nunuc2000

There are quite a few of empty rooms on this sailing, with less than half capacity at this point… Our room is definitely not a refurbished one, although we have been smelling a lot of paint and varnishing… But those are the only rooms we have specifically seen that have been upgraded… They look really nice! We have been on the revolutionized celebrity ships, and this looks almost exactly like that kind of decorating and motif which we love!

Today’s patters, along with photos from C304… Empty room that they are putting fresh paint in, it’s a handicapped room that they’ve also completely redesigned with new furniture… It looks very nice!!

Today is day three… Ketchikan, very early arrival of about 6:45 AM we were cleared to disembark, and 2:30 PM all aboard. A rather cool and gray day with just the lightest sprinkle of showers off and on… now for a menopausal woman from Canada, that meant just a really light jacket and occasionally even removing that lol A high of 13 Celsius which is about 55 Fahrenheit. Having been here before, we just wandered around for a couple of hours and got in all of our steps… Watched the amazing bald eagles and float planes and a couple of other ships come in after us.. and then back on board for a casual lunch and relaxation on our balcony watching for Eagles and just enjoying the incredible fresh air.

Yesterday was formal day, and that means captains dinner in the dining room… but yesterday also included another meal in the dining room being that it was a sea day… LUNCH! I had the caramelized prawns and the red snapper for lunch, hubby had the Cobb salad. The prawns were excellent… The red snapper not so much… A little dry and overdone for my liking. But John said the Cobb salad was pretty good, other than the chicken tasted like it might’ve been way past its prime ha ha ha. For dinner, hubby started with the watermelon and goat cheese salad and thought it was pretty good, and I had the shrimp cocktail and then the kale Caesar salad, both pretty good… But that kale Caesar salad is quite peppery I find. We both ordered the wild Alaska sockeye seared salmon… And disappointingly, it was very dry and over cooked. I’m not sure how, but we both missed seeing the halibut which would’ve been preferable to begin with… We will order that next week as we are on the back to back. For dessert, we both ordered the crêpe Suzette, but honestly it wasn’t very good… And I really wanted to like it. Insert sad disappointment here 😢 basically, it was a crêpe folded into fourths, and dropped into a bowl of syrup with a blob of ice cream on top. I’ve seen four-year-old use less syrup on a massive stack of pancakes. So that didn’t get eaten… but petit four was also available and that satisfied the Sweet cravings I get after dinner, and that left me extra room for calories in the form of liquid entertainment later on 👍🏼😂 The “pop rock band“ Static was playing again last night in explorers lounge, and while they do a good job of the type of music they play, it’s definitely geared towards the older demographics… Very soft rock, and 50s and 60s kind of music. But like I said, they are good at what they do, and I’m sure that this is the type of music that princess has contracted them for. PS… Posting to cruise critic is still kind of tricky, so looks like I may have to post text first and then my photos will follow…

Yesterday was formal day, and that means captains dinner in the dining room… but yesterday also included another meal in the dining room being that it was a sea day… LUNCH! I had the caramelized prawns and the red snapper for lunch, hubby had the Cobb salad. The prawns were excellent… The red snapper not so much… A little dry and overdone for my liking. But John said the Cobb salad was pretty good, other than the chicken tasted like it might’ve been way past its prime ha ha ha. For dinner, hubby started with the watermelon and goat cheese salad and thought it was pretty good, and I had the shrimp cocktail and then the kale Caesar salad, both pretty good… But that kale Caesar salad is quite peppery I find. We both ordered the wild Alaska sockeye seared salmon… And disappointingly, it was very dry and over cooked. I’m not sure how, but we both missed seeing the halibut which would’ve been preferable to begin with… We will order that next week as we are on the back to back. For dessert, we both ordered the crêpe Suzette, but honestly it wasn’t very good… And I really wanted to like it. Insert sad disappointment here 😢 basically, it was a crêpe folded into fourths, and dropped into a bowl of syrup with a blob of ice cream on top. I’ve seen four-year-old use less syrup on a massive stack of pancakes. So that didn’t get eaten… but petit four was also available and that satisfied the Sweet cravings I get after dinner, and that left me extra room for calories in the form of liquid entertainment later on 👍🏼😂 The “pop rock band“ Static was playing again last night in explorers lounge, and while they do a good job of the type of music they play, it’s definitely geared towards the older demographics… Very soft rock, and 50s and 60s kind of music. But like I said, they are good at what they do, and I’m sure that this is the type of music that princess has contracted them for. PS… Posting to cruise critic is still kind of tricky, so looks like I may have to post text first and then my photos will follow…

Finally got to meet @Senga and her hubby!! Thank you so much for introducing yourselves, and please, feel free to chime in anytime on this post - as we both have noticed, sometimes it’s tricky to post successfully on here… So if any of us can provide good information and answers, I’m sure it’s very helpful to others. 😊

We personally haven’t attended them yet, partly because it’s just not our cup of tea… and partly because we end up doing other things. But if you take a look at the pictures of the patters that I am posting, you can see the production shows at 7:30 and 930 on there 😊

Sorry it took me a couple of days to find the board lol

Wi-Fi is not horrible so far, I am able to occasionally post on this page, and Facebook is actually working very well, and I am able to instant message and text family and friends.

So here’s a funny little story… at least I think it’s pretty funny, I’m still giggling about it hours later: You know how the clerks start to circle around guests on sea days in the shops, particularly when it comes to jewelry? Well today was no different, and when we entered the EFFY shop, The assistant manager was particularly aggressive. Kept following us around, and suggesting to my husband that he should buy me something as beautiful as my eyes. Like we are talking he was really put the pressure on for a good two or three minutes and would not leave us alone. We kept telling him that we were just browsing, not interested in actually buying anything right now. He finally asked me what my favorite stone was. I replied “rolling?” And I think he really wasn’t sure what I said… So he just repeated “ya, your favorite stone?” Very deadpan I said “oh I think probably Mick Jagger.” He looked at me with an incredulous blank look on his face while my husband just about fell on the floor laughing uncontrollably! We left him standing there as we walked out and went to the good spirits bar to have a drink and laugh and laugh and laugh!! Still giggling about it this evening Hahaa!

Yes, there are two shows at night, one at 7:30, one at 9:30… Totally forgot to take a picture of the staff board, I will try and remember to do that tomorrow 😊

I totally couldn’t understand the announcement today… thank you for posting that, and I will say that for the most part it has felt like we are way under capacity which is kind of nice to be honest 🙂 but now we are in explorers waiting for the 50s and 60s party to start, and it is actually pretty packed in here… and nary a mask to be seen 😬

Just finished a lovely breakfast in the da Vinci dining room, and in the theater now waiting for a naturalist presentation by Sandra Schempp. Enjoyed dinner at our pre-reserve schedule time at 5:20 PM in Botticelli yesterday evening, and everything was hot, very tasty, and served with grace and humor by the amazing crew. The Medallion app continues to be pretty iffy off and on, with orders getting missed or very long delays, but really, that is the only dull spot and what has otherwise been so far a great start to the cruise. (yesterdays pre-boarding security debacle notwithstanding). As we are still making our way up the inside passage, it has been smooth like glass so far… and even though our room is at the very back of the ship, there was basically zero movement through the night. That almost disappoints me, as I actually enjoy a lot of movement, it reminds me I’m on a cruise ship and happy to be here lol! Here are the patters for yesterday, and today, along with the dinner menus from yesterday and our pictures… but I totally forgot to take a picture of the appetizer which was the garlic prawns… But they were delicious! Hubby had the cod for dinner, and I had the seafood stew. We both had the vanilla mascarpone For dessert, and it was quite delicious. We participated in the “good spirits at sea ~cocktail experience” and really enjoyed the cocktail creations we ordered… I had the Coco Cafe, and John had the Cartegena Cool… I included photos of the recipes for our two drinks and a few others too 😊 Later in the evening we had fun at one of the games StrikeOut, (I won a water bottle haha!) then off to bed… and I have a funny late night story that I’ll share later. 😊

First attempt at loading photos so I want to make sure this works before I invest a lot of time and energy loading a bunch more lol after a couple of beverages, ordered the bacon cheese fries from the salty dog on the Lido deck, here’s a picture of the salty dog menu and said fries… They were delicious after a couple of drinks!! please let me know if these photos turned out OK and then I will spend more time today posting photos of other things including the patters, and dinner menus, and our menu choices if there’s interest in those… oh what am I saying… Of course there’s interest in seeing the food photos! I always enjoy those too Hahaa!!

We took an Uber after getting our luggage - it was very easy to order one and it showed up in three minutes. Note that the taxi door is right outside the luggage Cara Cell’s in Vancouver domestic, and the Uber pick up is about 100 feet down from those doors. $32 was the cost for the two of us for an Uber, and well worth the price for door to door… It can be a little confusing or challenging to take the train if someone isn’t used to it, or if there are any physical challenges at all. Uber takes you right to the curb where you drop your luggage and then there are staff to guide you where to go from there.

Oh for sure I think new cruisers would be pretty wowed by this ship!

Got on board at 12:10 PM today… and happy to be on board, and we keep repeating the mantra “happy to be on a cruise ship, happy to be on a cruise ship, happy to be on a cruise ship!“ Lol Arrived at Port at 10:20 AM following a very smooth flight with WestJet from Calgary to Vancouver. After that there was a whole lot of twists and turns that had a shaking our heads somewhat. The first part isn’t so bad in that they get people moving pretty quickly through the process at that time of day I guess… luggage drop off was well marked and easy, and then getting into the actual princess terminal is relatively easy, and then they checked our vaccination status and Covid negative test status, and then they went looking for our medallions… And we heard one of the representatives talking to a couple of guests next to us that there was “a disclaimer about those medallions with pacemakers“… when I asked the representative assisting us about that and very broken English she just told us to move to the exit to go through to the security and customs line… I asked her twice but what about the pacemaker issue? And she kept just trying to shuffle us along. She didn’t know anything about it was obvious… so once the representative next to us was done with her guests, I asked her flat out, “what’s with the pacemaker issue?” she then said “oh yes, there’s definitely a warning about our medallion devices for anyone with pacemakers“. Oh dear!! First I’ve heard of this! I have a pacemaker, so I’m really glad I overheard that, otherwise I may have worn the medallion very close to my chest!! Good grief! That should be a very prominent thing to warn people of!! Anyway, we finished that part and then went through security and customs which was a fairly long line up but moved rather quickly. And immediately after customs, we were shuffled into a very small space… And not just princess cruisers, that included Oceana and Holland America cruisers… hundreds of us squished into a space that was probably not meant for more than 60 or 80 people… and there we stood and wait for about half an hour as port staff conferred back-and-forth with each other and on radios asking if the ships were zero it out yet and on and on and on. In the meantime, people kept filtering through the security and customs checkpoints and into this ever-increasing crowd. Good grief… You think they’d have this figured out by now! Enough seating for maybe 60 people, and another hundred or so standing up, many of which had no business standing for more than a few minutes without assistance. Finally at 11:30, they opened up dividers and told the different cruise line gas to go in opposite directions… So that we could again wait for boarding to begin. At least this time they were semi-organized and placing guests for princess according to loyalty level. Finally at about noon, they started boarding guests starting with the highest levels and working their way down, we are Ruby at this point, and we stepped on board at 12:15 PM Did notice that our original dinner reservation for 5:20 PM every day in da Vinci has mysteriously changed to Botticelli… not sure why, but as long as we get a table for two, I guess it’s not that big of a deal. Went to our room right away to drop off our carry-on, and discovered that our balcony is not capable of locking… That big lever handle just spins in circles in effectively. Not sure I’ve ever heard of wildlife or drunk neighbors presenting as wildlife climbing onto other peoples balconies to break in, but it still doesn’t sit that well with me. I mentioned it to our steward who is already incredibly attentive and absolutely wonderful, and he also brought us the extra hangers as requested. Had a quick little snack at the Buffet, and a couple of different beverages to help us relax, while we repeat that same mantra “ happy to be on a cruise ship, happy to be on a cruise ship, happy to be on a cruise ship!” Already experiencing multiple issues with the medallion app… It’s not loading, and then it mysteriously just pops up on my phone without trying… and two attempts to order a beverage on the app I have that with mixed results… The first time was in our room about an hour ago while we were unpacking… Took about 35 minutes for my beverage to arrive. And as I write this sitting next to Alfredos pizzeria, I had ordered a Prosecco, and after 40 minutes it still hasn’t arrived, but the status has changed to delivered and I noticed a Prosecco being delivered to a another table with a woman who happily drink it and then it said delivered on my app. I waved over the server, explained that I had ordered a Prosecco which still hasn’t arrived but suddenly now it shows as being delivered, and he stated that it must be an error at the bar that they aren’t receiving my orders. But he very graciously quickly went to grab me one, he was terrific. So, first impressions, extremely happy to be on a cruise ship! Lol but noticing that there are some tricky issues happening with that medallion app for sure, and the ship has a couple of spots that could use some refreshing, but overall she’s in OK shape… but absolutely without a doubt, the staff are the stars of the show!!! They are a truly wonderful group of people so far and we are so happy to be on a cruise ship, in big part thanks to them!!!

Whew!! We both received our negative test results this afternoon, so now we can cancel our back-up plans of camping. Just a few last minute things to pack, then a relaxing glass of wine while we watch a hockey playoff game, then off to bed... 5 am comes early!! Celine

Good advice on doing my stuff off-line 👍🏼

Hi Everyone! Hubby John and I will be boarding the Grand Princess in Vancouver tomorrow, as long as we procure a negative covid test this afternoon. I will do my best to stay in touch on here, answering questions and posting pictures as long as the wifi on board cooperates. We've been on many cruises with various lines over the years, but this will be our first Princess cruise in 10 years! This will be our first cruise since covid reared its ugly head, so there will be a lot new processes for us, including flight procedures, health protocols, and the new Medallion class with Princess. We'll be in a Caribe Balcony, with plans to spend a fair bit of time out there enjoying the scenery. We've cruised Alaska before, so we don't have any pressing need to book excursions, though we might book one or two once on board... we'll see. More than anything, just really looking forward to getting away for the first time in over 2 years, and having someone else cook and clean EVERY SINGLE DAY!! HAHA!! Well time to finish up my packing before heading to our local Sobey's pharmacy for our covid test... fingers crossed!! Celine

Oh that's pretty cool!! I'm just checking it out now... they show all the patters things it seems... like which music act is playing in which venue, which movies are playing on muts, etc. Still trying to get used to the app, but it seems like it might be pretty handy, thanks again! 🙂

Do you recall if those were played in the rooms as well? Wondering if we fall asleep watching a movie at MUTS, if we can finish it in the room on another day haha!

Tried doing a search, but nothing recent popped up... Is there a list of movies currently playing on MUTS for the month of May, or is there anyone currently cruising that has a pretty good idea of what's playing? I assume it's the same movies fleetwide, but maybe not?