Most Memorable Cruise

[tawlaw1526]

1 hour ago, tonit964 said:

Thank you for asking.
It was 7 months after this cruise, which was his last. We actually had another one booked with my brother that was to sail 2 days before he passed, of course we canceled but he was so sweet because he said we should still go without him.

He and my mom cruised about four times a year and when she passed, he didn’t think he could ever go again without her but I booked one for us about 8 months after and we had a blast and then we did two a year from then on. 
 

He was a Navy guy so he loved the sea.
 

Tonit964, that is a very precious story.    Memories you will be able to cherish a lifetime.   Your pictures were adorable.     

[Thrak]

30 minutes ago, tawlaw1526 said:

Hi Thrak, They dropped Bora Bora off our itinerary after we had this booked and our hearts set on going.   I am very bummed about it but I understand.     I am still very excited.    From my research, it does appear that cruise ships are getting to dock in Apia now but I would take Bora Bora any day.   

 

When we were out in the water on the excursion boat there were black tailed sharks and rays swimming all around and the guy said to "Jump In!" I don't normally "do" the water - I've never used a pool or hot tub on a cruise - so I didn't even have a swim suit with me. My wife and "most" of the others jumped it and I thought to myself, "This may well be the only time I ever get to be here" so I took the stuff out of my pockets, took off my shirt, belt, shoes, etc., and jumped in. It was great! As it turns out we can't really go back there on another cruise so I'm sooooooooooooooo glad I "took the plunge".

 

I can understand why they don't want these big ships there. The tiny little town was swamped with cruisers. We were on Emerald Princess which barely fit in through the reef and had to finagle around to get into position. These days all the ships are getting even bigger than Emerald Princess and there's no way they would even fit. (At least it doesn't seem that way to me.) It's unfortunate because that really was a great stop on our cruise.

[tawlaw1526]

9 minutes ago, Thrak said:

 

When we were out in the water on the excursion boat there were black tailed sharks and rays swimming all around and the guy said to "Jump In!" I don't normally "do" the water - I've never used a pool or hot tub on a cruise - so I didn't even have a swim suit with me. My wife and "most" of the others jumped it and I thought to myself, "This may well be the only time I ever get to be here" so I took the stuff out of my pockets, took off my shirt, belt, shoes, etc., and jumped in. It was great! As it turns out we can't really go back there on another cruise so I'm sooooooooooooooo glad I "took the plunge".

 

I can understand why they don't want these big ships there. The tiny little town was swamped with cruisers. We were on Emerald Princess which barely fit in through the reef and had to finagle around to get into position. These days all the ships are getting even bigger than Emerald Princess and there's no way they would even fit. (At least it doesn't seem that way to me.) It's unfortunate because that really was a great stop on our cruise.

Thrak,   That was a great story.   I am so glad you went in the water.    What a great memory!    
I would love Princess to build a brand new SMALL ship for these exact types of ports.   It would be so cool to have a new small ship to book and sail.   I like the smaller ships.    These giant Royal class ships feel way too large and now they are building even larger.     I think there is a lot to be desired in a small ship.  

[Crystabel]

It has to be our 2011 cruise on the Sea Princess from San Francisco to Sydney. We sailed in our first suite on the aft! The So. Pacific ports included Bora Bora and Moorea, and we spent several days in Sydney post cruise. We also made some lifelong friends who have since become our cruising buddies. 

[voljeep]

The Big Red Boat - SS Oceanic - 4 day out of Port Canaveral - early 1990's

 

Note: I 'hated' the traditional dining and we didn't cruise again until the kids were grown, moved out and in 2007 went on the DIAMOND to Alaska

[Honolulu Blue]

Most memorable Princess cruise (of the two I've taken):  The 80s themed cruise on the Regal back in December 2021:

 

Most memorable cruise overall - it's impossible for me to choose between two music themed charters (neither of which were on Princess, of course).  That story is covered in this series of posts:

 

[Honolulu Blue]

18 hours ago, cruzin4us said:

I was with a group of just freshly graduated kids from High School.   The drinking age was 18 and our chaperone allowed us to split a bottle of wine between all 8 of us sitting at our dining room table.   Afterwards, we would take the empty bottle back to our cabin and painstakingly write a note, cram the cork back in the bottle and then we'd head aft and fling it off the ship.  (No lectures required, this was 1979).    Fast forward 6 months and I was away at college and I received some mail from my mom.   With it was a letter from a man that found my bottle while visiting his mom on Santorini.    We kept in contact for years and then time moved on.

 

This was my most memorable cruise and it's what got me hooked.

"I hope that someone gets my

I hope that someone gets my

I hope that someone gets my

Message in a bottle, yeah..."

 

16 hours ago, rdsqrl said:

Has to be my first Princess cruise, on the original Island Princess (identical twin of the Love Boat ship!).  Firstly, it was totally exciting to be on a ship that looked just like it did on the television show!  Then, it was also my first Med cruise, so that was thrilling (Normandy beaches!  Gibraltar!  Rome!  Lisbon!  Monte Carlo!  Tangier!).  And lastly, there was the on-board romance with the ship's officer assigned to dine at our table . . .  I've been on 20+ voyages since that one, but none, not even a Grill suite on the QE2, is as special a memory as that cruise. 

Mmmmmm, just like the movies (or that TV show).📺  When I saw this, I thought of keeping score in baseball terms - as in did he make it to first base, second, third, or all the way home?  😍

[bjkTX]

My favorite was a full transit Panama Canal cruise on Princess in 2008.  You never forget your first (Golden Princess to Canada/Alaska) a few years earlier, and a few other in between, but for many reasons that PC cruise was the most memorable.  We joined the Roll Call more than a year out and it was one of the best ever - lots of participation, lots of advice and help.  We made so many friends from that Roll Call and even met with some pre-cruise and we still communicate with many of the RC members today - and have cruised with several again over the years.  The folks on the Roll Call were mostly experienced cruisers and many had done the PC and the ports before.  I'm pretty sure that every excursion we took was put together by someone from the Roll Call, even the hotels and restaurants pre and post cruise were set up by Roll Call friends.  So a cruise, that for us, would have presented quite a few obstacles turned out to be nothing but fun.  I was in the military 30 years and we moved a LOT - and when we think back on it there was one neighborhood and group of friends that was just perfect.  That PC cruise was like that neighborhood 🙂

[Kolleen]

I have a lot of faves, but I'll narrow it down.

 

- last cruise with my mom before she died RCL

- Christmas with our daughter who was working as Technical Entertainment Director on HAL

- solo cruise for my 30th birthday HAL

 

Most memorable but not a favorite- Sundancer Vancouver to Alaska which sank.

[ontheweb]

10 hours ago, Kolleen said:

I have a lot of faves, but I'll narrow it down.

 

- last cruise with my mom before she died RCL

- Christmas with our daughter who was working as Technical Entertainment Director on HAL

- solo cruise for my 30th birthday HAL

 

Most memorable but not a favorite- Sundancer Vancouver to Alaska which sank.

OMG, the ship SANK! With all the talk of the new e-muster drills versus the traditional muster drill, could you tell us how this worked out in a real life emergency?

[CruisingWalter]

On 2/19/2023 at 3:39 PM, DrewCC2225 said:

This is something I thought would be pretty fun. What was your most memorable cruise? I know it’s hard to narrow down to just one but I figured we could give this a try. It could be memorable for any reason such as an island you visited, last cruise with a loved one before they passed, first cruise etc…. 

 

It's hard to beat the first one. For us it was 2006 on Caribbean Princess. 14-day back to back 'welcome to cruising' experience. We booked our second cruise while onboard and have never looked back. 🙂

 

Since then we have sailed 8 different cruise lines (it'll be 9 or 10 by the end of 2023) and have found we really really love cruising. We have never had a bad cruise or such a bad experience we would not go back to any of the cruise lines. We enjoy all of them for different reasons. 

 

But if we're really are picking the most memorable cruise it would be the Hurricane Irma cruise. 10 nights on the Celebrity Equinox that left Miami just 3 days before Irma hit St. Thomas.  That was our originally planned first stop and we would have been there that day. Instead we went straight south to Curacao and essentially followed the hurricane back to Miami. Amazingly we only missed two of our original stops because the hurricane completely hammered St. Thomas and St. Maarten along with others. The most memorable thing about that cruise was how incredibly calm and beautiful the weather was the entire week. Possibly some of the best weather we've ever had on a cruise. It was such a juxtaposition to what we were seeing on the news. 

 

We have three more currently planned for this year with Sky Princess this coming Saturday as our first time on Princess since the Crown in 2018. Looking forward to sailing the Royal Class for the first time. 🙂

[iTownPrincess]

My most memorable cruise was my first one - NYC to Bermuda aboard the Nordic Prince in November 1992. I was blown away by it mostly because it was a new experience for me, but also because it was hurricane season (hence the incredibly cheap fare) and the ship was rockin’ and rollin’. I loved being rocked to sleep each night. (Learning to take a shower one-handed while the other hand clung to the grab rails was a challenge!)

[PMGS247]

#1 First cruise for most of the obvious reasons but probably most notably the stress of getting there and boarding 10 minutes before sail away.  Learned the lesson about flying in the day before IMMEDIATELY.

 

#2 December 2021 first cruise after the covid cruising shut down.  Sky princess.  First experience on a royal class ship and it was at 40% capacity.  Standard eastern Caribbean itinerary but between the new experience of the royal ship, having all the room in the world with the low capacity, 100% perfect weather, and the feeling of FINALLY being out at sea again it was an exceptionally satisfying vacation. 

[loge23]

First Princess cruise in 1992, aboard the late, great, Star Princess.

The itinerary was Venice to Athens, but it included memorable ports such as Rhodes, Santorini, Crete, and Izmir for Ephesus. Also Istanbul and a once-in-a-lifetime (especially now) cruise in the Black Sea to Odessa and Yalta. 

We did it all: a moonlit gondola ride with the singer and accordion player aboard - old women popped out of shuttered windows as we passed by! A Russian military rag-tag band greeted us in Odessa with Stars and Stripes Forever - brings tears to my eyes even now. Disbanded soldiers sold off their gear in a park in Odessa - the city was stunningly beautiful but racked by decades of USSR neglect. We sat on the portico at Yalta where Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt once sat. Unforgettable!

The ship was gorgeous - a young waiter, Bong, greeted me by name and asked if I would like "a Beefeater martini?" the second time I ever saw him - that continued throughout the cruise. Service was Italian family-style - everything was brought to the table in large platters/bowls and the waiters served you from there. There was table-side pastas every night. 

There's been dozens more since then, on multiple lines but mostly Princess. I don't complain much about the changes because that cruise was just unsurpassable in every way. 

 

 

 

[Steelers36]

On 2/19/2023 at 11:31 PM, Thrak said:

 

When we were out in the water on the excursion boat there were black tailed sharks and rays swimming all around and the guy said to "Jump In!" I don't normally "do" the water - I've never used a pool or hot tub on a cruise - so I didn't even have a swim suit with me. My wife and "most" of the others jumped it and I thought to myself, "This may well be the only time I ever get to be here" so I took the stuff out of my pockets, took off my shirt, belt, shoes, etc., and jumped in. It was great! As it turns out we can't really go back there on another cruise so I'm sooooooooooooooo glad I "took the plunge".

 

I can understand why they don't want these big ships there. The tiny little town was swamped with cruisers. We were on Emerald Princess which barely fit in through the reef and had to finagle around to get into position. These days all the ships are getting even bigger than Emerald Princess and there's no way they would even fit. (At least it doesn't seem that way to me.) It's unfortunate because that really was a great stop on our cruise.

A way around this for some folks may be to take a voyage to French Polynesia and then stay after disembarking in Papeete.  You can easily fly around to different islands and visit and stay.  Either fly home from Papeete, or catch the next ship when calling there.

[Lovincruisin1321]

Most memorable cruise was a 2-wk Baltic w/pre-cruise in Paris to London then boarding ship in South Hampton.

 

This was with Royal Caribbean in 2007 and it was 5-star with hotels and tours.

The Baltic capitals were sensational especially the two day in St. Petersburg.  

I created a photo book and I loved reliving this cruise!

Edited February 21, 2023 by Lovincruisin1321
wrong date

[Kolleen]

11 hours ago, ontheweb said:

OMG, the ship SANK! With all the talk of the new e-muster drills versus the traditional muster drill, could you tell us how this worked out in a real life emergency?

I was in my early 30s and there were about 10 of us still in the nightclub. Suddenly, the ship lurched and we were thrown against the wall. The officer I was dancing with told me to get to my cabin and get my lifevest just in case. Then the alarm went off.  I made it to my cabin and my roommate and I grabbed our jackets and lifevest.s The interior glass doors started closing.  We headed to our muster station on deck.  Most people arrived pretty quickly, but they were mostly in their pjs.  We didn't know what was happening exactly, but the ship started to severely list on the port side. We were told we were headed back to a paper mill dock because the water was much shallower. So, we waited. Crew came and gave blankets to the elderly in their pjs.  They also retrieved some essential medications for people.  They were outstanding. The lifeboats were lowered but we didn't board them. We eventually made it back to the dock. We were told to follow our assigned officer and we went down the stairs. For me, this was the scariest part. The stairs were at a fairly extreme angle and inside the ship felt unsafe.  We went down and were able to disembark.  If you've ever seen photos of the Arizona, the tilt of the ship from shore looked like that.  It eventually sank to the bottom on the port side, but I didn't see that.

https://www.upi.com/Archives/1984/08/14/The-luxury-cruise-ship-Sundancer-which-went-aground-on/1866461304000/

 

I know just how much the crew on ships practice, and it is a lot. My daughter worked as Technical Entertainment Manager on HAL and she told me.

Edited February 21, 2023 by Kolleen

[Eleanor Rigby 14]

What a story, Kolleen! Unbelievable! I’m glad to hear that you and your fellow cruisers got off the ship safely.

 

(Note to self: Keep medications and passport in an easily-reached location!)

[ontheweb]

12 hours ago, Kolleen said:

I was in my early 30s and there were about 10 of us still in the nightclub. Suddenly, the ship lurched and we were thrown against the wall. The officer I was dancing with told me to get to my cabin and get my lifevest just in case. Then the alarm went off.  I made it to my cabin and my roommate and I grabbed our jackets and lifevest.s The interior glass doors started closing.  We headed to our muster station on deck.  Most people arrived pretty quickly, but they were mostly in their pjs.  We didn't know what was happening exactly, but the ship started to severely list on the port side. We were told we were headed back to a paper mill dock because the water was much shallower. So, we waited. Crew came and gave blankets to the elderly in their pjs.  They also retrieved some essential medications for people.  They were outstanding. The lifeboats were lowered but we didn't board them. We eventually made it back to the dock. We were told to follow our assigned officer and we went down the stairs. For me, this was the scariest part. The stairs were at a fairly extreme angle and inside the ship felt unsafe.  We went down and were able to disembark.  If you've ever seen photos of the Arizona, the tilt of the ship from shore looked like that.  It eventually sank to the bottom on the port side, but I didn't see that.

https://www.upi.com/Archives/1984/08/14/The-luxury-cruise-ship-Sundancer-which-went-aground-on/1866461304000/

 

I know just how much the crew on ships practice, and it is a lot. My daughter worked as Technical Entertainment Manager on HAL and she told me.

Thank you for sharing. And kudos to the crew who did a splendid job of carrying out their duties. Practice pays off! Their muster training was not wasted.

[JoRoy218]

On 2/19/2023 at 8:37 PM, rdsqrl said:

Has to be my first Princess cruise, on the original Island Princess (identical twin of the Love Boat ship!).  Firstly, it was totally exciting to be on a ship that looked just like it did on the television show!  Then, it was also my first Med cruise, so that was thrilling (Normandy beaches!  Gibraltar!  Rome!  Lisbon!  Monte Carlo!  Tangier!).  And lastly, there was the on-board romance with the ship's officer assigned to dine at our table . . .  I've been on 20+ voyages since that one, but none, not even a Grill suite on the QE2, is as special a memory as that cruise. 

Your post has stimulated some special memories of my very first cruise.

I was 21,  just out of college, working and enjoying spending my own money.  A group of five girls and I booked two inside cabins on the Cunard Adventurer (San Juan, circle Caribbean). Looking back at very cramped cabins, we enjoyed every moment. We were assigned to two different tables in the MDR, my best friend and I sat at the Captains table, which was quite a surprise. One embarrassing incident: I was attempting to crack a lobster (for the first time) the claw flew out of my hand and landed in the lap of the Captain who was sitting to my left. He just laughed, picked it up and said “I believe this belongs to you.” Will NEVER forget how horrified I was. 😱

Since you mentioned “ship board” romances, I too experienced this. His name was Angus, from Scotland (IIRC was “Assistant Purser”)He and a few of his buddies obviously sought my friends and me out, we spent a good bit of time during that Caribbean cruise with them.  We did catch up several months later, when the ship docked in NY and we met for lunch. 

Another high point on that cruise was visiting Barbados, where my paternal grandparents and several aunts were born. My extended family had a big lunch for us and we spent the day enjoying this heavenly spot, a sweet little house and beach, on the Caribbean side. Sorry…very long…memories came rushing back from that week! 

Edited February 22, 2023 by JoRoy218