Cosmo30068

We have never been to Asia & couldn't resist the itinerary & price. Thank you!

We just booked the Sapphire Princess out of Singapore in February and haven't cruised Princess in a while. Does Princess still have the drink of the day & appetizer set up in Skywalkers before dinner for Platinum & Elite members? 

Thanks!

We were on the 3/26/16 Summit sailing out of San Juan. Our cabin was Concierge 8133. No footstools on the balcony. There is just enough room for the table & 2 chairs. Hope this helps.

Would like to know the dive operators you used. We are on this itinerary in February & have dives planned in all 3 ports. We are using ship's dive excursion in Belize because they will pick you up at the ship & you don't have to tender with everyone. Then private dives in Cozumel (Scuba with Alison - have used her twice before) and Sun Divers in Roatan.

Thanks.

I would also like to know more about your diving experience in Roatan. We are on this same itinerary in February - diving in each port. We are booked with the ship's dive excursion in Belize, but are on our own in Cozumel (Scuba with Alison) and in Roatan (Sun Divers).

Thanks for passing the information along.

Debi

Is it bad that reading everything about the Crown lately I'm pretty much regretting putting my family on the ship this coming Saturday?! :confused:

As with any other vacation, there are things you like & things you wish were different. None of the things we encountered made me wish we hadn't gone on this cruise. In retrospect, I would have booked another specialty restaurant (or two!). Definitely should have brought some room spray. This itinerary (Princess Cays, Curacao & Aruba) is not port intensive and we spent more time in our cabin, so we noticed it more.

If something really bothers you while on the Crown or any other ship, speak up and see if there is a resolution.

I would be interested to hear how your Crown experience is - please let us know.

Debi

It is probably less than two miles south of the port. You see the ship really well while at the beach. When we told the cab driver where we wanted to go, he looked like we were crazy. He said he could take us to a much nicer beach. Since the fare was almost identical to either Palm Beach or Eagle Beach, I think he may have wanted to take us somewhere he got a commission.

The beach is sandy - nothing to bring your snorkel gear for - there is no coral. Very calm (at least when we were there). There are several dive boats that are docked at the pier next door.

The really cool thing to see while at Nikky Beach are the airplanes landing. While you are not nearly as close as that famous bar in St. Maarten, you have a great view.

We spent about a half hour in the ocean, about an hour in the pool and then the rest of the time in the chairs on the beach or at a table near the bar. There is even a swim up bar in the pool.

If you are looking for a very quiet beach, it may work for you - there were no vendors coming by - no jet skis or anything like that.

QUOTE=canadarocks;40959211]Thanks so much for the review of Nikky Beach! I've wanted to read some first hand experience from someone here on CC. Can I ask what the beach was like there? We're trying to decide between Nikky Beach or heading to Eagle Beach.

This was our 10th Princess cruise – the third one on the Crown. We stayed in Caribe 634 – friends were next door in Caribe 636. We like the Caribe balconies & have the steward open up the balcony doors so our balcony seems even larger. Let me just say that we like the amount of storage room on Princess ships. We did a 14 night Celebrity cruise in February to Antarctica and found the clothes storage to be lacking.

Bon Voyage Experience - We had our daughter & 7-year-old granddaughter who live in South Florida do the “Bon Voyage Experience” – since the granddaughter has never cruised. Our friends had their kids and grandkids doing the Bon Voyage also. I think we were the only ones who did it on this cruise. For those who aren’t familiar with it, you pay $39pp and get to board the ship first. Enjoy lunch in the main dining room, a glass of wine, free photo and then get the run of the ship until one hour prior to the ship leaving port.

Embarkation - We arrived at the port at 10:00 since we like to torture ourselves by being at the port but not able to board – we waited in the Elite waiting area until 11:30 – when they let the Bon Voyage folks & us board. The future cruise consultant met us & walked us to our cabins to make sure they were ready. We looked in the fridge and noticed the previous occupant of our room had left their insulin pens and some other type of medicine in our refrigerator. :( My heart sank when I saw it – this 7 year old granddaughter that was with us was diagnosed at age 4 with Type 1 Diabetes and we understand the need to have your insulin with you. After looking to see if any of the prescriptions had the owner’s contact information, I called the purser’s desk and tried to stress how important it was to call the person & let them at least come back to the ship to get it. They said they would send someone for it. I just had to let it go – there was nothing I could do other than this.

We left to explore the ship & get to the dining room. The meal was very good – we have never gone to the dining room for lunch on embarkation day. While we were eating, the skies opened up & rain started falling. Since we had promised the granddaughter she could swim in the pools, we just went with it. Back to the cabin to change and checked the fridge – the insulin was still in the refrigerator. So much for helping get it back to the person in a timely manner. The cabin steward came by at this time & we gave it to him. I hope it somehow found its way back its owner from Camp LeJeune, North Carolina. Would love to hear if it did.

In spite of the rain, we enjoyed the pool & hot tub by the ice cream area. Since no one else was crazy enough to sit in the pouring rain, we had it all to ourselves. Pretty soon, it was 3:00 and the daughter & granddaughter had to leave the ship. I think the Bon Voyage experience was great. Glad we did it.

Muster drill was the same – it never ceases to amaze me how many people feel the need to play with the Velcro on the life jackets while the crew is instructing us not to play with the Velcro.

The weather cleared in time for sailaway. In case you don’t know about the Port of Everglades webcams, you can watch the sailaway of your ship when you get back. It’s all archived. We brought a brightly colored fabric thing to wave from our port side balcony and we got picked up on the camera for a while. Go to http://www.portevergladeswebcam.com

The smells –

We noticed a smell in the hallway outside our cabin area – it started a few cabins on either side. We dubbed it “The Landfill” – it was that kind of odor. Of course, when you opened the cabin door, it was now in the room. Made a call to the front desk on first sea day – they said they would report it – never saw anyone or heard anything. The cabin steward was very familiar with the complaint, so I think the reason we never heard anything was because there is nothing they can do – it’s just one of those smells. My advice to anyone staying in this area of Caribe is to bring some type of spray for your room to cover up the smell. The smell stayed the same all week. We visited some folks on Baja in the same area of the ship & their hallway didn’t smell. Our friends staying next door had a stronger smell in their cabin than we did.

Toilets –

We had read that some folks had toilet issues on the Crown. Ours was fine MOST of the time. Except on Tuesday night, my husband got up at 2:15am & noticed the toilet (this is going to get gross, but here goes) was almost overflowing with brown stinking sewer water. No one had used the bathroom in hours – just in case you were wondering. The toilet would not flush. A call to the front desk was promptly made & we were told they were working on the system. Nothing we could do about it. The next morning, the toilet was working fine & looked normal.

Then on Thursday night (following Aruba), we received a note by our door that said they were doing water supply maintenance and we would not have water to our cabin from 1:00am to approximately 6:30am. No one was to even try to flush the toilet during this time. Our steward said it was ship-wide. Not sure about that – we just filled up a few glasses of water to have on hand, just in case.

Air conditioning – while our cabin was never cold, it wasn’t hot. I never used a sweater or wrap during the entire cruise – the temps were comfortable in the common areas for me.

Ports –

Princess Cays was fine – we went “to the right” this time & found four chaise lounges under a tree. Make sure you bring your water shoes if you expect to go in the water. It is very rocky & shallow. I didn’t bring them this time and I’m sure my journey out to waist deep water offered some amusement to any onlookers.

Curacao – Since we didn’t arrive until 2:00, we were limited to what kind of scuba dive we could do. We had arranged a shore dive with The Dive Bus & couldn’t have been more pleased. By the way, in trying to get a cab to their shop, we were put in a van that dropped some of our fellow cruisers off in the downtown area to shop. Just saying that if you have plans to take a cab in a Caribbean port, please don’t expect him/her to be able to take your $100 bill. We had to wait for someone to try to break a $100 bill to pay the cab so we could get to our dive. The purser’s desk will break larger bills for you. It was very frustrating for our driver & I think he ended up just leaving without getting paid, since he knew he was holding us up.

Aruba – we went to Nikky’s Beach Club for the day. We arrived at 8:45am and weren’t sure we wanted to stay because no one was there & it looked a little sketchy. But am glad we stayed, since for $10pp, we got a great chair with umbrella and an adult beverage. Then you get to use the fresh water pool – they put lounge chairs in the shallow end & it was very comfortable. Their food was very good also. We met a group of three ladies from our cruise that were in the chairs next to us – this was their second time at Nikky’s. They told us the owner’s son would take us back to the port when we were ready & he did. We just tipped him a little.

Specialty Restaurants – we ate at the Crown Grill & Sabatini’s. Both were fantastic. Not sure which one is the winner since they were both so good.

Main Dining Room – Bottecelli – second seating. Food was ok – much better than if I was cooking it, but not memorable. We all felt that Celebrity food was definitely a step above Princess.

International Café – enjoyed the treats there & made good use of our coffee card.

We didn’t go to any shows on this cruise. We really cruise to visit with our friends, enjoy the view from the balcony & see the sights.

I did suggest to Princess in the post-cruise survey (in addition to to mentioning the landfill smell) that they consider offering a cruise that includes Aruba, Bonaire, Curacao & Dominica (the ABCD cruise) – those are all islands I would like to go back to & hit in one cruise.

So, to sum it up, it certainly wasn’t our best cruise on the Crown – but it was good enough to buy a future cruise credit. I probably wouldn’t pick the Crown until a refurbishment is done. She is looking tired.