Live From The Royal Princess

[lynn_and_rob]

The Royal Tea was fun and interesting, but it may need some tweaking to become something special...I would still give it a try for the $10 charge.

 

 

The Royal Tea is held in the sitting area under the stairs by the IC.

 

 

 

The Tea Menu...

 

 

The Tea Tower...

 

Lynn and Rob.

[lynn_and_rob]

At one point there was a lot of discussion about the location of the kids play set in the kids club. Here's the best angle I could get on it. I'll let others come to there own conclusion as to the location. By the way, I never did see anyone out there.

 

 

 

Lynn and Rob.

[lynn_and_rob]

Notice posted on board announcing the birth of Prince George:

 

 

 

The space opposite Kate's portrait is empty? There's a hook in place for a portrait, but nothing is there? Does anyone know whose portrait is suppose to be there?

 

 

Lynn and Rob.

[lynn_and_rob]

Sail in to Venice was simply amazing!

 

 

 

Lynn and Rob.

[lynn_and_rob]

Sometime in the middle of the cruise I noticed some of the elevator floors had saying on them. I couldn't believe I missed this. Then I noticed other elevators had them that didn't have them earlier in the cruise. I met up with someone else who also thought they were going crazy...turns out the carpets in the elevators were being replaced during the cruise. They started out with just plain carpet that matched the rest of the elevator lobby area, by the end of the cruise most of them had been converted. Each one had a different saying. Maybe someone has a list of all the different sayings?

 

 

 

Some pictures of balcony doors open:

 

 

 

 

Lynn and Rob.

[dmwnc1959]

Hi Lynn and Rob!

 

THANKS for the wonderful pictures!!! The Royal Tea looks very nice and I'm sure there's enough there to make a really nice afternoon snack. Looking forward to experiencing it myself on Royal Princess. :D

[Cruise Junky]

I took these pictures to show what it's like to have a meal on the "standard" size balconies. We found it worked well for the two of us, though not a whole lot of extra elbow room. Breakfast was quite tasty by the way :)

 

 

 

 

Lynn and Rob.

 

Did I remember you saying they didn't bring that table? I wonder why people are saying they had a table the size of a footstool? Different tables on different decks perhaps?

[KofAK]

Thanks for the reviews, especially the UST, and great pictures. We hope to be able to do the UST on the Royal.

[IECalCruiser]

...Some pictures of balcony doors open:

 

 

Lynn and Rob.

That looks like a photo of the balcony of M727 with the door open to M726. Looks like you have a great view of those balconies from the Horizon Terrace. They are certainly uncovered.

[IECalCruiser]

...Some pictures of balcony doors open:

 

 

Lynn and Rob.

For groups who want to share adjoining balconies, the wider doors make it look like one large space. At least half of one balcony door is covered when the partition is open though.

[sunsetbeachgal]

hi Lynn and Rob,

 

I was also on your sailing...and I also noticed the sayings on the elevator carpets and thought I was cracking up as I had not previously noticed them...they definitely were not there at the beginning of the cruise! Glad you posted some photos...I was going to attempt to do a few, but now I'm off the hook!!

 

Carole

[Woobstr112G]

Sail in to Venice was simply amazing!

 

 

 

Lynn and Rob.

 

It always is amazing. Thank you for sharing your wonderful pictures.....:):):)

 

Bob

[PescadoAmarillo]

Did I remember you saying they didn't bring that table? I wonder why people are saying they had a table the size of a footstool? Different tables on different decks perhaps?

Honestly, I've seen foot stools larger than that table. Sorry, but to have dishes perched half off the table is ridiculous. I would feel trapped while dining.

[Woobstr112G]

Honestly, I've seen foot stools larger than that table. Sorry, but to have dishes perched half off the table is ridiculous. I would feel trapped while dining.

 

I would have to agree. Those "foot stool" tables are way to small for my liking.....:):):)

 

Bob

[chamima]

Oh well...another Royal thread bites the dust! With all due respect Michell, I disagree with your assessment of an 'Everything' thread and think many of my fellow CC members, those that participated in the 5000+ entries on the thread in question, would agree.

 

I personally find bouncing around a large number of smaller threads more cumbersome.

 

But, at least you made Billco's day :D

 

 

I agree!!!!

 

Thanks for the pictures Lynn. Glad you got to post them before the thread closed.

I'm puzzled about the balcony dividers. Some seem to fully open and some seem to only half open. Is this correct?

Thanks for the picture of the play area. It only looks safe if an adult stands between the structure and the outside wall AT ALL TIMES. Still, I wouldn't like knowing that any child I was related to would even have the option of playing out there! :(

Another "what were they thinking????? for this ship! :( :confused: :( )

[lynn_and_rob]

Did I remember you saying they didn't bring that table? I wonder why people are saying they had a table the size of a footstool? Different tables on different decks perhaps?

 

Yes, that was the table already on the balcony. I was wondering if they were going to bring a table, like they do on the other ships. Everything fit, though it was a bit tight, but it made setup and cleanup a lot easier since the table could just stay in place.

 

Lynn and Rob.

[lynn_and_rob]

That looks like a photo of the balcony of M727 with the door open to M726. Looks like you have a great view of those balconies from the Horizon Terrace. They are certainly uncovered.

 

Yes, it is. You have a full view of the deck 15 balconies from HT, about 50% view of deck 14 balconies and that's it...you can't see deck 12.

 

Lynn and Rob.

[lynn_and_rob]

hi Lynn and Rob,

 

I was also on your sailing...and I also noticed the sayings on the elevator carpets and thought I was cracking up as I had not previously noticed them...they definitely were not there at the beginning of the cruise! Glad you posted some photos...I was going to attempt to do a few, but now I'm off the hook!!

 

Carole

 

I really thought I was going crazy, especially since I was being hyper sensitive to all the details after spending months reading Dave's thread. I was glad when I started meeting others who also thought they had few too many!

 

 

By the way, I believe we were on the same tour in Rome (CBM). My DW was the one who lost her train ticket in Rome and Peter bought her another one. She was rather upset about that , but Peter put his hand on her shoulder and told her "you're on vacation, just enjoy yourself and don't worry about this" That immediately put her at ease. She posted a really nice review for CBM on Trip Advisor. We also used them in Naples and were equally impressed.

 

 

Lynn and Rob

[TorontoTL]

Thanks Lynn and Rob for all your posts and additional photos! I really appreciate the tea menus as well being a tea drinker.

[Mom33]

Honestly, I've seen foot stools larger than that table. Sorry, but to have dishes perched half off the table is ridiculous. I would feel trapped while dining.

 

They don't bring a special table for breakfast, only for the UBD. That table pictured is regularly found on balconies on Caribe decks on other ships. When we have the Balcony breakfast, we bring out one course at a time. No problems with table size then. They bring too much food, but that's a good thing.:D

[sunsetbeachgal]

I really thought I was going crazy, especially since I was being hyper sensitive to all the details after spending months reading Dave's thread. I was glad when I started meeting others who also thought they had few too many!

 

 

By the way, I believe we were on the same tour in Rome (CBM). My DW was the one who lost her train ticket in Rome and Peter bought her another one. She was rather upset about that , but Peter put his hand on her shoulder and told her "you're on vacation, just enjoy yourself and don't worry about this" That immediately put her at ease. She posted a really nice review for CBM on Trip Advisor. We also used them in Naples and were equally impressed.

 

 

Lynn and Rob

 

HI Lynn,

 

Our family group did a private tour in Rome with Rome In Limo, so I don't think I met you. Thanks again for posting photos!!

 

Carole

[lynn_and_rob]

Last bits from our Royal Trip...

 

The front desk/tour desk area can get rather noisy when both are busy. Since they are in the same space surrounded by a lot of hard surfaces, it can be rather "echoey." This usually doesn't bother me too much, but if you are at one of the desks trying to converse with the staff about something it makes rather hard to hear. Maybe the addition of some soft materials in that space to absorb some of the sound, like a carpeted floor in place of the granite/marble?

 

The German dinner buffet in HC was great! The selection of items was large and the quality was very good. Since DW and I were off to Germany right after the cruise, I can say the authenticity was spot on. By the way, on the whole 12 day cruise, we ate dinner in the main dinning room only once (we had anytime dining), twice in Sabatini's, once in Crown Grill, twice in Alfredo's, once in Fondues, once German buffet, once room service (after one of the long days ashore), once at Prego Pizzeria ( the quattro formaggi was great!) , once at Trident Grill Barbecue, and the last night in Venice. I would say there are more than enough options for dinner on the Royal!

 

During the UST I asked about the outdoor fitness equipment. There are no signs explaining how to use it, and some of the equipment was not very intuitive (DW and I tried some of them one evening.) They said the signs are still being made and should be installed soon. We saw number of people during the cruise trying some of it, but like us, they seemed a little baffled by what to do, hopefully the signage will help.

 

As mentioned before, the Sea Walk really only gets used a lot on the first day, after that it's pretty much left alone. Occasionally someone would be out there (manly kids) but it wasn't an overly busy area. I know there were some concerns about privacy in the cabins below, but it didn't seem like too many people were out there (except me taking pictures of those cabins :) )

 

The $15 Venice shuttle ticket delivered to your cabin a couple days before arrival in Venice was an "opt-out" ticket. It defaulted to being charged to your cabin if you didn't return it. We were OK with that since we wanted to use it, but it was not made clear (on the ticket) that this was the case. I think it was mentioned in the Patter and maybe in an announcement, but it was not obvious. Since people are very distracted on a cruise it would have been nice to put some sort of red "warning" notice on the ticket.

 

Picture opposite Catherine's in the lobby area is empty, but there is a hook for a picture to go there. Does anyone know what is planned to hang there? Prince William? Princess Diana? Princess George? The Captain?

 

During the UST, the captain was talking about the sea trials (Captain Dino was aboard with Captain Tony for the trails) and mentioned that one of the tests, full left and full right rudder while under full speed, produced significantly less lean than you would normally expect. I think it's normal to lean about 18 degrees in such a situation, but the Royal only leaned 6 or 8 degrees. There's some videos online somewhere showing the Crown a number of years back pulling out of either Ft. Lauderdale or Port Canaveral and accidentally going into a full rudder under speed situation and the chaos that it caused, so it sounds like if something like that happened on the Royal it may not be such a disruption.

 

DW and I got a chance to use the shooting simulator on the extra sea day (the missed Mykonos stop.) It was very windy and when we got the stairs to go up to the sports court, the cruise staff were there with the stairs roped off. They said it was too windy to go up, but as we were walking away one of them stopped us and asked what we were looking for. When we said we wanted to try the shooting simulator, they decided it was OK as long as we were escorted up and back due to the wind, so we kind of had a private tour of the shooting simulator. It was very interesting. It's a single small dark room, probably big enough for 4 or 5 people. It is not decorated at all inside, just white walls and a plain linoleum floor. It turns out they had a whole camouflage design ready to go for the room (like a first person shooter game) and decided against it due to world events that were occurring, I would have to agree that was a good move. Unfortunately, they didn't have a backup plan for the room design. I suggested making it into a carnival shoot gallery theme. The shooting equipment itself is rather high end, I think it cost something like $30,000! It's from Switzerland and felt rather real (the rifle is quite heavy!) There's only one rifle so only one person can shoot at a time. My DW and I shot tin cans off of tree stumps and shot balloon rising through the air. There's also a skeet shooting game as well that we did not try. It was a lot of fun! I'm sure they will improve on it as time goes by.

 

 

Lynn and Rob.

[dmwnc1959]

Last bits from our Royal Trip...

 

Picture opposite Catherine's in the lobby area is empty, but there is a hook for a picture to go there. Does anyone know what is planned to hang there? Prince William? Princess Diana? Princess George? The Captain?

 

Lynn and Rob.

 

Noooooooo. This can't be the end already! Boooo. ;)

 

As for the 'blank space' across from the portrait of the Duchess of Cambridge my guess would be that they will have an official photograph of the ship taken while she is/was at sea. There were several from her second Preview Cruise posted on the official Princess site of her after she had left Southampton and was out in the Solent that were very nice.

 

THANKS again for everything. Very much appreciated! :D

[IECalCruiser]

Posted on wrong thread.

[IECalCruiser]

Once again :o