We’re starting to wind down for the night as morning will come early and be busy. I thought I’d throw my thoughts in here as a way of getting it all straight in my head.
This was an excellent cruise from start to finish. Very happy right now. So any critiques below are minor and did not affect our enjoyment.
Highlights
This is a beautiful ship. Absolutely now our favorite ship across any line for the decor. Enough that feels like Princess, but unique too. Sleek, modern and elegant all in one. Great artwork.
Lots of places to use for different purposes. To have a drink, to read, to have fun, to listen to music. That may be a bit different when the ship is more than 60% capacity but the spaces are still there.
The entertainment was excellent. From productions shows to smaller venues, we enjoyed everything we saw and heard.
Food in the restaurants was also excellent. We ate MDR, Crown Grill and Sabatini’s and it was all good.
The crew was amazingly friendly and helpful. We got more hellos and offers of help on the cruise than probably any other previous Princess cruise.
And ordering drinks on the app and having them delivered to you worked really, really well for us. Probably too well.
Misses
This is probably the same for all Royal class ships, but I hate the layout of the buffet. (We’ve cruised on every non-Royal class Princess ship at least once but somehow never a Royal class ship). There were long lines from inefficient design. You were guessing which side to enter and hoping that was the side that was open to the lines and not roped off. Minorly irritating.
The staff were significantly inexperienced on allergens compared to our previous experience. Including issues when tongs or utensils were missing, just grabbing utensils from other areas. E.g grabbing gluten free bread from under its cover with tongs from regular bread. To some extent that’s on us. We had grown used to staff having more experience and we didn’t want to bug the chef every time in the buffet. But I would recommend, you need to bug the chef every time. The chefs all knew what they were doing. The rest of the staff are learning. No actual issues occurred so we’re fine and happy. Just passing on the lesson learned.
Nice Touches and Nitpicks
For the completely ridiculous portion of the post. I like the USB charging ports in the lamps next to the beds. I hate the position of the toilet paper under the counter that always seems to cause you to rip off only one or two squares. I like that guest services is now out of the immediate piazza area which improves traffic at busy times. I hate that the Privacy notice has to be set on the panel outside (meaning being somewhat dressed in case someone walks by). I like the more limited space for the art and photo areas from a flow perspective. And I hate the app - even though it worked better for us than many others it has a long, long way to go.
But those are all so small things that I needed to get off my chest. The bottom line is - find a reason to sail on this ship. The ship and the crew were amazing. No regrets. Great vacation. Wish we could stay on.