Review - Grand Princess - March 25, 2005

[magnumcoog]

This was my first sailing with Princess. I have previously sailed with Disney and RCCL. This review is for the sailing of the Grand Princess out of Galveston with stops in Belize, Costa Maya, Grand Cayman, and Cozumel.

 

Saturday: We arrived at the pier around 10:30 a.m. and it was a madhouse as past cruise passengers were disembarking. We drove down from Little Rock to Galveston the night before so we had a car. We dropped off the bags and then I went and parked the car at the EZCruise parking lot and walked back to the pier (about 5 minutes).

 

We checked in which was painless and then waited about 15 minutes before boarding which began at 11:30 a.m.

 

We were able to go to the cabin immediately and we had an aft cabin D734 and it was great, the veranda was 14 x 10 and fully covered. There was never any issue with it being windy or when it rained getting wet.

 

We went up to the Horizon Court for lunch and returned to the cabin around 1 p.m and the bags began arriving so we unpacked and got that out of the way.

 

We had a "meet & mingle" after the muster drill and I believe about 30 CruiseCritic friends and family stopped by, was great for the kids to meet early in the cruise this way.

 

The weather was in the 70's but damp and when we departed the pier around 4:40 p.m it was getting foggy. When at sea we ran into heavy fog and the fog horn would blast about every 5 minutes.

 

The first sea day was uneventful except for being cloudy.

 

We arrived in Belize late, I am assuming because of the fog issue. Almost all of the excursions were cancelled. We had booked the cave tubing with Coral Breeze and it was also cancelled. I do not know why Princess goes to Belize first seems it would be better to go to Costa Maya. Did not leave the pier area as outside the gates of the pier area was a "mob" waiting to get you to buy drugs or whatever. The Grand Princess anchors about 2 miles offshore, takes about 20 minutes to tender to the pier.

 

Costa Maya, my favorite port and was the best all round weather day. We went to the beach and had a great lunch. Just a great day to relax.

 

Grand Cayman arrived on time, but alas there were 6-7 other ships in port. Tendering was a nightmare, in fact there was a collision between the local tender and a Celebrity tender, the Celebrity tender was heavily damaged but I did not see anyone that was hurt. We had not booked anything in Grand Cayman but saw a Nativeway person right as we got off the ship and we decided to go on their Sting ray city and snorkelling excursion, was $30 per person, boat was clean, and was only about 20 of us so not crowded. Highly recommend.

 

Cozumel-ugh, 8 or 9 ships in port, they announced that 30,000 crew and passenges would be on shore and I believe. Went to Paradise Beach, was expecting maybe a 100 beach goers, but looked like 1000. We only stayed about 1 1/2 as it was windy, crowded, and just not fun. It was so windy water was brown.

 

Last sea day was cold and rainy, can say much more than that. I guess I am a Southern or Eastern Caribbean person as I have never had weather conditions like what was experienced out of Galveston before. I doubt that we will sail out of Galveston again.

 

Disembarkation, you are given a color to disembark, but it was a nightmare, it was 9 a.m. and passengers just started leaving. We needed to be somewhere that evening, so we tried to be patient. The Princess personnel were telling everyone that if they got off the ship they would not be able to get their luggage until their color was called, this was so wrong. We decided to take our chance and immediately got luggage and was off to find EZCruise van. We found the EZCruise rep and van loaded up and we were on the road back home by 9:30 a.m.

 

We dropped friends off at the airport and then we had a flat lost 2 hours we thought we had made by getting off ship early. We decided it was because we left the ship early.

 

I have decided that I like the Grand Class ships, there are 4 pools, lots of deck space, 14 bars, 3 dining rooms. Family loved MUTS, it is amazing.

 

My teenage daughter told me there were over 400 teens on the ship. They were not a problem at all, there was a Youth Patrol and they were kept in check. I ran into more pushy elders than rowdy teens, and I am 52.

 

All in all it was another great cruise.

 

Thank you to all of my new friends who posted throughout the past year. You made it a better experience for me and I hope for you as well.