Just off Sky Princess

[MISTER 67]

Just off Sky Princess, 7 day Eastern Caribbean to Princess Cays, San Juan and St. Thomas.

Very nice cruise with almost perfect weather, we had a couple of sprinkles and yesterday morning the seas were a bit rougher, didn’t bother us but some people had some issues. We dis-embarked this AM at 6:30, we live in Punta Gorda Fl and were home by 9:12. That’s the earliest walk off we’ve ever experienced and this was our 72nd cruise.

I usually grade our cruises in various categories on a scale of 1 to 10 so here goes.

 

Ship Condition 9.5

Ship Cleanliness 9.9

Cabin service 9.5

MDR food 8.5

MDR Service 9.5

Buffet food 8.0

Buffet service 9.0 

Guest services 9.5

Bar and International Cafe service 9.5

Entertainment in main showroom 8.0

Activities 9.5

Cruise director and staff 9.5

Shipboard activities 9.9

 

My scores might seem a bit high but we are low maintenance people and hardly ever complain.

 

I will try to answer any questions.

 

 

[Hlitner]

We are still on the Sky (back to back) and would not disagree with any of your scores.  My only negatives are the lack of a Crooners” and my steak in the Crown Grill.  One might consider that a steakhouse that likes to make a big deal out of salt, rather than the beef, is telling.

 

Hank

[MISTER 67]

2 minutes ago, Hlitner said:

We are still on the Sky (back to back) and would not disagree with any of your scores.  My only negatives are the lack of a Crooners” and my steak in the Crown Grill.  One might consider that a steakhouse that likes to make a big deal out of salt, rather than the beef, is telling.

 

Hank

Have to agree, we also miss Crooners.

[Bgwest]

We spent 27 days on Sky as she repositioned across the Atlantic to begin this series of Caribbean sailings. 
Never again. This sailing convinced us that Sky is our least favorite ship in the entire Princess fleet. 
Too much wrong to enumerate but suffice it to say the corporate decision to replace public use spaces with retail and other revenue generating spaces has ruined the entire experience. 
Never again (did I already say that?). 

[MISTER 67]

1 hour ago, Bgwest said:

We spent 27 days on Sky as she repositioned across the Atlantic to begin this series of Caribbean sailings. 
Never again. This sailing convinced us that Sky is our least favorite ship in the entire Princess fleet. 
Too much wrong to enumerate but suffice it to say the corporate decision to replace public use spaces with retail and other revenue generating spaces has ruined the entire experience. 
Never again (did I already say that?). 

Welcome to cruising in the 21st century, have you sailed on Royal Caribbean or Celebrity?

[Hlitner]

1 hour ago, Bgwest said:

We spent 27 days on Sky as she repositioned across the Atlantic to begin this series of Caribbean sailings. 
Never again. This sailing convinced us that Sky is our least favorite ship in the entire Princess fleet. 
Too much wrong to enumerate but suffice it to say the corporate decision to replace public use spaces with retail and other revenue generating spaces has ruined the entire experience. 
Never again (did I already say that?). 

Mass market cruising is all about “maximizing onboard revenue.”  Ships are now designed with that in mind.  You can avoid this by booking small ship luxury lines, but of course, this comes at a higher financial price.

 

Hank

[Rick&Jeannie]

3 hours ago, Bgwest said:

We spent 27 days on Sky as she repositioned across the Atlantic to begin this series of Caribbean sailings. 
Never again. This sailing convinced us that Sky is our least favorite ship in the entire Princess fleet. 
Too much wrong to enumerate but suffice it to say the corporate decision to replace public use spaces with retail and other revenue generating spaces has ruined the entire experience. 
Never again (did I already say that?). 

Everybody has their own opinions as to what is "desirable" on a ship.  We were on the same transatlantic...we had a great time.  I won't say that the Sky is our *favorite* ship...but I approach this topic such that "any day on a ship is better than a day NOT on a ship!"

[voljeep]

5 minutes ago, Rick&Jeannie said:

Everybody has their own opinions as to what is "desirable" on a ship.  We were on the same transatlantic...we had a great time.  I won't say that the Sky is our *favorite* ship...but I approach this topic such that "any day on a ship is better than a day NOT on a ship!"

5 days before a cruise - fell and broke the tibia and fibula near the ankle ... now how bad was that ship and cruise? 🦄

[Rick&Jeannie]

1 minute ago, voljeep said:

5 days before a cruise - fell and broke the tibia and fibula near the ankle ... now how bad was that ship and cruise? 🦄

Bummer!

[boboraji]

We haven't sailed in years and even longer on a Princess Boat.  Thinking of taking the Sky to Norway next spring.  Do they still have formal night/s in the main dining room, or is every night in the MDR business casual?

Edited December 9, 2023 by boboraji

[snoozecrooze]

30 minutes ago, boboraji said:

We haven't sailed in years and even longer on a Princess Boat.  Thinking of taking the Sky to Norway next spring.  Do they still have formal night/s in the main dining room, or is every night in the MDR business casual?

Yes, there are still formal nights on that itinerary. Every night is not really business casual, no. Don't worry about needing to get glammed or spiffy; it's what you make of it. And "formal" holds a much different meaning nowadays than before on cruises.

[Rick&Jeannie]

40 minutes ago, boboraji said:

We haven't sailed in years and even longer on a Princess Boat.  Thinking of taking the Sky to Norway next spring.  Do they still have formal night/s in the main dining room, or is every night in the MDR business casual?

We did this same itinerary earlier this year.  As with *any* Princess cruise...you DO NOT have to "dress up"...even on what is generally referred to as "formal night".  They really don't even it call it that any more.  I *believe* the last reference I saw in regards to that was "Dress To Impress"...and in reality you're only impressing yourself, so whatever you feel comfortable wearing is pretty much accepted.  I don't want to start the usual firestorm that dress codes usually get in these forums...I just wear what was called "business casual" and my DW always just wears a slightly "dressy" top.  No tuxes or gowns for us!

[Bgwest]

5 hours ago, Hlitner said:

Mass market cruising is all about “maximizing onboard revenue.”  Ships are now designed with that in mind.  You can avoid this by booking small ship luxury lines, but of course, this comes at a higher financial price.

 

Hank

You are so right. 
And as if to prove your point, here we sit headed for docking in Ecuador tomorrow morning on the Sapphire. Our favorite ship in the Princess fleet. And BTW, at a much lower per day cost than our recent Sky experience.  
It’s all about planning ahead, far ahead. 
 

BGW

[kywildcatfanone]

We were on this cruise. Got home about 3 hours ago.  Overall we had a good time.

I see lots of cutbacks, but will save most of that for other days.

My biggest complaints were cleanliness issues around the buffet, in particular the coffee and ice availability.

The coffee dispensers worked some days and not others.  The ice dispensers rarely worked and they bad containers with ice and a scoop.  People would just dip their cup into the ice, hand and all, or leave the scoop in the ice and people would go "hunting" for it.   Even saw one kid just reach his hand in and grab pieces.

Then on day 5 they ran out of iced tea, then this morning we were told they had no half and half.

 

No idea why this happened, but someone commented to me they had been onboard the previous week and had the same issues.

[CyberVenus]

So I just got on the Sky Princess today, having previously been on the Royal and Regal Princess, with a similar design, I must say this one feels much more… like a lot of spaces were an afterthought. Like they copied the layout of the other ships for the decks, and then decided what to actually put in the spaces. Especially the extra dining areas around the plaza space on decks 5-7. It seems like they took what was otherwise a sort of lounge space and squished a restaurant in. Multiple times. It feels a little disappointing honestly, just because it seems like the design wasn’t thought out all the way, like they got lazy and copied the deck plans, but wanted to fit in more places for people to spend money so they put more restaurants in to places that aren’t designed for restaurants. 
 

also,it’s been several years (since pre-COVID) since my last cruise. But I swear the full digital photo set was like $150 or something before, now it’s  $170 for 10 photos… what if I have more? Seems I could get unlimited photos before for less, and that was when a human had to scan them, and put them on a flash drive, now it’s all automated with facial recognition and I download them in the app, no paid humans involved, should be cheaper now in my opinion since it’s more automated, isn’t that the general idea behind automating things? Cheaper for them, so cheaper for me too? 
 

Also, I seem to recall I used to have access to Apple services without paying for internet, so I could use iMessage to communicate among my group, also access the App Store, Apple Music, email, iCloud, etc… none of that works now, although weirdly I can still go to Apple’s website without paying. I always thought that a nice perk of the “MedallionNet” service. 
 

I had always intended on paying for one device, and obviously I did since I’m posting here, but was hoping to not pay for everyone in my 5 member group, especially since that’s one device past the 4 device package… it sits in that weird middle area of “I don’t need this enough to pay for it” but also “not having this is highly inconvenient” so it honestly degrades the experience somewhat since there’s no way for the 5 of us to communicate. the Princess app’s “chat” feature is basically useless since you have to manually open the app and navigate through the app to the conversations list to see if there are unread messages, no notifications or even anything on the front “home” page of the app, so… that’s not useful, being able to locate everyone seems to work well, much better than the last cruise if I remember correctly, but it’s not a substitute for actually chatting. Maybe it wouldn’t matter if I hadn’t been assuming it would be the same as before, but going in to the cruise, I was expecting we would all be able to chat from anywhere on the ship without an issue. 
 

also some people are having issues with the app, which I was able to resolve once by reinstalling the app, but now I can’t do that since we left port, unless I want to pay for internet access, because the App Store seems unavailable. I’m also not sure how I could register a device for access without the app on that device, but I assume there’s some way to do that… 

 

also, as someone who doesn’t use it, I was a bit pleased to see the casino on the Royal and Regal Princess was smaller, not an enormous section of the deck like the older ships, but this ship it’s bigger… not as big as before, but still bigger. 
 

Also, I’m thinking this ship was originally designed for a European market primarily, I seem to recall the Regal and Royal Princess each had more US standard power outlets in the room, this ship has 2, plus one in the bathroom, for a standard interior room anyways. I could be mistaken about the other ships, and luckily someone else in the group thought to bring a power strip, so that’s helpful. And I guess I can’t fault them for this, because most hotels still do this too, but the lamps have USB-A ports, and literally all of my Apple products, all the things they make for a couple years now, come with USB-C chargers, so the USB-A ports on the lamps are not helpful, I don’t keep up with it that well, but I imagine non-Apple products mostly come with USB-C chargers too. Feels like it’s time for an upgrade, but also they probably sell USB-A charging cables in one of the shops, so… revenue source… luckily I brought one USB-A cable to use in a rental car on an earlier portion of this trip, so it’s not entirely wasted, just the same, it’s disappointing to see, same as any new cars I see with it, like, new car, but literally none of my devices for a few years now can plug into it, so it’s brand new and also outdated. 
 

all that in mind, I acknowledge the ship launched in 2019 so some of my issues with the USB ports were not really a thing back then, especially if we figure they probably bought the tables with the lamps earlier in the construction phase, but the overall design seems more focused on squeezing money out of people and generally not as nicely designed with the layout seeming a bit like an afterthought, or just someone got lazy and couldn’t be bothered to redo the actual deck plan and just repurposed some spaces from the last couple of ships. 
 

I do like that the design isn’t an exact replica, the Regal Princess and the Royal Princess did feel like clones, even the artwork in the stairs and the hallways was identical and in identical positions, which disappointed me a bit because that means they’re also not original art pieces, at least they can’t both be since they had identical artwork. The Sky Princess here has new artwork at least, and my brief looking today I do like the way the shops are layed out, and so far I’m liking the Princess Live space being more of an open lounge area, rather than the closed in actual television theater space it was on the other two ships, mostly because it’s more accommodating for our 6 person group, one of whom is a child just over a year old. 
 

so, mixed feelings about the cruise so far, I’ll admit I was very into cruising before and was going regularly once or twice a year for 9 or 10 days at a time, while this cruise doesn’t turn me away from it, it isn’t impressing me enough to make me want to get back into it that regularly. Noting I stopped going regularly partially because of COVID but also because I moved to Iowa from South Carolina, so now I have to fly to the cruise not just drive 8 hours, so that makes it somewhat more expensive to go. 

[Kmkub]

8 hours ago, boboraji said:

We haven't sailed in years and even longer on a Princess Boat.  Thinking of taking the Sky to Norway next spring.  Do they still have formal night/s in the main dining room, or is every night in the MDR business casual?

Just off a 15-day TA on The Enchanted. We had two formal nights and one dress to impress night. Hard to tell them apart from any other night in the dining room, except a few people who truly did go formal. (We went semi-formal; no tux, but nice suit and fancy dress.)

 

On our last formal night, we were overdressed in our section. We don’t care, though. What others wear is none of our business. 

 

So, don’t worry about it.

[MISTER 67]

6 hours ago, CyberVenus said:

So I just got on the Sky Princess today, having previously been on the Royal and Regal Princess, with a similar design, I must say this one feels much more… like a lot of spaces were an afterthought. Like they copied the layout of the other ships for the decks, and then decided what to actually put in the spaces. Especially the extra dining areas around the plaza space on decks 5-7. It seems like they took what was otherwise a sort of lounge space and squished a restaurant in. Multiple times. It feels a little disappointing honestly, just because it seems like the design wasn’t thought out all the way, like they got lazy and copied the deck plans, but wanted to fit in more places for people to spend money so they put more restaurants in to places that aren’t designed for restaurants. 
 

also,it’s been several years (since pre-COVID) since my last cruise. But I swear the full digital photo set was like $150 or something before, now it’s  $170 for 10 photos… what if I have more? Seems I could get unlimited photos before for less, and that was when a human had to scan them, and put them on a flash drive, now it’s all automated with facial recognition and I download them in the app, no paid humans involved, should be cheaper now in my opinion since it’s more automated, isn’t that the general idea behind automating things? Cheaper for them, so cheaper for me too? 
 

Also, I seem to recall I used to have access to Apple services without paying for internet, so I could use iMessage to communicate among my group, also access the App Store, Apple Music, email, iCloud, etc… none of that works now, although weirdly I can still go to Apple’s website without paying. I always thought that a nice perk of the “MedallionNet” service. 
 

I had always intended on paying for one device, and obviously I did since I’m posting here, but was hoping to not pay for everyone in my 5 member group, especially since that’s one device past the 4 device package… it sits in that weird middle area of “I don’t need this enough to pay for it” but also “not having this is highly inconvenient” so it honestly degrades the experience somewhat since there’s no way for the 5 of us to communicate. the Princess app’s “chat” feature is basically useless since you have to manually open the app and navigate through the app to the conversations list to see if there are unread messages, no notifications or even anything on the front “home” page of the app, so… that’s not useful, being able to locate everyone seems to work well, much better than the last cruise if I remember correctly, but it’s not a substitute for actually chatting. Maybe it wouldn’t matter if I hadn’t been assuming it would be the same as before, but going in to the cruise, I was expecting we would all be able to chat from anywhere on the ship without an issue. 
 

also some people are having issues with the app, which I was able to resolve once by reinstalling the app, but now I can’t do that since we left port, unless I want to pay for internet access, because the App Store seems unavailable. I’m also not sure how I could register a device for access without the app on that device, but I assume there’s some way to do that… 

 

also, as someone who doesn’t use it, I was a bit pleased to see the casino on the Royal and Regal Princess was smaller, not an enormous section of the deck like the older ships, but this ship it’s bigger… not as big as before, but still bigger. 
 

Also, I’m thinking this ship was originally designed for a European market primarily, I seem to recall the Regal and Royal Princess each had more US standard power outlets in the room, this ship has 2, plus one in the bathroom, for a standard interior room anyways. I could be mistaken about the other ships, and luckily someone else in the group thought to bring a power strip, so that’s helpful. And I guess I can’t fault them for this, because most hotels still do this too, but the lamps have USB-A ports, and literally all of my Apple products, all the things they make for a couple years now, come with USB-C chargers, so the USB-A ports on the lamps are not helpful, I don’t keep up with it that well, but I imagine non-Apple products mostly come with USB-C chargers too. Feels like it’s time for an upgrade, but also they probably sell USB-A charging cables in one of the shops, so… revenue source… luckily I brought one USB-A cable to use in a rental car on an earlier portion of this trip, so it’s not entirely wasted, just the same, it’s disappointing to see, same as any new cars I see with it, like, new car, but literally none of my devices for a few years now can plug into it, so it’s brand new and also outdated. 
 

all that in mind, I acknowledge the ship launched in 2019 so some of my issues with the USB ports were not really a thing back then, especially if we figure they probably bought the tables with the lamps earlier in the construction phase, but the overall design seems more focused on squeezing money out of people and generally not as nicely designed with the layout seeming a bit like an afterthought, or just someone got lazy and couldn’t be bothered to redo the actual deck plan and just repurposed some spaces from the last couple of ships. 
 

I do like that the design isn’t an exact replica, the Regal Princess and the Royal Princess did feel like clones, even the artwork in the stairs and the hallways was identical and in identical positions, which disappointed me a bit because that means they’re also not original art pieces, at least they can’t both be since they had identical artwork. The Sky Princess here has new artwork at least, and my brief looking today I do like the way the shops are layed out, and so far I’m liking the Princess Live space being more of an open lounge area, rather than the closed in actual television theater space it was on the other two ships, mostly because it’s more accommodating for our 6 person group, one of whom is a child just over a year old. 
 

so, mixed feelings about the cruise so far, I’ll admit I was very into cruising before and was going regularly once or twice a year for 9 or 10 days at a time, while this cruise doesn’t turn me away from it, it isn’t impressing me enough to make me want to get back into it that regularly. Noting I stopped going regularly partially because of COVID but also because I moved to Iowa from South Carolina, so now I have to fly to the cruise not just drive 8 hours, so that makes it somewhat more expensive to go. 

I agree with you as they replaced Crooners with the seafood restaurant on the port side of deck 7, it actually interfered with passenger flow as I was stopped and told to go around the Atrium on the starboard side. I had no problem with Alfredo’s also on deck 7 as it did not block passenger the passenger flow. We had no other problems with the layout of the ship, we did think they should relocate the pastry area in the buffet more towards the main area which is a bit more aft. 

BTW I’m a voracious reader and read 3 books and started a 4th on the cruise and I love the quiet area in the rear on both sides of deck 7, the starboard side is for smokers, there you will find the old style steamer deck chairs with nice comfortable padding, great place for reading and taking in the views and sounds of the ocean.

Edited December 10, 2023 by MISTER 67

[septrack]

19 hours ago, kywildcatfanone said:

We were on this cruise. Got home about 3 hours ago.  Overall we had a good time.

I see lots of cutbacks, but will save most of that for other days.

My biggest complaints were cleanliness issues around the buffet, in particular the coffee and ice availability.

The coffee dispensers worked some days and not others.  The ice dispensers rarely worked and they bad containers with ice and a scoop.  People would just dip their cup into the ice, hand and all, or leave the scoop in the ice and people would go "hunting" for it.   Even saw one kid just reach his hand in and grab pieces.

Then on day 5 they ran out of iced tea, then this morning we were told they had no half and half.

 

No idea why this happened, but someone commented to me they had been onboard the previous week and had the same issues.

You are lucky. We are still on board the ship. Our cabin steward last week said the supply side of this ship is the worst he had ever been on. Last week, no wash cloths, and our bed was made up as twins, when he changed them he couldn't get a queen size comforter. Had to join two twin size ones. This week he corrected that, but today said he was having a real problem supplying toilet paper. He ordered it, but his supply never came. ...He just dropped off a single roll he managed to find somewhere. I guess tomorrow in Belize City Princess employees may be fanning out to buy TP. Just kidding, but I wouldn't be surprised. Just in time inventory only works when it's JUST IN TIME! One last thing. Went to many bars including Vines to get either 2 wine glasses, or chanp glasses to drink our 2 bottles we brought onboard in our cabin. No Luck at any. Saw many in the dining rooms, and everywhere else hurricane glasses.

Edited December 10, 2023 by septrack

[Daisyloo]

On 12/9/2023 at 11:17 AM, Hlitner said:

We are still on the Sky (back to back) and would not disagree with any of your scores.  My only negatives are the lack of a Crooners” and my steak in the Crown Grill.  One might consider that a steakhouse that likes to make a big deal out of salt, rather than the beef, is telling.

 

Hank

We will be on the Sky next summer. We like Crooners on other ships.  What would be a good bar for our before and after dinner drinks?  

[Guest Snaxmuppet]

Before we do Good Spirits at Sea (if we can get a seat), after we do Take 5.

[MISTER 67]

12 minutes ago, Daisyloo said:

We will be on the Sky next summer. We like Crooners on other ships.  What would be a good bar for our before and after dinner drinks?  

Nicest one would be the Crown Grill Bar on deck 7.

Bellini’s off the Atrium on deck 5 isn’t bad but could be noisy.

Edited December 10, 2023 by MISTER 67

[Hlitner]

1 hour ago, Daisyloo said:

We will be on the Sky next summer. We like Crooners on other ships.  What would be a good bar for our before and after dinner drinks?  

We have been going to the Crown 

Grill Bar.  But there is no substitute for the missing Crooners.

[J13C85]

1 hour ago, Daisyloo said:

We will be on the Sky next summer. We like Crooners on other ships.  What would be a good bar for our before and after dinner drinks?  

Our favorite bar on Sky is the Crown Grill Bar. 

[MISTER 67]

2 hours ago, Hlitner said:

We have been going to the Crown 

Grill Bar.  But there is no substitute for the missing Crooners.

While on board we booked the Enchanted for May and looking at the deck plans we were very happy to see that there is a Crooners on the starboard side of deck 6.

[CyberVenus]

So I’ve noticed some additional things, unfortunately I have to say they’re both a minor degradation of the overall experience. 
 

despite additional restaurants, it seems no place has drinks anywhere until the bars open at 7:00 AM. So, not looking for alcohol that early, but soda isn’t available anywhere either. After being directed around to various parts of the ship and then being eventually told the only way to get soda before the bars open is to essentially order room service, which I can do to any place on the ship, but having to pay for that seems like it makes the “soda package” sort of useless during certain times of the day. In the past on the Regal and Royal Princess the bar located at the back of the ship behind the buffet, I forget what the bar was called, was open 24 hours so the early morning soda was easily accessible. After being directed by different staff around to different locations and ending up at that bar 3 times, the bartender there did eventually go grab one, guess he felt bad for the literal runaround of the ship in search of a soda. 
 

also, the motion activated lights that can’t be completely turned off, in the staterooms, is really bothersome getting up in the middle of night. The bedside table lights are low to the floor and easy to block, but the light on the ceiling near the bathroom is bothersome. I’ve tried sticking different things to cover the sensor, but everything I stick up there keeps falling off.