VOR

The real question for me is the Grand's.

Grand princess is 16, Star and Golden just a few years behind.

As for competing with RC, the new ships look like RC ships so.....

As said below, all uncovered.

For motion, I find its actually a difficult question. The ship rocks from the middle, the farther you are from that the more up and down you get. It rolls around the center line, so the higher you are, the more you feel the roll (the stabilizers kill most roll anyway). I don't feel either of those to any extent so I dont worry.

What does get me is yaw, which is the aft ship moving side to side around where the bow cuts the water. Its very slight movement, but I find it 'off putting'. I only notice it in the back 100-150 feet of the boat.

Cruising has changed over the years. In order to keep pricing affordable, some things have had to be modified, changed or cut back. Most aren't noticeable to the average cruiser and as always, some people care more about some changes than others. We can wish for the "good old days" but the reality is that Princess, like other lines, is far more mainstream than they used to be. Even with the cutbacks, I still enjoy cruising and Princess in particular. No one thing is so important to me that I'd consider not cruising or not on Princess. I just like being at sea and on a ship.

Exactly Pam, I think some of the cutbacks might go too far but for the most part its just making the ships accessible to more people.

Those who want to pay more to get more have options on the Luxury lines.

Remember 7 days on Princess cost at least 1500 bucks 30 or 35 years ago. Current value, that's what it costs to sail Seabourn or Regent

What it boils down to is that no one can provide you with what princess provides to for 100 bucks a day. They cannot pay the bills at that price point.

Their marketing strategy is to let us on the ship at that price, and then pay their bills through selling to a captive audience. In order to do that they needs to take steps to prevent having to compete with shore based suppliers.

If that costs them some customers that they would not have made any money on anyway, I suspect they chose to live with that when they set the policy and the price of the voyage.

Wrong!!!

When you check your baggage at the airport, your bags may be opened and searched without you being there.

 

Princess, and the other cruise lines, have the right to open and search anything which comes on board the ship. Princess, as well as the other cruise lines, have rules in regards to alcohol. If you smuggle and break the rules, expect to be caught.

They have every right to do it, but they are for the most part smart enough to exercise that right in a much smarter way, which is to hold your bags if they have questions, and search while you are standing there.

I don't get it. If you were not trying to sneak in alcohol to begin with you would not have to worry about them looking into your bags. The airlines do it all the time without you being there. and they just put a note in your bag that they did open it.

The airlines most certainly do not do it, the TSA does under their authority to secure the airport and the aircraft.

This is not a security issue, its a financial one, so they would not be wise to search without you there. As was stated, all it takes is one thing to go missing, and its a huge mess.

We have some ultra light weight cloths hampers than fols completely flat and easily fit in a medium sized suitcase. IIRC a set of 3 was less than 10 dollars at a wallgreens.

We set them in the corner of the closet. Really helps keep things straight.

Flourless Chocolate Cake

I was watching sailaway on the Ft. Lauderdale webcam on Sunday and was watching the Coral Princess depart. I noticed way up high on the smoke stack on back of ship what looked like two huge jet engines. I thought, is that for real? I did some research and the wikipedia entry for the Coral says the propulsion is two fixed pitch propellers driven by two diesel engines and two General Electric LM 2500 engines. I looked up the GE engines and they are described as turbo jet engines used on several cruise ships for power generation. Wow! Can anybody who has sailed on the Coral tell us what that sounds like?

On Saphire this spring, one of the officers called BUST's in a lecture.

That stands for big useless shiny things

Can the casino be easily avoided when going from point A to point B on the ship? I know that on some of the Carnival ships, the casino spans the width of the ship, so unless you walk up (or down a flight) and then reverse, you cannot avoid walking through the casino.

The Casino's on the grands are between the atrium and the theater on either the Promenade deck or the deck below. You can access the theater from either deck, and also use the starboard promenade to avoid smoke. So yes, there no need to walk through the casino.

That said its sometimes the most convenient path from where you are, to where you want to go.