Ruby Princess Alaska RT Seattle July 5th Review

Hey all,

I am currently on the Ruby Princess Tracy Arm cruise RT from Alaska that left on July 5. When I get back I will be doing a complete review, hopefully detailed with many pics for everyone. For right now, because I don't want to use a ton of data sir pay for the Internet I will start it off with some background info about me and answer any questions that you guys have about Ruby or Alaska in general. Just let me know.

I have been on many cruises with several different lines. We started cruising as a family a long time ago in a ship called the Big Road Boat, anyone remember that one. We only did it because we got the cruise for free as part of the Make a Wish foundation for my little sister, who was battling Leukemia at the time, she was 3. She is who I went on this cruise with, she turned 21!

We then did several ones with carnival and will never again do any with them. While ours weren't incredibly horrible, they also weren't good. We mainly did them because of the port location, we used to live outside of Houston TX. We stopped cruising with carnival because of all the problems there were, both with our cruises and they kept on having trouble with ships stopping and having mechanical problems. No thanks. I know some people on here like them a lot so they must have changed in recent years. Still won't cruise with them.

Best cruise we ever went on, as children, was the Disney cruise. If you have children and have an opportunity, depending on your budget, I very strongly recommend Disney. Once in a lifetime cruise for kids. We went all out on this one, with a suite on the Disney Magic, to celebrate my sis entering remission.

We have also done several RCL and a Norwegian. My fav for the price is RCL. Best for doing the Caribbean and for families or young people. I found that their activities were more varied than princesses so far and had better options for different venues available.

But so far, princess has been great overall. There are things that I have disliked and things I have loved.

Looking forward to reading your review. We just got off the ship on the day you got on. Still enjoy reading the reviews. Keeps the memories alive!

We had great weather except in Skagway where it poured all day but we were on the train ride it didn't really matter that much to us. Smooth seas and sunny skies the rest of the week.

Have fun!

Looking forward to reading your review. We just got off the ship on the day you got on. Still enjoy reading the reviews. Keeps the memories alive!

 

 

 

We had great weather except in Skagway where it poured all day but we were on the train ride it didn't really matter that much to us. Smooth seas and sunny skies the rest of the week.

 

 

 

Have fun!

Thanks. We just did Ketchikan today and it was sunny and hot, not my favorite. It is looking like it will be cold and slightly rainy in Juneau and Skagway so I will personally like that.

Alright. Got some time so I will quickly summarize some pros and cons so far on princess blvd other lines.

Pros

Very clean and well kept. Noticed that everything is very well cleaned and maintained. Nothing really looked worn down or anything like on others.

Very classy and upscale. Everything from the piazza to the Horizon Court was done very well and was a lot classier than other ships, such as the RCL, which are a lot more casual and not as nice.

While there were kids on our ship, and a fair amount of them, they were mostly older kids and there wasn't a whole bunch of younger kids. This was a huge bonus as really young kids usually do cause some problem, especially if you like the quiet.

Good service in the bars. You are usually approached very easily by waiters and asked for drinks. Service in dining room was good as well, not great or awesome so far, but we have only eaten in there once so far.

Anytime dining. We have done the MDR once so far, and we are using anytime dining so that we can guarantee that we don't have to eat with other people. We went about a quarter to 8 or so and were seated immediately. Will see if there are any problems with it as we progress further into the cruise.

More pros.

Embarkation was very super easy at Seattle. We got there around noon and did everything in probably under 30 min in our room. Great timing and direction. Printing the Heath form beforehand saved a ton of time as there was a big line at the place to fill them out.

Food. So far the food has all been great. Did Sabatini's which was great. MDR was great as well, so far. Pleasantly surprise by the HC Buffett for breakfast and lunch. Had a great selection and variety of food. My sister is a vegetarian and had plenty of options when we ate in the HC. Not as much as the MdR

Thanks for posting. Looking forward to any posts you do along the way and if you do a review after. We are doing this same cruise on the Ruby the end of August. Hope the rest of the cruise is great for you. :cool:

Thanks for posting. Looking forward to any posts you do along the way and if you do a review after. We are doing this same cruise on the Ruby the end of August. Hope the rest of the cruise is great for you. :cool:

Yes I hope so too! I will for sure do a review later. Plan on doing a detailed one so don't want to do it now and use a ton of data. So I'll do it when i get home. But I will try to add little summaries on different areas/amenities/venues/ports when I get a few spare moment per day.

Thanks for taking the time to post while on your cruise. :)

Looking forward to your review. I can't go until next year so I'm excited to read other reviews! Have a great cruise!

Debbie

International cafe. Very cool. My fav is the double chocolate mocha latte. So yummy. I go down in the morning and get it and a little item to tie me over until my sister gets up. She likes to sleep in. They actually had donuts in the morning. Never seen that before. Yummy. Pretty good prices too. The specialty coffee wasn't too bad. Also there is gelato for 1.50. We haven't tried it yet but we will and it looks really yummy.

Pictures of the Patters if you can please!!!

Pictures of the Patters if you can please!!!

She's on the ship now! Scanning and uploading the Patters would be prohibitively expensive and time consuming.

OP, have a great cruise and don't worry about requests... Enjoy...

Thanks for checking in. It sounds like the Ruby is working her magic!

I was on the Ruby in January and the food was probably the best I have enjoyed on Princess.

I'm looking forward to your full review and any photos you have will be much appreciated.

Norris

Pictures of the Patters if you can please!!!

I am making a note of taking pics of the patters so they will be included when the review is done after the cruise.

Can you tell me what night the production show Colors of the World is...

Looking forward to your review. I will be on the Ruby next August.

Excellent review. Looking forward to the rest. Thanks for sharing.

Can you tell me what night the production show Colors of the World is...

It is yet another singing and dancing show. Basically just dancing and songs from different countries. Was the same level of quality as the other princess productions, not very good in my personal opinion. They did quite a bit of singing dancing shows and we skipped some of them after watching the first two. Only went to others if there was nothing else to do. We also had Steve Moris, who does comedy and music. He did 3 shows and they were great. So much better than that production shows. There was also a magician that did two shows. Also wonderful.

Whether you will like the production shows depends on your background. We live in big cities and go to shows often. Have been to Broadway shows and other shows with reputable companies I. Big cities like San Francisco and Houston so we didn't have a high opinion of these on Princess. However, if you have never gone to a show or hardly ever, you might think they are wonderful.

I also used to be a singer in elementary through high school so I have a slightly higher expectations.

I will say though that RCL has much better entertainment. One of my biggest negatives about Princess is that we found the shows and entertainment very lacking. Hope this helps.

Alright. Off the cruise now just waiting to get home to humid heat of Texas. So I will start my review. I will work on adding days as I get time.

Day 1: Embark

I might repeat things that I have stated before in my initial summary so just ignore if I repeat myself.

Embarkation was easy and very quick, under 30 minutes and onboard. We went out to a celebratory brunch first and then took an Uber to the pier. Got there by noon and onboard shortly after. I printed out the health form before hand and it saved a lot of time as there was a long line at the table to fill it out. So I strongly recommend to everyone to print it out and fill it out that morning. Will save you time and headaches.

Got to our room right away. Very helpful in helping people find their cabins and getting around. My first criticism comes when we got to our cabin. Not a huge deal but it was disappointing. It was my sisters birthday and I filled out online that we would be celebrating her birthday and put in the date, the day that we boarded. I was told that the door would be decorated to show that we were celebrating. I noticed as we walked that a lot of doors were decorated with birthday signs. However, when we got to our door, there was nothing. I thought hat perhaps they just hadn't gotten to it yet but it was never added. It is any a huge deal but I was looking forward to surprising my sister with it. What I didn't understand is why we didn't get the door decorated? In our cabin we had a paper for a celebration in the MDR to bring in but no decor on the door. Does anyone know why this was done? I would like to know so I know how to get them to do it next time.

We then went to he HC for a late lunch. My sister and I had a bad experience on RCL when we went to lunch in the MDR and they sat us at a table with other people so she won't go back in case it happens again. We really don't like having to sit with strangers. We have found that it ruins our vacation. So we went to the crowded HC. Anyone know if you can get a table for two in the MDR for breakfast or lunch, for the future?

By the way, she loved the HC, much more than I did, because of all of the vegetarian options. The MDR has limited options as it comes to vegetarian options, specifically for the main course so she really enjoyed having more than one option.

Then we finally got a drink! Been waiting for this. One of my favorite parts of cruising, the food and drinks. We didn't purchase any drink packages because they were either too expensive or they didn't include anything that we liked. The soda packages didn't include root beer so that was a no go, I drink dr pepper, root beer or mr pibb, no diet coke for me. The all inclusive package that I know a lot of people get, I personally feel is very very expensive so we didn't get that either. Almost 400/person for 7 nights. Outrageous. My sister got a mojito, which she really likes as she ordered it several other times. I got a Blue Hawaiian. It was one of my favs on our last cruise with RCL so thought I would try it again.

Spent the rest of the time exploring the ship and seeing what there was. One thing that was a slight problem was the free specialty dining that we got in our promo when I booked the cruise. For some reason that I cannot fathom, they put is in the Crown Grill, which was not going to work with her being a vegetarian. So we decided to stop by Sabatini's to get it changed. No one was there. So we went back to the room again and called the dine line. I called them to change the reservation to Sabatini's. This guy said that he couldn't change it because it was pre reserved or something. That we would have to go down to Sabatini's to have he manager changed it and make a reservation. I found his really weird and inconvenient. Had to make so many trips back and forth just to reserve this table. Pretty crazy.

Sabatini's

Finally dinner time came. Went for 7:30 and actually lucked out and got a seat by the window! Cool. Biggest complaint about Sabatini's is the extreme lack of vegetarian options. She had no trouble with appetizer and pasta but she couldn't order a main course because there wasn't any options, which we found extremely ridiculous. If I had to pay for it I probably wouldn't do it because of this. So she got the Soufflé and then the manicotti, all that she could have. Another thing I disliked was that the waiter kind of gave her a little of a hard time when she said she was just getting an appetizer and a pasta and no main course. Like he couldn't possibly believe it and couldn't see why. She explained that she is a vegetarian and instead of offering another option for a main course, which I would expect, he said something like that's too bad or something. So didn't care for that but the food was great. She loved both her dishes. I had to get the Burrata! We are huge Italian lovers, even have some Italians in our family, so Burrata was a must. It was fabulous. Some of the best I have ever had. Then I had the lobster. I am a huge lobster lover so I just had to try it. I had read that there were mixed reviews on it but lobster is one of my favs so I had to order it. It was great, very good.

Then came to dessert. She had a sort of creme brûlée mouse thing that she said was good but not really crime brûlée but still good. I had one of the 50th chocolate desserts. Some sort of chocolate tiramisu thing with espresso gelato. Very good.

Alright. Off the cruise now just waiting to get home to humid heat of Texas. So I will start my review. I will work on adding days as I get time.

 

Day 1: Embark

 

I might repeat things that I have stated before in my initial summary so just ignore if I repeat myself.

 

Embarkation was easy and very quick, under 30 minutes and onboard. We went out to a celebratory brunch first and then took an Uber to the pier. Got there by noon and onboard shortly after. I printed out the health form before hand and it saved a lot of time as there was a long line at the table to fill it out. So I strongly recommend to everyone to print it out and fill it out that morning. Will save you time and headaches.

 

Got to our room right away. Very helpful in helping people find their cabins and getting around. My first criticism comes when we got to our cabin. Not a huge deal but it was disappointing. It was my sisters birthday and I filled out online that we would be celebrating her birthday and put in the date, the day that we boarded. I was told that the door would be decorated to show that we were celebrating. I noticed as we walked that a lot of doors were decorated with birthday signs. However, when we got to our door, there was nothing. I thought hat perhaps they just hadn't gotten to it yet but it was never added. It is any a huge deal but I was looking forward to surprising my sister with it. What I didn't understand is why we didn't get the door decorated? In our cabin we had a paper for a celebration in the MDR to bring in but no decor on the door. Does anyone know why this was done? I would like to know so I know how to get them to do it next time.

 

your room steward is in charge of this. You should have asked him. Very simple.

 

We then went to he HC for a late lunch. My sister and I had a bad experience on RCL when we went to lunch in the MDR and they sat us at a table with other people so she won't go back in case it happens again. We really don't like having to sit with strangers. We have found that it ruins our vacation. So we went to the crowded HC. Anyone know if you can get a table for two in the MDR for breakfast or lunch, for the future?

 

You can get a table for 2. Ask and you shall receive! The headwaiter should have been able to help you. Again, you have to ask!

 

By the way, she loved the HC, much more than I did, because of all of the vegetarian options. The MDR has limited options as it comes to vegetarian options, specifically for the main course so she really enjoyed having more than one option.

 

Then we finally got a drink! Been waiting for this. One of my favorite parts of cruising, the food and drinks. We didn't purchase any drink packages because they were either too expensive or they didn't include anything that we liked. The soda packages didn't include root beer so that was a no go, I drink dr pepper, root beer or mr pibb, no diet coke for me. The all inclusive package that I know a lot of people get, I personally feel is very very expensive so we didn't get that either. Almost 400/person for 7 nights. Outrageous. My sister got a mojito, which she really likes as she ordered it several other times. I got a Blue Hawaiian. It was one of my favs on our last cruise with RCL so thought I would try it again.

 

 

 

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See bolded comments.

Also did the welcome aboard show which was great as it wasn't a production show [emoji6]. It was the comedy of Steve Moris. We were lucky and had three shows from him which made for actually entertaining shows. A great change of pace from the disappointing production shows.

And that's a wrap for Day One.

Sorry if the pics aren't the best quality. I am uploading iPhone pics from the iPhone app so it might not be the best. I will try to upload them again in better quality once I get home. Still in transit at the airport. Here are some misc pics of the ship.

See bolded comments.

Eh for next time I guess. I shouldn't have to ask for a simple sign, that should have been done.

Good to know about the MDR for other meals. We really never had time to do it anyways as we usually eat later and so the hours for the MDR have already passed. Thanks.

She's on the ship now! Scanning and uploading the Patters would be prohibitively expensive and time consuming.

 

OP, have a great cruise and don't worry about requests... Enjoy...

Thus the PLEASE, geesh

I am making a note of taking pics of the patters so they will be included when the review is done after the cruise.

Thank you so much!

Thus the PLEASE, geesh

 

 

 

Thank you so much!

Alright. So I am posting here a link to a folder on Google Drive that contains all of the patters. They may be out of order but they are all there.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B26iIuZCR6nMfjB1QlJtQlAtQlA2QzI4dEJYSXVSOXVLZjByTkxEQnBkN29qc2JDVFdlaFU