Crown San Juan

[vicruiser]

I will be traveling for the first time on Princess on 12/8/07 Crown Princess. I have traveled RCL, CCL, and NCL. Is the Crown Princess a really nice ship? How are the entertainment and the food? I plan to go to Sabatini's and skip Crown Grille because of too many mixed views. Does anyone know the cost of Sabatini’s? I am scheduled for Anytime Dining. I see the ship has two restaurants for this, am I right? I have cabin R611? I t is under the Lido deck. Has anyone experienced any cabins in this vicinity if not this cabin? Any input will be greatly appreciated.:confused:

[Newsdoc]

It's a really nice ship, spotlessly maintained. But our cruise on 11/3 was otherwise very much a mixed bag.

 

Dining

 

We made the mistake of traditional dining (2nd seating in the Boticelli), thinking that this is where Princess would station its most experienced staff. Boy, were we ever wrong about that! It was truly amateur hour, with waiters who clearly didn't know what they were doing and therefore took their training way too seriously.

 

Examples:

• While you're ordinarily supposed to serve from the right, you shouldn't do so if the guest is seated in a location which makes that difficult. I would have much prefered to have been served from the left instead of having the waiter physically lean on top of me in order to reach around to my right.
  
• While it's obvious that Princess has made all beverages a major profit center, it's inappropriate for a waiter to repeatedly pester guests to place their drink orders when they have yet to read their menus long enough to decide on entrees and then peruse the wine list for something to complement their meal. Being asked four times in five minutes for a wine order borders on the obnoxious.
  
• Waiters still struggling with English as a second language should not be trained with trite attempts at humor that they try over an over again. Practice does not necessarily make perfect, especially when you try to tell the same joke over and over again.

After putting up with this for two days, we opted for Anytime Dining down in Michelangelo and were pleasantly surprised to find the quality of service which actually exceeded our expectations. Our waiter, Florin, was so good that he actually made the entire trip more enjoyable (and we definitely made sure to single him out for additional compensation at the end of the cruise).

 

The Michelangelo, Boticelli and DaVinci dining rooms all feature the same menus and the food ranges from very good to excellent -- so Anytime Dining is definitely the way to go. Note: we didn't feel that paying Sabatini an extra $20 pp would be worth it because the main dining rooms always had Italian entrees available and they even featured an Italian night during the cruise. But we did try Crown Grill only to find embarassingly bad service and a rib eye strewn with gristle. The Brazilian lobster was quite good, but after finishing our entrees it took literally half an hour to get our desserts and then another 15 minutes to get our bill (which the waiter screwed up so badly that we had to go to the Passenger Services desk to get things straightened out).

 

Our recommendation: stick to the main dining rooms with Anytime dining. Save your money and don't go for the specialty restaurants, and don't even bother with the buffets (except perhaps for an occasional breakfast). The International Cafe is also quite good (especially for a quick light lunch) -- but expect to pay a surcharge if you want to order tapas in the evening.

 

Entertainment

 

The comedians ranged from good to excellent, but the quality of the musical acts was all over the board.

 

As for Movies Under the Stars, Princess gets an "A" for concept and an "F" in execution. They do offer a good selection of films & other entertainment, but just because you have a 70,000 watt sound system doesn't mean you have to turn the volume up beyond the point of causing painful permanent hearing loss. It also would have been nice if the aspect ratio of the picture had been set properly so that the faces weren't so stretched out. But none of this seemed to bother the hundreds of people who turned out each night to enjoy the outdoor movie experience.

 

Cabin

 

In general, spotlessly clean and very well laid out. Hopefully, you should be far enough down the Riviera Deck to not be affected by the noise from the Lido Deck immediately above.

 

Unfortunately, that wasn't the case for us. Even though we'd paid top dollar for what was sold to us as one of the best suites on the ship (R402), the Sail Away party was set up in such a way that the "dance floor" was directly over our room -- which made it impossible to even think about trying to sleep until well after midnight. When we called Passenger Services to discuss this issue, we were assured that this was a one-time only occurance and that there would be no other similar events during the rest of our cruise.

 

Which meant that whoever we spoke with either told us a bald-faced lie or simply didn't have a clue as to what was planned by her department. Three nights later, the Tropical Night party was held in exactly the same spot. This time, the noise was even worse. With more than a hundred people line-dancing directly over our cabin, it was so loud that we couldn't even watch the TV (much less try to sleep). I'm not exaggerating: the combined weight of all those passengers bouncing up and down in unison was so jarring that one of the ceiling lamps in our bathroom broke.

 

Spa/Salon Services

 

As long as you know up front that Steiner trains all of its employees on the hard-sell for additional unwanted services, the quality of the services you do want are usually quite good. After politely warning my masseuse that her tip depended entire on her not trying to sell me anything extra, I had a truly excellent massage -- and after visiting the salon, my mother-in-law's hair looked so good that we took photos of it from every angle so that she could show her hairdresser back home.

 

As for The Sactuary, it really is a wonderful experience (definitely worth the $10pp surcharge for a half-day) -- but one best reserved for an at-sea day. Otherwise, all that peace & tranquility is likely to be drowned out by the overly amplified live musicians Princess arranges out on the dock at every port.

 

Premium Services

 

Even though we'd paid for a full suite, many of the amenities we were supposed to get were simply not offered -- so it's apparent that everyone from embarkation staff to stateroom attendants need much more training. Also, while we'd taken the time to fill out our "Cruise Personalizers" online, except for dining all of our other preference requests were completely ignored. Even the Steiner spa ignored our confirmed booking times for a cuple of massages -- but immediately restored them after we threatened to cancel our appointments entirely.

 

Shore Excursions

 

This is another major profit center for Princess, so unless you want to pay more than twice as much for less than half the service then book your excursions on your own (either in advance or at each of the docks -- there are plenty of excellent non-affiliated shore excursions available in every port).

 

By way of example, on Tortola we booked our own ferry tour to the Baths at Virgin Gorda for just $30 roundtrip per person. We took Speedy's 9AM departure and got to Virgin Gorda hours before everyone else. That gave us plenty of time to explore the Baths at our leisure and then relax & swim at Devil's Beach before heading back -- which is when we ran into well over 150 people who had paid more than twice as much to take the official Princess excursion. Instead of the leisurely experience we had, they were marched single-file through the intricate complex of boulders along the beach (no time for pictures and you only see the backside of the person in front of you instead of the amazing natural setting). Likewise, based on other Cruise Critic recommendations we hired Sanjay for a private tour on Barbados and Bernard (St. Lucia Taximan) and in both cases were delighted with the personalized itinerary and freedom to go at our own pace.