cborzill

In my opinion, Azamara was never given a chance.  Royal Caribbean initially intended to fold those ships into the Celebrity brand, then decided to create a new brand, mainly to compete with Oceania, calling it Azamara.  But Royal Caribbean never made the necessary investments, such as ordering new ships, like Oceania did.  Initially, Azamara copied the Oceania product, then they switched strategy and decided to distinguish itself by emphasizing land programs and late port stays.  That is fine, but they never did anything to improve the actual cruising experience.  I hope they do better with Silversea, which already has new ships coming on line.

1 hour ago, skynight said:

I have seen CNN International on board.

 

The Sapphire and Diamond were built by Mitsubishi in Japan. The Pacific was built in St. Nazaire, for Renaissance.

I stand corrected!  Thanks for reminding that Diamond and Sapphire were built by Mitsubishi.

On ‎11‎/‎22‎/‎2019 at 8:17 AM, lstone19 said:

 

I suspect one reason Princess did not exercise the options is they were not happy with the shipyard. Coral Princess was delayed and they had to cancel at least the first six cruises in late 2002 (we were booked on what was orginally the sixth - a Christmas / New Year's cruise; we watched it go from sixth to second to first to cancelled). I think Island Princess was also delayed but I'm less sure of that.

 

Interestingly, I got into a discussion with one of the ship's senior officers last month who was unaware of that aspect of the ship's history. As the ship's information listed in delivered in 2002, they assumed it had gone into service in 2002. I assured them it did not and was even able to show them one of the Cruise Critic buttons I had made marking that first scheduled and then actual holiday cruise (below).

Coral and Island Princess are the only two ships of the Princess fleet built at the St. Nazaire shipyard in France, which later became STX.  All other Princess ships were built by Fincantieri in Italy.  Interestingly, Fincantieri is currently in the process of gaining that St. Nazaire shipyard.

Coral was designed to have two main shows at the same time twice every night, one in the Theater forward, and one in the aft Universe lounge.  On it's sister ship, Island Princess, they decided to take a scalpel and replace the aft lounge with more staterooms so they could make more money, thus reducing public space on Island and crowding the main Theater.  Big Mistake.  As has been mentioned, Coral has a real wrap around promenade.  Frankly, when these ships came out, Princess had an option to build two more of this class, but decided to cancel those options in favor of building more Grand class.  Big mistake again.  I wish Princess had more ships like Coral Princess. 

Bonnie:  We'd love to go on this cruise in October but can't make it this year.  Any chance a Philippines intensive cruise will be repeated by Azamara in the future?  I checked your schedule for 2020 and 2021 and could not find one.

We did this cruise in 1998. No shots are needed, unless you also plan to cruise to the Amazon. I would highly recommend the pre-cruise package to see Iguazu Falls before the cruise. Not to be missed. Nobody got sick on the cruise. Highly recommended.

The only negative is that you have to get a Brazilian visa.