LIVE FROM - Royal Princess - Sept 3-10 2022, Vancouver BC to Anchorage Alaska

[dreaminofcruisin]

11 hours ago, rheathslc said:

I usually love sitting at Vines but found their wine btg selection lacking on this trip. My favorite mainstays in the sparkling department, Gloria Ferrer and Nicholas Feuillatte are not on offer. But they are available on the ship somewhere. Because they are on listed as by the bottle options to order on our evening canape menu. And I got a glass of the Nicholas F. at Ocean Terrace with our sushi last night.

 

Will try posting the menus I've collected if the internet will behave.

 

I'm wondering if Vines even HAD a menu available to you? Recently on the Emerald and asking for a menu seemed like a foreign concept there. There were no QR codes on the tables like other venues. When they finally got me a menu, it was paper and the only Plus options available were the same as all other bars. Even at the Premier level, there wasn't much by the glass for us white wine drinkers..... ☹️

 

[CruzeQueen2]

11 hours ago, rheathslc said:

I usually love sitting at Vines but found their wine btg selection lacking on this trip. My favorite mainstays in the sparkling department, Gloria Ferrer and Nicholas Feuillatte are not on offer. But they are available on the ship somewhere. Because they are on listed as by the bottle options to order on our evening canape menu. And I got a glass of the Nicholas F. at Ocean Terrace with our sushi last night.

 

Will try posting the menus I've collected if the internet will behave.

Thank you! That is good to know. I sailed on Royal in May. That was the first sailing "return to sail". The selections of BTG were very good at that time. Looking forward to trying some new wines at Vines this time around, if necessary.

[CruzeQueen2]

4 minutes ago, dreaminofcruisin said:

 

I'm wondering if Vines even HAD a menu available to you? Recently on the Emerald and asking for a menu seemed like a foreign concept there. There were no QR codes on the tables like other venues. When they finally got me a menu, it was paper and the only Plus options available were the same as all other bars. Even at the Premier level, there wasn't much by the glass for us white wine drinkers..... ☹️

 

Oh, I see. There used to be enough choices for me BTG in the "book" menu. But I know things have changed. Will have to wait and see. I drink mostly reds, but enjoyed some whites there as well. I appreciate getting this update from you. Thank you.

 

[CruzeQueen2]

@rheathslc Do you know the temperature these days? I'm packing now for next week! TIA Bringing my raingear and fleece! TIA

[nini]

2 hours ago, CruzeQueen2 said:

@rheathslc Do you know the temperature these days? I'm packing now for next week! TIA Bringing my raingear and fleece! TIA

We have the weather app on our phone. You can set up any city/ cities. It will be rainy... we sail on September 14th for 12 days.

[voljeep]

when ordering wine in Vines - I just usually say something like - I'll have a Cab - we have the PLUS package - I'll defer to your selection - never been disappointed ... I'm a simple man

[catgirl411]

20 hours ago, rheathslc said:

Hello all, sorry to have been MIA again. I'm just not having much luck getting CC to work even with the cell signal in port. Every time I go to post it looks like it's going to quote every single post in the thread and I can't find a way to remove the quoted material. Has anyone else experienced that?

 

I'll post some full day reviews this evening if I can get them to post correctly. 

 

This is just a brief review of Princess Premier so far:

 

Wine prices DID go up as has been reported on other threads about Premier. The only New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc (my personal fav) - Cloudy Bay - is now $19 so thank goodness for Premier or I'd be paying a bunch extra for it. There also seems to still be a supply issue. Several of the wines I have ordered have not been available and they tell me they'll replace them with something else at that price point which is confusing to me as the menus don't have multiple options for each varietal at the higher price points. All of the wine offered on Princess Plus is JUST offered by varietal - no specific wineries are named at all. I'm not much of a red wine person so I've been paying attention mostly to the whites and sparkling options. If there is a specific wine you want me to check on let me know.

 

Prizes: So far I've only noticed that we've "won" one entry for the end of cruise drawing. We end up not coming and going very much while the casino is open which on this cruise has so far been only one sea day and late at night. I have also noticed that every stateroom door shows the Princess Prizes logo. I don't know if that's just to entice the people who didn't sign up or of somehow everyone actually is enrolled. That seems unlikely to me and I'll try to get an answer about that.

 

Pictures: we've been posing for lots of pictures on board and we even had one taken at embarkation and when we got off the ship in Juneau. That's the first time they've had either of those on any of my cruises since the restart. Hopefully there will be enough that we like that we can each pick the 3 prints that are included with Premier. 

 

Stay tuned for reviews from Days 2-5 🙂

I have to say that I found the wine listing by varietal only to be frustrating. I don’t want to have to interrogate the server every time I want a glass of wine.  I wonder if it’s done that way because they’ve had supply challenges this summer?

 

[HaveDogWillTravel]

@rheathslcI am wondering what type of wine glasses are used on the Royal. On the grand class ships the nice glasses without a lip (sometimes even Riedel) are only available in Vines and the MDR upon request. And they don’t like you to take them out of their spaces. So I carry my Riedel on now.
 

However, on the Discovery last April all venues served all wine in nice glasses without a lip. 
 

‘Does the Royal have the nice glasses everywhere or only in limited venues?  
 

Welcome home. I hope your cruise and birthday were everything you hoped for and more. 

[rheathslc]

On 9/10/2022 at 9:17 AM, HaveDogWillTravel said:

@rheathslcI am wondering what type of wine glasses are used on the Royal. On the grand class ships the nice glasses without a lip (sometimes even Riedel) are only available in Vines and the MDR upon request. And they don’t like you to take them out of their spaces. So I carry my Riedel on now.
 

However, on the Discovery last April all venues served all wine in nice glasses without a lip. 
 

‘Does the Royal have the nice glasses everywhere or only in limited venues?  
 

Welcome home. I hope your cruise and birthday were everything you hoped for and more. 

They had nice wine glasses in Club Class dining and Crown Grill as well as Bellini's, Good Spirits, and Ocean Terrace as far as I recall. We did not order wine from Crooners, Princess Live Cafe or Vista Lounge. Cannot speak to the rest of the dining rooms.  I also fell asleep and we missed the SD we had reserved in Sabatini's so I also don't know about the glasses there other than the champagne flutes for the mimosas I had with our suite breakfast each day. 🙂

 

[rheathslc]

Hello again! We're back to the land of reliable wifi and normal daily routines. This turned out to be less of a "live from" for me than an ex post facto review. Sorry about that! The days got away from me. And once we disembarked we had 36 hours in Anchorage with my sisters and their families before catching the red-eye home to SLC and we ended up sleeping most of the day yesterday.

 

I'll post as much as I can remember of my thoughts and impressions of the ship and itinerary as well as answer any questions that I can.

 

As I mentioned before, this was a replacement cruise for the two 5-day B2B cruises we originally booked on the Diamond. Those were to be round-trip from San Diego with plenty of sea days and warm weather ports like Ensenada and Cabo. This was a huge departure from that and I struggled the entire time with the dueling priorities of wanting to relax as originally intended and not wanting to miss out on the beautiful scenery and unique experiences of an Alaska cruise.

 

I will say that the Enclave on the Royal class ships may have tipped the scales for me. I usually prefer the smaller ships but that hydrotherapy pool was pure heaven! Between that and this being our first cruise in a suite we really did have ample opportunity to relax and enjoy ourselves.

 

I'll be posting about the following as quickly as I can:

Ship condition

Suite experience

Crew

Food and Beverage

Itinerary

and whatever else I can remember. 🙂

 

 

[rheathslc]

On 9/8/2022 at 11:31 AM, dreaminofcruisin said:

 

I'm wondering if Vines even HAD a menu available to you? Recently on the Emerald and asking for a menu seemed like a foreign concept there. There were no QR codes on the tables like other venues. When they finally got me a menu, it was paper and the only Plus options available were the same as all other bars. Even at the Premier level, there wasn't much by the glass for us white wine drinkers..... ☹️

 

I was handed a menu when I asked but it was disappointingly spare. I remember vines used to have pages of great by the glass options and even more bottles. 

[cr8tiv1]

Welcome home...plus one year older.

[rheathslc]

General ship review and Day 2 - Ketchikan (sort of)

 

I watched as many video reviews of the Royal as I could find before we left. The most recent do show the newer furniture around the ship such as in Crooners, around the Piazza, and outside of Princess Live. More contemporary colors and patterns on the upholstery, etc. One of the pleasant surprises for me is that the carpet in our suite was new and a lot more aesthetically pleasing than what was showing in some of the videos and pictures I saw. I try to post pictures as well.

 

There were a few areas of the ship that are starting to show their age but overall I found the decor and furnishings to feel pretty updated and fresh. Mind you, I normally sail on Grand class ships so my perspective is probably influenced by that. Haha!

 

Our suite was incredible. I LOVE that the tubs in the suites on the new ships do NOT have jets. Those are just notoriously hard to keep clean and always had a bit of an ick factor for me. Even in swanky hotels. The tub was incredible! I could submerge my whole body at one time and it has a nice angled back rest. The shower with the glass surround was such an important upgrade. WHY oh why does Princess still keep those horrid curtains in all the other stateroom categories. They're the worst.

 

We had a huge wrap-around balcony on Riviera deck. The way the aft decks are terraced that meant that almost our whole balcony at the back was visible from above but the side was fully covered by the deck above. To my delight, the barrier between our balcony and the one just forward of ours created a nice little pocket where there was almost never any rain hitting the deck even on the rainiest and windiest days. The couch is terrible. It was very hard and the fabric has an almost plasticized feel. It was very slippery and hard to actually sit on. Preston used one of the cozy plaid blankets to make it easier to sit on. I mostly avoided sitting on it at all.

 

We LOVED the concierge lounge. The host, Ecer, was incredible. While there was a sign for a Suite and Elite line at the Passenger Services desk the one time we tried to use it (on the 1st morning before we remembered about the concierge lounge) some people in line told is there was only ONE line and we had to go to the back of it. I was in a non-confrontational mood so I didn't push it. But after that we never even tried to go to Passenger Services or the Excursion desk. We just used went straight to Ecer who helped with everything from cancelling an excursion after the deadline to comping our sushi at Ocean Terrace when we we unable to rebook Sabatini's after I slept through our reservation.

 

We have 5 future cruises booked and now I'm trying to figure out how we can afford to stay in a suite on all of them. Haha! It's unlikely but we were for sure spoiled on this trip.

 

 

[rheathslc]

[rheathslc]

Oops! Forgot to post about Ketchikan. Mostly because we were exhausted and decided to stay on board. But we got a glorious day.

[CruzeQueen2]

5 minutes ago, rheathslc said:

Oops! Forgot to post about Ketchikan. Mostly because we were exhausted and decided to stay on board. But we got a glorious day.

Thank you for sharing your experiences with us. @rheathslcEven post cruise! Great photos.

[polmcs]

Glad to see that you enjoyed your alternate cruise after the Diamond 5 day Cabo cruise was cancelled. We’ve opted to defer to the same cruise itinerary for next Feb.

 

That said, if the Sep 6 cruise to Cabo had gone off as planned, then it would have been interesting to see what would have happened. The weather was lousy here in San Diego that week as a consequence of a Pacific hurricane hitting the Baja coast. I’m thinking that at best, we would have gotten a day trip to Ensenada and 4 sea days as the captain would never sail into the vicinity of a hurricane.