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Click on each photo below for a larger image,
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for a slideshow of all the below photos.
Yes, we are "Night Owls" or maybe vampires. On "Sea Days" we often just stay in our room much of the day waiting for sunset to head out for the night life. Until dinner, all we ate today was the light breakfast that Princess brought to our room.
Since Princess only allows one bottle of wine per person to be brought on board without the $15 corkage fee, we brought two of our finest wines. On most of our past cruises we have not purchased a drinks package. Instead we have brought on board many bottles of wine and just paid the $15 corkage fee for every bottle beyond the first 2 bottles. We love this Princess policy of bringing on as many bottles of wine as you want. Most other cruise lines limit you to one bottle per person with no allowance for bringing on more bottles, even with a corkage fee.
We only started getting a Drinks Package since Princess came out with their Princess Plus pricing package. We always want to pre-pay the gratuities and get access to at least one WiFi device each. If we were to purchase just those two add-ons, the cost would already be almost up to the cost of the Princess Plus package. We aren't big drinkers, but just the cost of the few drinks we purchase each day plus the gratuities plus the WiFi access, make the Princess Plus package a good deal for us. Thus, we only brought two bottles of wine on board and have been getting glasses of wine and other drinks that are included with the Princess Plus Drinks Package.
On this cruise we actually splurged and upgraded from the Princess Plus to the Princess Premier package. That upgrade was an additional $25 per day each, or a total upgrade of $500 for the two of us for the ten day cruise. That gave each of us the ability to have 4 devices connected to the WiFi simultaneously. That isn't essential for us, but is more convenient than switching the WiFi back and forth between devices. I have my mobile phone, my computer, and a spare business mobile phone connected to my 4 WiFi device plan. I would also connect my Kindle Oasis to it, but haven't been able to get the Oasis to display the WiFi logon screen. My wife also has her mobile phone and Chromebook connected to the WiFi under her 4 WiFi device plan. Again, I could not get her Kindle Oasis connected to the WiFi.
The Princess Premier also allows us to go for the "Top Shelf" drinks, up to $18 per drink, which includes some of the better wines by the glass. Since we don't drink a lot, we generally like to go for the more high end drinks when we do. The Princess Premier Package also includes 2 dinners for each person in one of the "pay extra" upscale restaurants. For a 3 to 10 day cruise, I think the Princess Premier Package is worth it for us, but I don't think it would be for longer than a 10 day cruise. The cost just starts getting to be too much and you don't get more than the 2 upscale dinners per person no matter how long the cruise. For longer cruises we'll just live within the Princess Plus Package.
My wife and I check the menus at all of the restaurants every day, especially the main dining rooms. We haven't been too impressed with the offerings for these first two days at sea. We aren't big on red meat, only splurging on a filet mignon once in a while. I don't like the taste of any kind of seafood with the exception of tuna. I did manage to learn to enjoy salmon as long as it is not too fishy tasting. So that eliminates all the red meat and fish on the main dining room menus, of which there seem to be a lot. That gets me down to chicken and vegetarian items. We were on a Carnival Panorama cruise just a few weeks ago and I had no problem finding very enticing and delicious items on the menus in their main dining rooms every day. On the few days that there were a shortage of selections to my liking, I could always order the vegetarian Indian food selection that they always had and that I loved.
Fortunately, I've been able to find a huge selection of food that I really like at the Princess buffet. They have a huge array of vegetarian items, chicken, and even at least one Indian dish every day so far. I find the buffet offerings much more extensive than those on the Carnival Panorama. I am easily able to fill up on the foods that I enjoy from the buffet. I just hope that Princess comes up with some items I can look forward to in the main dining rooms soon.
Well, my wife, Barbara, certainly looks fantastic in the above photo. I didn't bring anything "impressive" along other than my 3 piece suite to wear on the semi-formal dress up nights. Since it wasn't one of those dress up nights, I didn't want to wear my 3 peice suit. Also, I wasn't really happy with the photos a ship photographer provided for me to download. I think I am standing a bit awkward in this photo. He did take other better photos that are available as prints, but did not make those available for download.
I forgot to mention that photos are another benefit of the Princess Premier package. Theoretically I'm supposed to be able to get digital copies of ALL of the photos we have taken by ship photographers plus get up to 3 prints free. Maybe they will give me a USB Thumb Drive at the end of the cruise with all of the photos they have taken. I hope so.
My wife and I next went to the early performance of "Rock Opera" in the Princess Theater. I thought it was going to be more like other rock operas like "Tommy", "Hair", "Jesus Christ Superstar", but it seemed more Opera than Rock. But we really enjoyed the show anyway and glad we attended. After that we went to see the comedy show which was fantastic. So far we've been enjoying the comedy shows on this cruise way more than those on the Carnival Panorama. There has been very little potty or sex humor in these shows unlike the ones on Carnival. We aren't easily offended, but just throwing in dirty words to get a few laughs is not our idea of good humor. It takes more work to come up with good comedy if you don't revert to blurting out dirty words every other sentence. We aren't offended by any words, but if the line wouldn't be funny without the words, then they seem to just be a crutch to insure a laugh.
Next, on to one of our favorite venues, the jazz lounge. We love jazz (see my other website: JazzDens.com) and this band is great. However, our favorite jazz instruments are horns, especially the saxophone. Neither on this cruise nor our prior cruise on the Sky Princess did they often have horns join them for a performance. The only time they will have horns is when one of the members of the Princess Theater orchestra join them for a performance. Princess does seem to recognize the importance of incorporating horns into jazz as they have 2 or 3 horns in a display case as you enter the Take Five from the forward end.
Above Right: People sitting in The Salty Dog Gatropub to listen to music after the restaurant has closed for dinner. Now wouldn't this be nicer if this was still the "Vines Wine Bar" as it is on other Princess ships where you could order from a huge selection of wine by the glass, and even wine flights, while listening to the music?
Slice closes at 11 PM so I went up there 10 minutes before they closed. It didn't look like they were making any new fresh pizza, but they had several plates set out with 1 to 3 slices on them from probably the most recent and last pizzas they made. I grabbed one with the 3 slices and headed back to the Crooner's Lounge where my wife was waiting. I wondered if they kept the left over pizza out for people to take after they closed, but more likely for health reasons they probably just gather it up and throw it away while they are cleaning up after close. I agree with other reviewers who say that Slice makes the best pizza of any cruise ship I have ever been on, even better than the GiGi's restaurant on this same cruise ship.
We really enjoy this piano player and singer who has a great repetoire of songs and a lot of knowledge about both the songs and the artists. He takes requests and we have yet to see him turn down a request because he did not know the song. The only mystery is that the Princess Patter said he'd be playing from 11pm until 2am. He did start at 11pm, but finished at midnight. My wife and I had expected to stay and listen for at least another hour.
I took this photo at Crooner's Bar as it is the only way to know what drinks they offer, other than asking the bartender. As I mentioned yesterday, the bar menu QR Code at each bar is totally inaccurate and useless, as is the bar menus in the Medallion App and on the cabin TV screens. The bartenders and servers don't seem to have any idea why the bar menus don't match their inventory. I hate playing 20 questions with the bartenders and servers: do you have this? do you have that? do you have this? do you have that? Again I tried to order items on the bar menu which they did not have, but did have other items that were not listed on the bar menu. It would be nice to have an accurate list of what each bar actually has in stock so that I can order my drinks from the menu. I really don't know why they put the bar menu QR Codes on every table or bother to publish them everywhere if they are totally inaccurate and useless.
Also, I don't know if others have experience this, but most of the bars seem to be highly understaffed. Most bars don't have enough bartenders or servers to keep up, but mostly a lack of bartenders. The bartenders not only have to fill orders of customers that come up to the bar, but also prepare all the drinks for the bar servers to take them to patrons. I often see servers just standing around the bar waiting for the overwhelmed bartenders to get their drinks prepared. I don't blame the serving staff for this problem. Either Princess is not hiring enough staff in order to cut costs, or maybe they just can't find enough people to hire and train.
We decided to splurge on some final late night decadence of a couple of rich Martinis from the Crooner's Bar and tuna crossants and chocolate chip cookies from the 24 hour International Cafe.
Fortunately they did have the Milky Way and Mint Chocolate Martinis shown on the above bar menu and those are what we ordered (Click on the above photo for a larger and clearer image).
Many of these new cruise ships are so big that the hallways seem to just go on forever. This photo was taken on the long walk back to our cabin.
I know a lot of my commentary today may sound like a lot of complaing but we are actually enjoying our time on the cruise. There are always going to be little things that aren't quite as I'd rather them to be, but overall the cruise has been great so far.
Click on each photo above for a larger image,
or
CLICK HERE
for a slideshow of all the above photos.
If in this report you see any typos, misspellings, factual errors or other types of errors, please let me know.
Please include the web address (URL) of the report in which you found the error. Thank you! Send your email to:
