned away unless you came in the buff I think. LOL

 

But at least it would give Cruise Critic quite a lot to talk over if you did. Was that formal buff wear or casual?

 

 

Before we had dinner we had some snacks up in the Sky Walkers lounge for the Platinum/

Elite. There were only 60-70 Elites onboard. I love the first night as Guacamole and chips is one of my favorites.

 

At home I try to be strictly Vegan. I do eat a little fish and some dairy on a cruise. I find Princess severely lacking in the Plant Based eating department. Their salad bar in the buffet is pretty good but overall sorely lacking in any beans. We Plant Based eaters love our beans!!! I may have seen one maybe two dishes with beans in them in the Main dining room.

 

I didn't take very many food pictures either, but I will add the few as I go along. We had any time dining.

 

This is the Wedge Salad on night one.

 

 

 

This was the vegetarian option that night of kind of Thai noodle dish called Sobo Noodles. It was not very good.

 

 

 

 

 

Dessert for us was Flourless Chocolate cake. This was fantastic, but I ate it before I could get a picture.

 

We hit the welcome aboard show before our dinner, sorry I got the cart before the horse so to speak. The singer was Lou Gazzara who was one of the finalists in the second year of American Idol. He was fantastic. We loved his show! My notes say it was one of the best Princess shows I have ever seen.

 

Since we were up at 4a.m., we called it a night very early.

My bed was very comfortable and I slept with that barely perceivable rocking of the ship. LOVE IT!! End to a mainly fantastic day!

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Before bed last night we were to turn clocks back one hour. At least the clock said 5:20 when I woke up instead of

4:20. Sometimes a crazy wake up program gets loaded from the prior day and that is what happened since I was

up so early yesterday for our drive.

 

My friend found the slight light coming under the curtain made her wake up extra early too. Alaska has a lot of daylight hours!

 

This was a great time to enjoy that balcony. We saw many Dall's Porpoise playing in the ocean, and some seals. Possibly saw a spray from a whale but nothing more on the whale sightings.

 

Being an Elite, I get a free mini bar set up. I traded it in for two coffee cards. There are a few threads on here talking about these cards. The ones we got were smaller than my previous cards and had nothing on the back, and no expiration date. I read that it doesn't matter they will all expire in August 2019 apparently. Dang, I was rather excited mine did not have an expiration date.

 

We went down most mornings and got a little something at the International Cafe on the coffee card and often times a bowl of melons and wonderful banana/walnut bread.

 

My morning consisted of watching a Wilderness documentary short and then line dancing. The entertainment staff we had at things we attended were all top notch. There was a corn hole bean bag toss in the atrium that was great fun and I actually got one in so made it to round two and three, but alas my one in was all she wrote. There was a can can lesson also in the atrium and those participating were asked to come the next night at 8:30 as there was some kind of show we would be in. 8:30 the next night found us doing something else, so we missed this. I am sure it was great fun.

 

There was a pub lunch today. It was held in the Crown Grill and we enjoyed it very much. I do love their fish and chips but the table next to us got every one of the entrees to share and they all looked interesting.

 

At 1:30 in the theater was a lumberjack talk and axe throwing competition. WHAT??? So Alaska, isn't it! We had to go see this. The Lumberjack was onboard from Ketchikan's lumberjack show. Ladies, he is a cutie! This was so unique, and throughout the cruise I noticed more of this kind of thing and thank Princess for adding these special touches of Alaska!

 

Next up was the naturalist, Michael Modzelewski. I normally try these presentations out and then never go back as the person can be rather boring. I found Michael's talks to be wonderful. We ended up at all four of his presentations. He lives life on an island off of Ketchikan.

 

Both of us, my friend more than myself, like to do laps around deck 7. Today the weather was light rain/wind jacket required weather. Remember this is May and later in the summer this may have not been necessary. It is so fun to watch for wild life as I walk. I again saw the porpoises. It is so amazing being able to see the beautiful land for most of the cruise days.

 

This was formal night. Cheers!

 

 

The new to me menu had sides listed at the bottom of the right hand side of the menu. I did not photograph the new menus, but on another thread I know someone else has.

I think possibly three times I bypassed the vegetarian entree and went with just the sides. This rather baffled the servers and they pushed me to order an entree, but I ended up loving the sides. Here is one and there were BEANS!

 

 

Tonight the show in the theater was a production show called Colors of the World. I enjoyed it. Then on to the Explorers Lounge and watch Music with Funch. He is great! I guess he is the piano player from Crooner's but we did not see him play in there.

 

Again it was an early night.

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Day three was a late arrival to Juneau.

 

They announced that today between 6 and 8 a.m. was to be some great wild life spotting. My internal crazy alarm woke me up at 4:20. I tell myself it is insane, but can not go back to sleep. I was ready way before 6 on the balcony to see whatever was coming. Alas, no wild life but these beautiful views met us.

 

 

 

 

 

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Day three views cont.

 

 

 

 

 

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Day three views cont.

 

 

 

 

There is a hanging glacier up there.

 

 

[trbarton]

I have a few Princess cruises under my belt, and have even been on a few Alaska cruises (this was my 5th), but I have yet to do a review on Alaska. I love to read reviews as I am anticipating a cruise, especially with pictures, so I will do my best adding them. Please be aware that I am no photographer, and all pictures are just from an iphone.

 

Alaska was not on my radar, as my husband and I have a cruise set in October for the Mediterranean, so when my dear friend called with a last minute deal we just couldn't pass up for a Balcony on the Ruby, it became front and center in my mind that a girl's cruise was in order. We only had one week to plan and get ready. Luckily we live in Washington State and our drive to port is about 5 hours.

We chanced going to catch the ship the same day as the cruise, but we armed ourselves with travel insurance just in case! We left at 5:30a.m. and luckily no problems occurred on the road that day. As a matter of fact, a good omen of this rainbow before the sun had even risen, gave me a good feeling.

 

 

Also lucky for us, her son lives about a half hour from the port so he very graciously drove us and kept her car for the week. Parking in Seattle is very expensive and very hard to come by.

 

He dropped us off about 11:15 I think. Porters were taking luggage for both the Ruby and the Eurodam so they warned us to be careful to have the right porter depending on the color of their vests warn. We went through security and visited the "we have some wine" desk. That all went smoothly and THEN we checked in. They were all so friendly and nice, BUT our check in gal disappeared for ages. Finally when she comes back she has bad news. My card was given to me, but my friend's card was missing, or never been printed.

We learned that no one is allowed to enter the ship without their card and they only can print the cards on the ship. They promised someone would print it and be right out in about 10 minutes. She motioned for us to sit in an area and wait. We realize at that point that everyone had already gotten on the ship. If we had her card we could have walked right on.

 

I am sure any seasoned cruisers out there, who know the thrill and joy of walking on the ship, will understand how awful this was. We sat and sat and sat. About a half hour later I approached a desk check-in person again. They called to find out what was going on. Well seems the machine onboard was broken down. I ask if there was anyway we could get on and enjoy the ship while we wait for it. I am again told "No one can get on without a card". Um, what if the machine is never fixed? I get a shrug. We are directed to a different area to sit. About five minutes later another couple join us as they also are missing cards. We wait another 10 minutes so total of 45 awful minutes watching everyone else get on the ship and wondering if we will be left in Seattle, and someone appears with the cards.

 

Once we were finally on, I went to the service desk to discuss our wait of 45 minutes. I will preface this with all other staff we encountered on this cruise were wonderful and our service was stellar, but this person, whose name was Iva, was not wonderful! I explained what happened, and she gave me a hard stare saying nothing. I then suggested for our inconvenience possibly a comped specialty dinner or maybe a drink coupon or two would be a nice gesture. She said I will check with a supervisor. She leaves, comes right back and says "sorry, no we don't do that." Then stared me down again.

Wow, there could have been so many things happen that even if the end result is a "no" it would have felt better.

I did not feel the need to waste more time on pursuing this with anyone higher up and we headed for a bite to eat.

 

It took a long time and this yummy drink off the back of the ship to help things feel good again.

 

 

Here is our view during lunch. Looks like they were doing a little railing work.

 

 

A shot of the back swimming pool.

 

 

Thanks for taking the time to post this.

I was on the Ruby in March on a 10 day Mexico cruise.

What an angering experience having no cruise card.

Curious if Princess was aware of your dietary issues before the cruise? When I was on the Ruby one person at our table had some dietary issues & a staff person came by each evening to show & discuss the next days evening menu. I thought that it was great that Princess did this & a big plus for them.

Tom😎

Edited June 7, 2018 by trbarton

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We arrive in Juneau....

 

We arrived on time and we did not hear anything of the usual "bing bong" that sounds in the hall to say when and where we can get off the ship. There may have been one, but we heard nothing.

 

Since we booked pretty last minute, we decided we would get off and see what we could find to do. Here I am ready for about anything.

 

 

There were people lined up everywhere and no staff around at all it seemed to tell us where to go. Rather chaotic and people were quite irritated to say the least. This is a view down a hall and I am not sure we were in any kind of line.

 

 

If this had been the first cruise out for Alaska I would understand, but this was the fourth or fifth.

Princess, more staff direction would have been very helpful. I think they ran and hid. I might have if I hadn't wanted to

get off the ship so much.

 

When we finally did manage to get off, we were met with a down pour. It is Alaska after all, so we were ready. Thank goodness for umbrellas. Raincoats are great, but I was glad to have my umbrella too.

There are tour booths in the down town area and they all want you to book with them. We went with a sweet little gal and she found us a whale watching/mendenhall glacier tour. The tour started about an hour later so we went over to some of the shops and found this friendly guy.

 

 

Sadly that was the only bear sighting we had.

 

We met our tour which was called Alaska Tales under a white awning behind the Robert's tram. There were about 14 people on our tour, so wonderful small group. They took us out to Auke Bay to our little whale boat.

 

This is on the bus.

 

[ROWSE]

Thanks for taking the time to post this.

I was on the Ruby in March on a 10 day Mexico cruise.

What an angering experience having no cruise card.

Tom😎

 

Hi Tom!

 

Glad to see you following along!

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Day three Juneau...

 

We arrive at Auke Bay. It is very stormy out!

 

 

We load on the boat with a darling married couple as Captain and first mate.

 

This is Rick and he did an amazing job bringing us back alive. We own a small boat and we

know the bounce from some waves. This was BIG waves and apparently we were the last small

craft to be allowed out for the day as the waves were 4 to 5 feet at least. Thank goodness for a

completely enclosed seating area as the water came up over the top of the boat.

 

 

This is the back area of the boat we could go out to when the boat stopped for whales.

 

 

We had many many humpback sightings. I only managed a couple still shots.

Here is a spray.

 

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Day Three Juneau cont.

 

We had an amazing moment and sadly no one had their cameras out but a Humpback did a complete

breach right beside the boat. This just takes your breath away! They said this is rare.

 

Next, the bus took us out to Mendenhall Glacier. We were to catch the Blue Bus back, the last bus leaving at 6:00.

We did the approximately mile hike out to Nugget Waterfall.

 

 

Mendenhall Glacier.

 

 

Thanks to this young man directly behind us in the following picture as my friend dropped her phone

and he alerted her.

 

 

 

We left earlier than the last 6:00 bus and there was quite a crowd. Luckily we were able to get on.

We headed back to the ship.

[Lewaina]

Love reading people's reviews,your pics were great We did Alaska on Golden princess last June it was fabulous.Doing Southampton to Singapore in October on Sapphire princess ,love princess ships.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Forums

[land lover]

Lots of personality in your photos(of you guys) and writing...we were on the cruise b4 yours.....so really am enjoying your review.

[dchip]

Enjoying your review and photos! I am only using my iPhone these days. The resulting photos are great.

 

Cheers, Denise

[Woobstr112G]

Thank you for posting your review with pictures. Looking forward to seeing/reading more.....:):):)

 

Bob

[mthomp5]

Having fun reading along! Thank you for sharing. We will be on the Ruby doing this cruise in September!

[Kellie in Texas]

This line made me snort coffee out my nose! :D

"But at least it would give Cruise Critic quite a lot to talk over if you did. Was that formal buff wear or casual?"

Your formal night dress is lovely.

[ROWSE]

Love reading people's reviews,your pics were great We did Alaska on Golden princess last June it was fabulous.Doing Southampton to Singapore in October on Sapphire princess ,love princess ships.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Forums

 

Thank you for the picture compliment. There are so many on here that have almost professional photos and mine are just little snap and go shots, but thank you for thinking they are okay.

 

I imagine June was a little warmer than we experienced and our only really cold was going up into Glacier Bay. Your October cruise sounds wonderful!

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Lots of personality in your photos(of you guys) and writing...we were on the cruise b4 yours.....so really am enjoying your review.

 

Thank you so much for coming along down my memory lane. It is so fun to "do it again" so to speak in a review.

 

Did your cruise have as much confusion getting off in a couple ports as ours did?

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Enjoying your review and photos! I am only using my iPhone these days. The resulting photos are great.

 

Cheers, Denise

 

Thank you Denise for reading! It is so nice to have an iphone and not have to carry along another camera!

[ROWSE]

Thank you for posting your review with pictures. Looking forward to seeing/reading more.....:):):)

 

Bob

 

Thank you Bob! I always love to see your posts on Cruise Critic, you are one of the very helpful people on these boards!