Plato123

We have stayed at both, and both are good but the Hyatt House is a bit better IMO. There is lots of walkable shopping in the area and a BJs Wholesale Club where you can get decent wines at good prices, of which you can take two bottles on the ship with you. Several restaurants in the area too.

Our free bottle was a Castle Rock Pinot Noir. Not quite as far down in the barrel as Canyon Road would have been. Others have had better free bottles,

Don't forget to use the coupon for a free bottle of wine on your first night complimentary specialty dining. You can find the coupon booklet pdf in this forum.

We enjoyed the concierge lounge on the Royal and even more so, the service of the concierge in making reservations and just being very helpful in ironing out minor issues. In our experience, the wines in the lounge were not bad and some cases very good (Siverado and "real" Mondavi CS). We will miss that on our upcoming Emerald cruise but will still get the Premier package for the convenience and better wines. What we will miss in concierge benefits will be made up with an excellent itinerary we hope. We upgraded to an Owner's Suite from a Penthouse Suite, with help from our TA, and actually saved money.

We always stay in suites and Celebrity is our preference overall. We like Luminae on Celebrity as food and service, as well as knowlegeable wine servers are excellent and part of the suite package. As far as specialty dining, we really like Murano on Celebrity regardless of the price but we also very much like Sabatini's on Princess. We found steaks at the Tuscan Grill and the Crown Grill were not worth it regardless of price, Value wise, for us, Princess is a better deal and , for us, their itineraries are more interesting at this time. Celebrity is getting more expensive than we care to pay,

Our waiter in Sabatini's told us about it on our second or third night on the cruise, but I would just ask the maître 'd at the entrance. I collect Sassicaia so I was interested. If you are a food blogger or something alike they might comp you. We weren't.

We enjoyed the Concierge Lounge "happy hours" on the Royal, as well as the services of our Concierge Carmen in arranging specialty dining and setting up the app for wifi etc. The wines served during happy hours were better quality as were the other drinks and overall it was a nice social environment away from the crowds.

On a recent Royal cruise , in Sabatini's, I ordered eggs florentine with a side of proscuito and Grana Padana chunks. It was excellent.

We may not cruise as often as we could because we want the most "Comfort and Convenience" when we do. We book suites and get the best package we can afford to maximize our comfort and minimize the hassles of cruising. For us who are gettting on these things are important. For our next Princess cruise we will have an owner's suite and the Premier package and that will maximize our "Comfort and Convernience" which is a term by whwich our older cancer fighting neighbour lives by.

I agree. I was also disappointed that when you ordered wine in a dining room you never saw the bottle unless you bought the whole bottle. In bars that was not an issue and you often would find some unlisted better wines in the Premier package served in bars and lounges. I also liked that we could get a Courvoisier XO cognac in the Wheelhouse bar as part of the Premier package. It is too bad that Princess only has the Cattier Champagne in their Premier listing, no Cava at all nor any decent Californian sparkling wines. Another oddity was that there was only one decent Chianti in the Premier package, a Nippozano, yet on our cruise there were two decent Italian venus, Alfredo's and Sabatini's.

On our last Princess cruise we tried the Crown Grill twice and were not impressed. One side dish we thought could be interesting was the roasted marrow bone and shallot crushed potatoes. To us it just seemed like a regular baked potato, and not crushed. This was on the Royal. Any one tried this and liked it? Also, are any of their chops really a chop? I tried the beef chop and it just seemed like a regular rib steak with toppings. Our next Princess cruise will be on the Emerald and I would appreciate any comments (and pix) of items from their Crown Grill, especially the Chilean Sea Bass with King Prawns.

Google is your friend, I thanked the OP. https://static.cdn.responsys.net/i2/responsysimages/content/princessus/ShipwideSavingsCoupons2023.pdf?cid=om_email_promo_internal_precruise_precruise___shipwidesavings&eccn=EHCZTQ5CCWVLM4GW45AJURVR6E&rrid=8567731587&mi_u=8567731587&custId=EHCZTQ5CCWVLM4GW45AJURVR6E&mi_ecmp=

If you find the 2023 coupons in this forum, and print it out, you can also get a free bottle of wine with your complimentary embarkation day specialty dinner. Either have it with the dinner or take it back to your suite. It will be the wine of the day so no choices are available and ours was a.bottle of Castle Rock Pinot Noir.

The app deck plans show these two restaurants as still being in place on the ship, but I see no mention of them still being open. Are they still there, or has something replaced them or will something replace them? We were hoping for more specialty dining options for our two week cruise later this year.

You could but we just downloaded the images to our tablets (or phone) or whatever you use the Princess app on, and I transfered them to our PC at home. The files are not big.

Our printed images wer 5X7, 6X8, and 8X10 and images downloaded were jpg. We each initially got one print of each size, but the app let us get an extra set and maybe even more if we had tried. Image reolution on jpg was not great at 1600 x 2000. No usb stick was offered with the images, but we did not ask either.

Apparently there is no concierge lounge on the Emerald Princess, but is there a suite concierge? We were recently on the Royal and appreciated the service we received from Carmen our concierge and her staff on that cruise. We really did enjoy the concierge lounge on the Royal as it was a nice "retreat" from the busy areas on the ship.

We did like using the app to get coffee and tea delivered to our suite in the morning. We did not like having things charged to our account that we did not order and having to get the charges reversed . Probable cause was a transcription error when our suite number was written down incorrectly when they were unable to scan our medallion.

We normally cruise in a suite on Celebrity, but only once on a newer Celebrity ship the Edge.. Also we have recently cruised in a penthouse suite with Princess on the Royal. We also normally have the premium drinks package. One reason we tried Princess is we wanted a change and Princess was quite a change, both positive and negative. From our point of view the traditional elegance of the Royal Princess was more appealing than the modern elegance of the Edge. Food was better on Celebrity as we usually ate in Luminae and we preferred being served wine poured from the bottle in front of us than being brought a glass as was the case on Princess. We normally do not dine in the MDR on Celebrity but did on Princess, but in Club Class. Again from our point of view Princess is too heavily invested in tech and I saw few real benefits of the medallion system and app dependence with its frequent glitches. From an environmental perspective Celebrity wins hands down, as plastic bottles are everywhere whereas on Celebrity it is metal or glass. We also like that Celebrity has individual cloth towels in public washrooms rather than paper. Celebrity also has a much wider range of suites than Princess. We liked the unlimited free laundry on Princess with our package. From a steak perspective, we found the specialty "Grills" on Princess and Celebrity equally bad. We found Murano and Sabatini's both to be excellent with an slight preference to Murano for "best cheese selection and service at sea" IMO. We are planning our next Caribbean cruise on Princess because the itinerary is more appealing and relative to Celebrity the prices are more appealing too. On that cruise we will miss Michael's Club on non refurbished Celebrity ships but not the Retreal Lounge on the newer ships but the Concierge lounge on Princess will still be a nice benefit.

We are considering a cruise on the Emerald Princess but can't see much of a difference between these two types of suites other than the Penthouse Suite has a jetted tub and the price, Can anyone provide more information?

The last time we were at Sabatini's for dinner I had excellent osso buco. And being in a suite I had an excellent eggs florentine with a side of proscuito and chunks of grana padano, with happy juice (mimosa) for breakfast one morning. Best food, service and ambiance on our Royal cruise.

We were on the Reflection and overnighted in NOLA on Fat Tuesday. Great to be right at the Convention Centre and walk to see all the floats and parades. Went home with five pounds of beads from the last Mardi Gras before the pandemic shut things down. Great cruising the Missippi too.

While we probably will not try the Crown Grill again if we cruise on Princess, I should note that the food we had was not dissimilar to the Tuscan Grill on Celebrity, but it was a lot less expensive. As for beef and veal we consider Sabatini's our favorite and should note that they had a special "Super Tuscan" wine pairing dinner on our cruise. Not all the wines served were Tuscan, but they were all excellent and it was an enjoyable curated wine and food experience, The price was $60 a person and it was worth it. Our only disappointment was that the last course before dessert was a huge piece of rare tagliata of beef that while delicious, was way too much and we noted most people just could not finish it. The ship made limoncello did help with digestion.

Probably about 1 PM.

I just checked my clip and it definitely does not unscrew but does appear to be magnetic (which I did not notice before!). Maybe the older ones did unscrew. The holder on the lanyard is much tighter than our clips.