rayliang

Coral retained the original ship design with better routing and more public space on-board. I would personally chose Coral over Island if a choice is present.

Though honestly the cruising from SFO to LAX is kinda blah as well and like a waste of time unless you just want more sea days.

end of the season means rain, and you are reading the end of salmon runs as well.

Personally I rather drive myself for the land portion of the tour. Alaska is pretty easy to drive around, and you get to see a ton more

Stay out of cabins above / below the clubs, such as the P612, if you are a light sleeper

@hallasm

Thank you. does Hurtigruten ships also hit the same fjords the big ships go to? I'm getting more and more interested in doing that instead of the big ships

@hallasm

Thank you very much for your reviews. These provides excellent reference for us.

questions:

1) if you have only 1 Norway fjord cruise in your entire life, which one? the big cruise ships or Hurtigruten?

2) your started the tour from Bodo instead of Bergen, may I ask why? Hurtigruten website lists every sailing from Bergen to Kirkenes. Are the cruising between Bergen & Bodo not worth it?

as long as Princess continue to have the better itineraries and bang for the buck in that regard, that what brings me back. But I do agree that Princess cruises really started to feel old and slow, though I guess that can be relaxing.

Captain Tuvo is now on Island

These are my thoughts on my19 Days Panama Canal Cruise on-board the Island Princess.

Cruisers: mostly older couples, with I think no more than ahundred kids. Most cruisers are veterans of multiple Panama Canal sailings,whom you can ask and learn a lot from regarding the trip.

Ship: Overall my experience on the ship has being good. Theship's movement lines are weird and sometimes illogical, making moving from onepart of the ship to another part sometimes more convoluted then it should be.But once you get used to the ship, its not a big deal.

Room: Oceanview Plaza 612. Small but cozy, overall a good stayover 19 days. Only bad thing is the room is right below the Explorer Lounge, solate night music might be problematic if you are a light sleeper. The newPrincess Bed is comfortable, but overall doesn't breath well and I tend to overheat at night. And the bed for me is a little too soft.

Entertainment: Band for nightly dancing attracts a good # ofpeople to the dance floor. Entertainment in general is nice.

Food: is decent, though the soup had being consistently oversalted, and fish is fairly consistently over-cooked, while other seafood onaverage is a little blander then I liked. If possible do not get AnytimeDining. From my observations the lines for anytime diner is consistently 30min+after 6pm. Horizon Court is not bad at all.

Crew / Service: I experienced good service overall. CaptainTuvel is by far the best cruise ship captain of my experience, friendly andvery approachable, and proactive in fixing any issues he encounters. Otherservice members has being good to me as well. Though according to multipleveteran Princess cruisers I talked with during the cruise, service and foodseems to be toward the low end of their Princess experiences.

Port of Calls: Overall any of the local tour guides allows youto see far more with far smaller group and cheaper by about 10-20% vs.comparable Princess tours. Will highly highly recommend using local companiesvs. Princess’ own cruise tours.

Huatulco: small town without much of interest. Being in Oaxaca,I went to restaurant El Sabor for some mole. Their black mole is awesome,though the coloratito (red) mole is bland. The chicken that accompanies themole sauces were ok.

Puerto Chiapas: I joined a tour right off the dock from"Tour Guide Association of Puerto Chiapas"(miekevanostaeyen@hotmail.com) for $45. You can find their tour desk at theentrance to the cruise terminal building where everyone is gathering to get onbuses. It does the same itinerary as Princess Cruise's own tour to Izapa andchocolate demonstration, but with an added trip into Tapachula proper. The tourgroup has a maximum size of 12 people and we rode in a decent full size tourvan. The tour includes bottled water for everyone. Our guide is Uriel, whospeaks excellent English and is very informative of all things Tapachula andsurrounding areas. I highly recommend doing this tour with them instead of withPrincess. Izapa is not much to look at, especially if you being to other biggerMayan sites like Chichen Itza or Coba. The highlight of the tour is thechocolate demonstration. Our small group went to the chocolatier's own home.Her family treated us to local snacks, freshly made tortilla and queso fresco,and a local beverage. The chocolatier has coco trees with ripe coco fruitsright in her backyard. She demonstrated the whole Mayan chocolate makingprocess, from fresh fruit, to the coco seeds, to drying, toasting, grinding,and molding into chocolates, and the final process of making Mayan hotchocolate drink. We get to taste every intermediate steps (the coco seedcoating is sweet!!!), and we get to ask the chocolatier all sort of questionsat each step. By comparison, the Princess tours went to the local townplaza at Tuxla Chico to do their chocolate demonstration, where bus full ofpeople crowd around a stage trying to see how things are done. Our chocolatedemonstration was a absolutely wonderful experience and in my opinion thechocolate experience is worth the $45 alone, and everything else on the tour isjust gravy. If you go with this tour, please ask and insist w/ the tour guide thatyou want the small demonstration at the chocolatier's home. I enjoy thedemonstration so much I bought a bag of everything. We went to Tapachula thento a restaurant with decent food and fast wifi for an hour before returning tothe ship. There's really not much in Tapachula.

Puerto Quetzal: I hadoriginally planned to hire a local taxi for the day to take us to Antigua,thinking it will cost about $50-$100 (according to our guide Uriel at theprevious port, $500 Quetzal should be enough). However, Puerto Quetzal turnedout not to have any taxis. If you do not take Princess’ tours, your only otheroption is a single tour company that will charge you $200 for 1 car for theday, or $45 / ppl if you have 6+. We ended up negotiated together with anotherfamily down to $40 / person for the day and hopped in. I don’t remember theguide’s name, and he didn’t provide much information either. We had the vantook us to Finca Filadelphia, just north of Antigua. The coffee plantationprovided an excellent introduction in the coffee production business, and has agood restaurant serving good Guatemalan food and juices. Well worth a visit. Wetook the plantation’s free shuttle back to Antigua to meet up with rest of thegroup and walked around town before heading back. Antigua is beautiful andvibrant, wish I had more time to walk around.

Puntarenas: We went with the10in1 tour from Thumbs Up Tours. Our guide was Kari, an American expat. Thetour itself was nice and we saw many animals, though sadly didn’t see any manymonkeys, toucans, and macaws as we liked. Saw plenty of gators and other birdson the tour though. According to the tour guide we need to go to higherelevations to see those birds more often, or take a tour to the bird sanctuary.Overall I very much enjoy the tour and saw a lot. Though the included lunchhonestly is not good in my opinion. I do still recommend them over Princess.

San Juan Del Sur: we went with Macua tours. The tourincludes Masaya Volcano, the local crater lake (volcano lake), a boat ride onLake Nicaragua, lunch, and a short walking tour of Granada. The tour guide wasexcellent and provided a lot of information along the way to Masaya volcano andto Granada. We had a lot of fun seeing the sights and learning about Nicaragua.The Masaya volcano must not be missed. The tour included a Nicaraguan lunch ata Granada hotel. The food is most wonderful. Highly recommend this tour overanything Princess provides. I kind of wish we have more time in Granada, thoughI think its not as pretty and fun as Antigua.

Manzanillo: We went with Tlaloc Tours, with a group of 6. Contactedthe owner Christopher via Facebook and arranged everything over FacebookMessenger. His tour guide Pancho took us on the same Cuyutlan Turtle Sanctuarytour that Princess provides, with an added bonus of a tour of the Manzanillohotel zone, and a beach front seafood lunch at Santiago Bay (not included intour fee). Although Pancho’s English is heavily accented, he is stillunderstandable and is an excellent guide, providing much information andassistant to us. He also arranged for Cuyutlan Turtle sanctuary to provide useach with 1 baby sea turtle to release back to the ocean. That was anexperience. The lunch location, Ramada Lucita, has a beautiful view of SantiagoBay and the beach goers, in addition to provide excellent seafood and drinks,with absolutely incredibly tasty fresh raw oysters and clams to boot (justcaught that morning). The spiny lobster I think tastes good, but is not worth themoney. The charcoal grilled fish is just top notch and a must order.

Conclusion:

Great 19 day cruise. Never really felt bored. Really enjoythe trip. Highly recommend this vs. cruise LA <-> Florida instead.

Very enlightening post. Is Princess unique in this regard or do all cruiselines operate in the same manner?

I would say no, since most of the big cruise lines are all subsidiaries of Carnival.

Thank you for the review

you are the second person to mention that the HC is better then MDR... really surprising for me and hopefully will get fixed when the ship comes out of dry dock this week.

I also have a question regarding coffee. So does the HC have coffee in the morning for breakfast? or do we need to get a coffee card for even just basic run of the mill coffee?

ccrain you are a god sent

no PV.

I guess I'll just fly by ear :)

ccrain: thank you so very much for the tips!

hillslife, I'm on the same cruise too :) we might have a CC get together planned. Are you on our roll call list?

thank you ccrain. Your live thread has being very informative, I just hope we don't get the rains you did.

Questions: are there some parts of the ship that goes dark at night, to facilitate star watching? I figure being out in the middle of the ocean or anchored off Gastun Lake will provide great star gazing opportunities, if the ship's external lights doesn't ruin my night vision

oh interesting. The only Pacific snorkeling I'd ever done was off Hawaii, so it be my first time doing Mexican Pacific. Its really not that great? I've read reviews of places like Playa San Agustin being a very good place to snorkel and stuff.

So maybe I should concentrate on eating instead?

we will be at Huatulco for 7 hours on Christmas day off Island Princess. I read that Huatulco has great snorkeling, but being in Oaxaca I also want to eat mole. I love to eat.

What should I do????? Is there a good mole restaurant right off the dock?

snowfinite

my wife and I are on the same sailing. I am working on organizing some private tours for Huatulco & Puerto Quetzal, and I know someone else is handling San Juan Del Sur.

Please let me know if you are interested.

Thanks for the info!

HC is the buffet?

much appreciated!!!

hi Baja mama

can you please tell me which Viator tour it is for the hot springs? I think my wife will be most interested when we arrive at Puerto Quetzal after Christmas

hi all

My wife and I will be at Puerto Quetzel on the Island Princess in December 27th on the Island Princess. I'm personally interested in Antigua and visit a coffee plantation, while I know my wife would love a good soak at a hot spring. Is it possible to do all 3? If not, what are the two must not misses? Any suggestions be great, including tour operators :) Thank you all in advance!

60-90 minutes should do it

So were the prices better with a 4x4 from Avis than the Green Jeep? I need something a little larger and with 4 doors because I will have two tall people riding in the back.

I rented a minivan from Sourdough in Skagway. The car is old but I had no issues, and its nice and clean too.

We were 5 ppl (4 adults and 1 kid). We hired a guide from Dyea Dave's. We hit Emerald Lake, Carcross, the suspension bridge, and drive all the way to the Chilkoot Trail. And we saved plenty of money by doing so :) The guide (a lady, wish I remember her name) was excellent in telling us about everything we saw on the road.

I find 2-3 days worth of clothing plenty, plus the shirts and pants for formal night. At least on Princess ships, there's coin laundry so I have clean cloths.

Take the train from Whittier to Anchorage, if you want a train ride, then rent a car in Anchorage to drive to Denali and back. The only real place to rent a car is Anchorage, so a train out to Denali is pretty much out.

Go to AAA and grab a Alaska book. I found pretty much everything interesting on it.