Crown Back-To-Back 1/4 - 1/18 Review

[GRAYTech]

We just returned from an outstanding back-to-back cruise, 1/4 – 1/18 on the Crown Princess. We were fortunate enough to stay a week in D736 and then the following week in D737, both full vista suites. The rooms are a mirror image of one another. However, the A/C worked great in D736 and really didn’t work at all in D737. The back to back cruise also meant a port day at Ft Lauderdale in the middle. Our luggage was moved to the new room and we got our new cards immediately but we had to disembark to go through customs and re-board. This was a hassle and took about 2 hours total because they had trouble finding a couple of passengers. The day was somewhat of a loss like any embarkation day. If it were a true 14 day cruise this would not have been an issue.

 

We found the cruise, activities and food to be very good and consistent with most other reviews so I won’t spend much time on it other than to say don’t miss the Crown Grill. The food and service are outstanding, 5 star in my book. The cover charge is also waved the first night for suite passengers.

 

Something I couldn't find before this cruise was technical info about the room. My Ipad and 10 inch dell mini laptop just fit in the room safe. A larger laptop will not fit in the safe. We brought an Apple TV along and were able to hook it to the available HDMI port on the TV and switch the input settings on the TV to view it. The Apple TV picked up an IP address on the wireless system so we air-played photos, videos etc to the TV and it worked great. The Apple TV did not require internet access to work. One caution though, we were air-played spammed. At one point someone from another cabin began to show photos / videos on our Apple TV, some of which included Asian porn! Your kids may not appreciate the video bombing if they were watching Little Mermaid.

 

The internet worked great. We were able to Skype with our Daughter in Hong Kong even while at sea. Only one time was the connection too slow and even then it was just a little funkie. The internet worked better than past cruises to the same region. I was NOT able to connect to my office Cisco VPN. In fact trying it put my SecureID into next Token mode which meant when were on land with 'real wifi' like in Aruba, my VPN connection was not working. The boat ISP notes that IPSEC VPN's will likely not work and I can confirm it's true.

 

If you are platinum+ or in a full suite be sure to check out the cocktail hour in Skywalker’s before dinner. Dan will have $5 martinis and great hor dourves including raw beef, caviar and a whole table of upscale cheese and snacks. Do the drink punch card thing too - you never know if you will be the lucky one to have your bar-bill wiped clean. Just ask a server for one.

[riclop]

Thanks for the review.