chrisandkaryn

Have just booked for May 2023.  Has anyone actually done a cruise on Pacific Adventure yet?

Hi everyone. While disappointed to hear that the Oceanview Cafe no longer serves sushi,we wondered if anyone has tried the new Sushi on Five?

a lot of the cocktails are made with "syrups" rather than juices so they tend to be quite sweet but I drank a lot of Bahama Mamas in the end orange, pineapple, grenadine, a couple of rums.

wonderful review and photos - thank you for sharing! brought back many memories for us and reminded us why we chose Solstice again this time.

in addition to your very comprehensive review, I would like to add something we learned last time. if you don't want to drink the sugar-laden orange juice "drink" in the OC, go the bar at the entrance to the buffet and you can get fresh squeezed orange juice.

We miss enough that we just booked a Princess cruise this summer and are cancelling an asian celebrity cruise earlier in the year. Given the changes on Celebrity, it's time to see if Princess is a good alternative for family/friend cruises. We've already started to book on Oceania and other lines when we cruise alone and we just completed a 2 week river cruise (obviously not on Celebrity). Yes Celebrity, we have heard your message....we aren't important to you. We're happy to let those young wealthy folks, your current target audience, book the aqua cabins we would have booked.

 

It's not one change...it's the sum total of the changes we've seen over the years. Probably the final nail was the change in the aqua class water policy.

 

We haven't completely abandon Celebrity...we're just putting our toes in the water with HAL (given their new smoking policy) and Princess....and those are $10K toes.

 

After our annual cruise with friends in December, it will be the first time in many years that we won't have a single Celebrity cruise booked. Oh, we're still cruising but those $'s are going elsewhere.

 

I don't think we're alone.....

We are huge fans of Celebrity (Solstice) but we tried Princess (Diamond) last year and found much to love about Princess as well. I'm sure you will find things to love about Princess also :)

Hopefully it won't take away from the Islanders..the tours they offered where such great prices....love Mystery Island and looking forward to it again in a couple of weeks.

I have to say that was my first thought too - I hope the Islanders will benefit from this rather than going into the pockets of a cruise line.

As someone brand new to cruising, I'd like more info on choosing a cruise line that would suit me best. I'd like to know the differences between the cruise lines, who their target market is, if they cater well to different age groups, families, young people, old people, rich people, "regular" people (haha - as in I'd feel totally out of place on Cunard, for example!), entertainment wise, etc etc. Would my teen enjoy Celebrity, and Princess? More in depth on which cruise suits which kind of person, I'd really appreciate that kind of thing.

 

I'm going on Carnival very soon, but many of their itineraries are the same, so even if I love them, I'd like some other options.

 

I'd also love a look at reviews, ie I find myself getting put off by many bad reviews of almost all ships (!) and would love a "review of the reviews", how genuine are they, are they fair. For example I like the idea of P&O's itineraries as well as their advertising of ship amenities, but then I read reviews and it puts me off. Then I see by people's signatures, many long time cruisers having sailed them repeatedly, so can they really be that bad?

I found the best way to find out what cruiseline/ship suited us was by reading the cruise critic reviews. For example:

Celebrity Solstice Fellow Passengers

The typical Celebrity passenger is mid-50's, traveling as a couple, sophisticated and appreciative of the better things in life. The majority are from the United States, but that balance, as well as the ratio of couples to families with kids may shift between the Caribbean and European seasons.

The member reviews can be a bit confusing. I asked myself if some of the reviewers were on the same cruise at all, because they differed so much from ours, but the one time we ignored the bad reviews for a particular cruise line/ ship we regretted it. I tend to agree that if the reviewer is a repeat customer then it must be pretty good.

I think any review that is totally negative needs to be questioned. For example we hated almost everything about our last cruise but when I did the review, I made sure I mention anything positive in the interest of fairness.

You're welcome one thing I love about Princess is that they really try to make sure that your dining experience is a good one. I have had head waiters come by and notice that I wasn't eating the food and immediately replace it. I've had wait staff note that some of the meat that night was tough and ask about mine (which was) and then replace it with another that was tender. They strive very hard to ensure that you're eating food you enjoy. Even if you order something and then don't like it they'll replace it gladly and promptly. I've even had them go "off menu" to make something we wanted.

that's all good to hear! the dining experience is a huge part of the cruise for us and we felt let down by the food on Carnival after Celebrity so we're pinning all our hopes in Princess :)

all good GUT - I need to use the "quote" thingy right? ;)

sounds great - we've always boarded around 11am and I wasn't looking forward to an afternoon embarkation if sailaway is 4pm

thanks GUT2407 - we figure if we take our own, we won't be spending time at Guest Relations picking up and then returning one.

next question: are you allocated an embarkation time or are you able to select a period of time when you do your online boarding pass?

Hi chrisandkaryn,

It's best to BYO. There weren't any on our 2013 cruise. Keep the Q's coming.

(Everyone can help answer these ;))

thanks for the quick response :)

when are you cruising next? 12 October 2015

which ship? Diamond Princess because it seems to be similar to Celebrity

where to? South Pacific

and why there? because it included Mare (never been) Mystery Island (want to see again as we didn't snorkel last time) Vila (to explore more)

In my experience the menu items are very consistent across the fleet. There are variations in taste which someone on a board said had to do with the head chef. We love the hollandaise sauce on the eggs at Sabatini's at breakfast and it has always been delicious and light on out most recent cruise it was heavy and tasteless. However in general I think the food is good. Norman Love's dessert creations are excellent and one night on our cruise in January did a "through the decades" menu with dishes from each decade of Princess. It was fun and tasty.

Thanks for the quick reply. Great information. I would expect a slight variation due to different chefs but it's good to know that generally speaking what I'm seeing is pretty much what I will get :)

finally! a thread specific to Diamond (& Golden). October will be our first cruise on Diamond so i'm looking forward to learning all about her here (and sharing info post cruise). Right now, my pressing question is whether Diamond has power adaptors onboard for the duration of the cruise?

Great idea! I just waded through a 23-page "Princess" thread that actually went off on a quite a few tangents throughout and 99% of the actual Princess info was not OZ specific.

are the MDR menus fairly consistent across all Princess cruises? I see a lot of photos of meals but many are on cruises other than Diamond, which we are sailing on come October.

would the menus on Diamond Princess be similar to those on Golden Princess or Crown Princess?

oooooooooh I'm in foodie heaven! is food not half the reason we cruise? (in my case maybe 90%) ;)

would love to see anything from Diamond Princess, and I will sort out my Celebrity Solstice and Carnival Legend food porn - not that I can say much good about Carnival food but they that's just me.

yep all of the above, but we did a "luncheon" onboard Voyager of the Seas while in port and I'm wondering how we can get to do that on other ships.

haha MicCanberra - makes total sense. in fact during out cruise one of the pools had to be closed for a day or two because of .. well lets just say it wasn't 'soup' but it came from a child ;)

You will absolutely love the specialty restaurants! we enjoyed all three on our first cruise with Solstice so much that we booked them all again the moment we boarded. If you order the lobster at Murano, they actually cook it at your table. :)

I would highly recommend Celebrity Solstice. Being of similar age group to yourself, we found it suited our needs perfectly. The one cruise line we will never use again is Carnival - their boast of it being the FUN ship should have been a dead giveaway. The demographic on Carnival Legend meant that, like others have mentioned, we were bombarded by children. In fact on the one evening I dared to go to the hot tub to relax after a long day trip, I was kindly told by the 10 or 11 year old kids that the "adults" pool is at the other end of the ship. And don't be lulled into safely thinking it will only be during school holiday times! I won't go into the food etc but suffice to say "you get what you pay for" and it is truly worth paying a little extra to enjoy the added benefits of a Celebrity cruise.

We've done both FNQ (Barrier Reef) and South Pacific and loved both, although perhaps my favourite spot now is Isle of Pines - mainly for the snorkelling :)

wow where were YOU lurking pwkmpjm?

of course you're right, and that's why I did stress the word rumour, but having said that I can't help wondering how you came to suddenly pop up in a "roll-call" thread a week or more after the cruise is actually over? hmmm?

Interestingly, while on the cruise we heard a rumour that the port fees had been increased and Carnival was not willing to pay the increase. Might not be true but it does make you wonder when the locals in Port Vila were unaware of any civil unrest, and there was no mention in any of the newspapers while we were there either.