VersaliusPrimus

A Backstreet Boys song from 1999 is certainly an... interesting choice for Princess. I guess it just serves as a short demo of their dancers in the Piazza rather than any showcase of their singers. I hope their song choice for production shows follows more in line with 5 Skies or Rock Opera i.e. classical pieces mixed with modern songs from vocal powerhouses like Kelly Clarkson. Even the modern songs in Rock Opera (namely, the ones from "The Greatest Showman" soundtrack) were used well in showing off more complex choreography and vocal performances than previous production shows. Seems we'll have to wait for reviews from later cruises to find out if the Sun Princess shows live up to the hype. I will echo all the previous posts and thank you for the immense amount of info you have gathered while on your vacation! I hope you still found time to kick back and relax between wandering around snapping photos and collecting info!

Thank you very much for all the photos! If you get the chance, can you snap a quick photo of the menu at the Gelateria? Curious to see what's changed since this looks like half the usual number of options as other ships.

Indeed, I am hoping the charge for soft serve is just miscommunication between staff. If not, then this is liable to result in a lot of food wasted by people doing exactly this. Why pay the fee for soft serve if your package already includes a higher tier dessert (assuming they're still made with gelato) that you can order, eat what you want and toss the rest? Even if someone "only" opted for Princess Plus, that still covers 2 premium desserts per day. A fee for soft serve ice cream on a ship which is supposed to be more family friendly than previous designs with the new Park19 (whenever it's finished) would set Princess apart from its competitors in a negative fashion, even before they book if they research the ship first.

In the main dining room on other cruise lines we've been able to order an entree-portion of a starter and vice versa. Do you know if this is also possible in Tamarind? One of our party isn't terribly excited about the entree options but might like multiple appetizers, maybe a larger portion of an appetizer as a main course.

I have sailed on the Royal Princess for a 10 day Eastern Caribbean cruise in Dec 2017 and the Sky Princess (closer to Discovery than Royal in both age and features) this past summer for a B2B Iceland and Norway trip. While they are very similar ships, there are a couple differences you are likely to notice if your focus is onboard entertainment, which you specifically mention. Princess Live on the Royal and Regal is much more enclosed with a regular-sized, single door serving as its only passenger entrance. On the later ships, beginning with Sky Princess, this venue is opened up to the main walking path along the starboard side of the ship where passengers can walk from the Princess Theater all the way back to the Vista lounge (a "throughfare" if you will). This allowed for more seating not only within the venue proper but also the passengers seated along the throughfare to also participate in any trivia or other activities conducted here. I should note that on both Royal and Sky this venue completely filled up 20-30 minutes prior to popular activities, like the Abba trivia on Sky. Still, the additional seating made a difference and made the setting feel more open (because it was). The other major entertainment difference is the selection of production shows. The Royal (and Regal when we sailed on her June 2022) had Bravo and one other show (the name escapes me at the moment) while Sky had Rock Opera and Five Skies. We would judge both Bravo and Rock Opera to be comparable in style with the latter having a more contemporary song selection (at least two songs I recall from the soundtrack to The Greatest Showman). Our enjoyment of these shows depended heavily on the matching of the vocalists' style and range to the song they were performing. This ended up being rather hit-or-miss on both ships unfortunately, but overall we enjoyed both shows. Five Skies, on the other hand, quickly became our favorite show out of all we've seen across the Princess fleet, so much so we went back to see both showtimes on the second cruise onboard Sky. The technical advancements, storytelling, and vocal performances hit all the right notes for us. That all said, we enjoyed both of our cruises but definitely prefer the modified layout and newer production shows on the Sky/Enchanted/Discovery Princess. Hope this helps!

Glad to see others enjoying the Catch! We dined there three times on our B2B on the Sky this past summer, trying out different combinations of appetizers and entrees. We agreed later that the presence of the Catch on a ship would mean we never set foot in Crown Grill since we love seafood and can get surf and turf at the Catch without an additional fee. One question: I've heard from a neighbor who just disembarked from the Hawaii cruise previous to yours that the Discovery is not yet using Starlink, but it looks like you had no trouble posting from the ship, including quite a few photos. Is Starlink available onboard or were you making do with the older service? Thank you again for your posts and report!

I wouldn't be surprised if they [eventually] turn this flexible rate lock into a "perk" for those who book with the Princess Premier package, or rather, make that a requirement to do so.

This part of the announcement also stood out to me. How can a customer "secure today's pricing... without locking in the specific dates or itinerary" for any cabin? Pricing largely depends on cabin category, sailing date, ship, and itinerary. Even if you hold three of those four variables constant, the fourth will still affect the price i.e. a customer designates they want to "lock in" the fare for a standard balcony on the Discovery Princess to Alaska for 7 days, they will see a difference in cruise fare between sailing in May or July. Does Princess have some calculated cruise fare for each cabin category with a substantial price cushion built-in as a "fee" to ensure some minimum profit margin? This margin could then be considered by the customer the cost of "locking in" a rate with the flexibility of attaching it to a booking later. The amount of headache this can potentially cause for passengers, booking agents, and people behind the scenes at PCL is mindboggling...

Thanks for the info! The Allure in Europe is certainly an interesting prospect, especially if it's going to be in the Mediterranean. Does anyone know if Celebrity's deployment schedule will likely follow this timing or thereabouts, being a sister cruiseline? I haven't seen anything on the Celebrity CC boards yet about 2025 deployment.

Ask for a cookie and get multiple? This sounds like a possible explanation to how my pants got tighter after my last cruise... 😄

Thanks for the clarification! So the Singapore season itself could open up at a different time, although it is still unclear when since they removed it from the opening schedule. I do remember reading that vacations longer than 5 days are uncommon in Singapore, so it makes sense for the associated sailings to be about that length. Combined with the statistic from Celebrity, it makes sense from the business side to wait, watch the market and make any adjustments to maximize revenue. As a consumer who likes to plan out vacations years in advance, though, the wait to even know the dates for certain sailings (assuming itineraries will be identical to the Spectrum) is a little disappointing. We're booked on cruises for 2024 and 2025, and have watched the cruise fares continue to rise. We wonder what the base cruise fare will be another 3 months from now? Add on top of that the rising airfare and vacations to Asia from North America are getting very pricey. 😞

This would explain the multi-month delay in releasing the Singapore sailings. If demand for Spectrum sailings exceeds supply, supplement that supply with Anthem sailings. Otherwise, Anthem maintains separate itineraries out of Singapore while Spectrum serves Hong Kong and/or Shanghai.

Do you mean Singapore sailings for 2024-2025 will go on sale in October? They were listed on the release schedule document as the week of July 23rd, but that line has since disappeared. Does the switch from the Spectrum OTS necessitate a review of itineraries for 3 months, even though the replacement ship is likely the same class? I don't really expect anyone here to have these answers, just wondering "out loud" as it were.

Thank you very much! Firsthand data definitely helps from someone currently onboard! One sugar free dessert and one sugar free flavor ice cream is exactly what was available during our last Princess cruise last month, so I was hoping for more from O since their marketing pushes their culinary offerings so much. Perhaps they could taste better than on Princess? Then again, the Princess sugar free dessert was consistently tasteless, so that would be quite a low bar to clear... Princess only had Diet Pepsi and Sprite Zero so O having a wider selection than that would be refreshing. 🙂 Curious, would you attribute the communication difficulties you experienced to the staff being relatively new to the job/setting? We also had some issues clearly communicating with our waiters on the Princess cruise, although generally that was only with the crew who were still early in their first contract and did not have as much experience with English-speaking passengers as the more seasoned crew. Regarding the wifi, in a video posted yesterday a travel agent I follow on Youtube posted a full ship tour of the Riviera where he states the ship will soon be equipped with Starlink. The Marina should also be on their list to upgrade, although probably not in time for you to benefit from it. 😞 Thank you again for taking time out of your vacation to give your reports!

As others have expressed, thanks for reporting during your cruise! We have our first Oceania cruise booked for 2025 while also looking at options for our first Celebrity cruise. A quick question if you get the chance: How extensive are the sugar-free or no sugar added options onboard Oceania? If you happen to have tried any, how did you like it/them?

I will echo previous sentiments: Thank you for the advance notice! I love being able to plan ahead and compare itineraries with what the other cruise lines have to offer, especially with ship deployments changing in seemingly every region these days. This last section caught my attention (emphasis added). Does this mean the past guest discount is ending only for these Europe itineraries or ending for all new bookings on August 31st?

Thank you for the comparison! We were on the Regal in June 2022 but were told they did not have any ship models for sale due to supply/distribution issues. Does anyone know if they have resumed selling them since then?

Thanks for the link! I've been using the same metric to compare the passenger density on different ships, but it does have some limitations. One noted in that post is the tendency of some cruise lines, itineraries, or ships to exceed the double occupancy number used in the calculation, rendering that assumption false and affecting the results. Another limitation I didn't see any discussion about was the proportion of the stated gross tonnage that is actually available for passengers to explore. Every cruise ship will have some portion of its volume dedicated to areas necessary for vessel operations (bridge, generators, engines, control systems, etc.), another portion dedicated to behind-the-scenes hotel operations (kitchens, theatrical backstage, hotel admin, etc.), another portion occupied by passenger and crew cabins, and the remaining volume is what passengers can spread out and enjoy. This last portion would be the used to find a more accurate metric of passenger density. Since I don't know of any official numbers for any ship segmented in this way, perhaps I could posit some numbers to see how it changes the comparison of two ships, namely the Grand and Royal Princess: Grand Princess official numbers: 107,517 GT with 2600 passengers at dual occupancy Royal Princess official numbers: 142,229 GT with 3560 passengers at dual occupancy Now let's consider the Grand Princess and get a [very] loose estimate of its GT available to passengers. If we assume vessel operations occupy 20,000 GT and hotel operations occupy another 20,000 GT, cabins occupy about 46,500 GT (estimate from passenger cabins occupying the majority of 5.5 decks plus crew cabins down below), then the GT available to passengers becomes 21,017. Now let's consider the Royal Princess and generate estimates of each segment relative to those on the Grand. This larger ship will require more space dedicated to each segment due to increased demand for propulsion and a higher passenger count. If we then assume vessel operations occupy 30,000 GT (more generators, engines, etc.), hotel operations are another 30,000 GT (more kitchen space, more laundry capacity, etc.), cabins are about 58,500 GT (passenger cabins occupying about 6 decks plus another deck for crew cabins), then the GT available to passengers becomes 23,729. Using the adjusted numbers for GT, the revised metric is now 8.08 for the Grand and 6.67 for the Royal. Of course, this metric still does not take into account any outdoor space available to passengers or how the ship's design accommodates passenger flow to reduce any perception of overcrowding. This avenue of analysis also does not account for space available on a limited basis, such as the Sanctuary or Concierge lounge. This last limitation will have a greater impact on the usefulness of this analysis on ships like the upcoming Sun Princess with more sections of the ship dedicated toward Reserve or Signature suite guests. This has been a fun little thought experiment. Over the years I've read many comments on how a certain ship, class of ship, or cruise line "felt" more crowded, so I searched for a numerical way to compare ships regarding passenger density. With all its limitations, this metric should never be the sole deciding factor when comparing ships, but it can have some usefulness as a starting point. I'm an engineer; I like numbers to start with, so this metric serves that purpose. 😄

We contacted our TA about this promotion since we have two B2B cruises on the Sky this summer booked with Princess Plus. We were told we would have to refare to obtain the new Princess Plus to qualify for the promotion. The price difference in the cruise fare from when we booked it on top of the price increase from old to new Princess Plus meant it was nowhere near worth it for us. We'll wait and see how much of a headache the changeover causes onboard. 😟

Possible, although don't these ships usually spend a couple weeks in drydock? That would leave zero time for repositioning from Hong Kong or Tokyo to Vancouver or Seattle. I expect the itinerary for the transition cruises weren't finalized in time to be included in the brochure. Brisbane -> Tokyo -> Whittier -> Vancouver would be a VERY nice cruise indeed! My family was booked on the Royal from Whittier to Tokyo, but alas, that booking was cancelled due to the fleetwide pause. We'll have to see if the Royal takes that same route back to Sydney after the Alaska 2024 season though.

Thank you for the early info! Some observations: The Royal Princess currently shows a transition cruise from Sydney to Tokyo, ending on April 27th, 2024. The earliest itinerary listed on the provided brochure I can see is the southbound Voyage of the Glaciers embarking May 11th from Whittier. This leaves a span of 14 days in between for an additional transition cruise, although my family was hoping the Royal Princess would be doing Japan cruises for the summer of 2024. The Majestic Princess currently shows a transition cruise from Sydney to Hong Kong, ending on May 1st, 2024. The earliest itinerary I can find on the brochure is May 12th from Seattle, leaving a span of 11 days blank. I expected the Majestic to remain and run roundtrip Hong Kong cruises for the 2024 summer season since the ship was intended for the Chinese market. We'll see if these remaining cruises appear to fill in the gaps later on or if the previous itineraries are adjusted to compensate.