Review - Owners Suite - Golden Princess - RT Seattle/Alaska Aug 30 -Sept 6

[skrodle]

Hey there-

Just got back from our trip and wanted to post my review. Let me know if you have any questions :)

 

THE SHIP

The ship is beautiful, it was my 2nd time on her, and 7th time on a Grand Class ship. I think (aside from a few things) she may be one of my favorites. They definitely were doing good up keep (saw lots of painting, varnishing, etc) and just overall was still pretty.

 

The room was quite nice (B751), it felt like we were in a very large hotel room. The balcony was spectacular. We had a couple problems with the room in the first day, but they were resolved quickly. The cabin is not over the top elegant, just nice, which was fine. The jacuzzi bathtub was fantastic and the bath salts were so nice (took lots of baths). I was disappointed that the other bath products were no longer the eucalyptus products, I thought for sure they would have saved those for the suites. The mini bar was a nice touch, as were the evening canapes (although they often did not deliver what I ordered) but it was fine. Room service breakfast was awesome and being able to order room service from the main dining room was a plus. I feel if we had more sea days I would have spent a lot more time in the room.

 

The food was above average from past cruises. We ate in several places. Starting with Crown Grill, since we were in a suite, we got the first night free there. I had not been in crown grill for 3 cruises, because our last 2 times there (on different ships) had been so dreadfully slow. On our last cruise we had friends who ate there and it was a 4 hour dinner for them. This was not the case on the Golden. Service was spectacular. Our waitress and Maitre'd were fantastic. The food was really good, and I was impressed that one of the desserts was from the new Norman Love Chocolate collection that is supposed to start this fall on the Royal. They are already running several of the desserts on this ship. I had the peanut butter bar... omg SOOOOO good!!

Other things to note about the food: My last cruise on the Caribbean the pizza had gone down hill, here it was just as good as I had remembered. The ice cream bar now does a Bullion bar from 11-1 which was a nice touch (different broth - chicken/beef/fish) and several veggies so you can make your own soup. Trident grill now offers a Smokehouse BBQ menu from 6p-10p that has ribs, bbq chicken, and pulled pork. There were about 8 different items, and about 5 of them were offered every night. The pulled pork was awesome.

Main dining room was, well, the main dining room, not mind blowing good, but not bad. I only had one thing that was not good (a crab quiche) other than that everything was nice. Here again they had the Norman Love chocolate dessert, the Hazelnut bar, again FANTASTIC. I cannot wait until the whole fleet has these and they have all the offerings. It was noted on the menu that all the chocolate now in their desserts was Guittard Chocolate as well.

Breakfast at Sabatini's was awesome. The servers were wonderful, the Maitre'd was really nice, but the food... wow! Worth the suite. The fresh orange juice, the doughnuts, and the poached egg on potatoes with hollandaise sauce... wow! They could totally offer this as a $10 upcharge and I would pay for it every day if I wasnt in a suite.

International cafe was good, I went there mostly in the morning to get doughnuts for the room before we went to breakfast. They were some of the best doughnuts ever. The cronut that people have been raving about was good, but does not live up to the hype. The other doughnuts were better.

 

Bar Service was spectacular. We were on the all inclusive package and it was much better than my last experience with this. Last time on CB it was a total booze cruise, everyone had it, and service was atrocious. One of the nice things they are now doing is when the 3 of us went up to the bar to get a drink, they would only run one card since all three of us had stickers. Made the process so much more efficient. Last cruise this was taking 1/2 the time!! Our server in Crooners (Goce) was awesome, knew our name after 1 time and had our card number written down so he could run it for every drink order and we wouldnt have to present it.

 

Spa was good. It was the typical Lotus experience. I have a love/hate relationship with the spa. I like their service, I just hate everything else. We had booked online our appointment. When they dropped off our bill it was different from what was quoted on our confirmation. The girls began to argue with us so that kind of ruined the whole experience. They corrected it, but it just was a sour note. And the service was supposed to be 55 minutes, but I swear every time we book a service it is 5 minutes late, and ends 5 minutes early. Thankfully they did not try to sell us a bunch of Elemis products (which I actually wanted, but found for cheaper on Amazon). Next cruise I just need to talk to the spa manager ahead of time and let them know of my expectations. Because the actual treatment (pedicure) was amazing.

 

We also did the ultimate ship tour. Holy Moley! this was a great experience. Ours lasted 3.5 hours, an hour longer than quoted. But it was so cool. I know there have been several threads on this topic before, but I was very impressed. My favorite part was the laundry tour. The officer who runs laundry was fantastic. He takes such pride in what is a horrible job. He runs a tight ship (no pun) with his crew of 20. I just made sure to thank every one of them. It seemed like a very thankless job, but the pride they put into their job was phenomenal.

 

THE PORTS:

So this is gonna be a little short....

The three alaska ports of Juneau, Skagway, and Ketchican were all pretty similar. If you were not doing an excursion, and just walking around the port town, they were kind of unidentifiable from the next. All had the same Diamonds International store (but they have sales tax here, so I didnt see the allure) and they all had the same slimy sales people (especially our Port Shopping host Todd, OMG was he every a slimy sales man!).

 

We did whale watching in Juneau with Harv and Marvs. This was great. Only 5 of us on the boat and we saw so many whales. We were super close to some. We also rented a car to go birding and saw a huge lack of birds (btw Alaska, not the place to go see birds). We did drive to the campground for Mendenhal Glacier. This had a MUCH better view of the glacier than the visitors center. The camp ground was super cute and if you like camping in freezing cold weather, this would be for you! lol. We also saw 2 beavers here building a dam right along the road at the campground, they were like 2 feet from our car.

Skagway we did the train. Train was cool. Neat to see once. As part of our tour we did panning for gold, it was cute, would be great for kids. And we had lunch at the Skagway in. It was not good. We actually walked out on it since it was at the end of the tour. I could write a whole other post on this one.

Ketchican was ok, we just got off and had an early lunch. Great King Crab here. We did not want to do any tours here since we were only in port for such a short time and didnt want to get up so early and feel rushed.

Glacier bay was ok. I actually wasnt as impressed as I thought. I mean it was good... but I wasnt BLOWN AWAY!

And Victoria was nice, just wish we had more time there.. I had been there once on a reposition cruise and spent all day there. We went into town and had some drinks. Cant wait to go back there.

 

So there yah go... let me know if you have any questions... happy to oblige. It was a good cruise over all... the cruise was better then the ports though... I liked Alaska, but I dont know if I need to go back. As far as nature-y places go, I like Yellowstone and Grand Tetons better... Next two cruises are to mexico... I cant wait for the sun!

[Colo Cruiser]

Thanks for the review.

[RickEk]

Thanks for the review. FYI, the bullion bar is Alaska only...

[MsSoCalCruiser]

Thank you for your review. I enjoyed it.

[skrodle]

Thanks for the review. FYI, the bullion bar is Alaska only...

 

i was afraid of that... it was so good. when we were on the Sapphire before it moved to Asia they were testing a ramen bar, so I thought the bullion bar was the US version of it...

[rocklinmom]

Thanks for this review! I just booked a second cruise on the Golden for next July and am looking forward to seeing Alaska again. Do you recall how the rain was, if at all? Also how was sailing from San Fran? (we were out of Seattle last time)

[rocklinmom]

Oh geez, I just saw your title again and you sailed from Seattle, not San Fran. Never mind my second question then!! :)

[2 to cruise]

You didn't take advantage of breakfast at Sabatini's for full suite passengers? That is a wonderful perk, hope you didn't miss it.:)

[candide333]

Thanks so much for your positive review. We are sailing on 9/18/14 on the Golden Princess on a Coastal with a stop in Santa Barbara, so I posted your review on our roll call. This will be our 5th cruise on the Golden, one of our favorite ships.

Edited September 8, 2014 by candide333

[JF - retired RRT]

You didn't take advantage of breakfast at Sabatini's for full suite passengers? That is a wonderful perk, hope you didn't miss it.:)

You must have skipped this:

Breakfast at Sabatini's was awesome. The servers were wonderful, the Maitre'd was really nice, but the food... wow! Worth the suite. The fresh orange juice, the doughnuts, and the poached egg on potatoes with hollandaise sauce... wow! They could totally offer this as a $10 upcharge and I would pay for it every day if I wasnt in a suite. :eek:

[RetiredNTraveling]

Thanks for the review as it was a great trip down memory lane. ;) We really enjoyed our trips to Alaska and also on the Golden Princess! :eek:

Edited September 8, 2014 by RetiredNTraveling

[2 to cruise]

You must have skipped this:

Breakfast at Sabatini's was awesome. The servers were wonderful, the Maitre'd was really nice, but the food... wow! Worth the suite. The fresh orange juice, the doughnuts, and the poached egg on potatoes with hollandaise sauce... wow! They could totally offer this as a $10 upcharge and I would pay for it every day if I wasnt in a suite. :eek:

 

Well, I'm sorry......best I get my eyes examined...LOL. That is a wonderful perk isn't it? I agree, I would also pay an upcharge for it....delish!:)

[jsiegel]

Thanks for this review! I just booked a second cruise on the Golden for next July and am looking forward to seeing Alaska again. Do you recall how the rain was, if at all? )

 

I was on this cruise too. We had rain in Seattle the day we left, we had rain in Juneau, we had pretty good rain while I was trying to watch Frozen on MUTS. We had clouds in Glacier Bay. We had lots of clouds in Skagway. We had pretty clear skies in Ketchikan. We had bright clear skies in Seattle for our return.

 

I agree about Glacier Bay and the birds. Only heard/saw one calving on the Marjorie glacier. When I was there in June there was a lot of activity on the glacier. But that's nature for you, unpredictable. I also only saw one bald eagle, not the numbers I've seen before. We saw a number of sea otters in Glacier Bay. Friday morning off the coast of Canada there had to be about 100 humpback whales spouting in any direction you looked. I hope someone took pictures and posts them somewhere. That was awesome and made up for the lack of wildlife earlier in the cruise.

 

Jackie

[rocklinmom]

Thank you Jackie! So it sounds like rain will be possible, as usual, with Juneau the best chance. We lucked out before and didn't get any rain but I can't hope for that again. That would be tough to watch MUTS in the rain! But cooler weather is always better than 104 degrees at home in the summer.

 

 

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[PathfinderEss]

Thanks for your review.

[skrodle]

Thank you Jackie! So it sounds like rain will be possible, as usual, with Juneau the best chance. We lucked out before and didn't get any rain but I can't hope for that again. That would be tough to watch MUTS in the rain!

 

MUTS was a disappointment on this cruise... no true MUTS... they only played shows during the day... all but one night the screen was dark after 6pm...

the night was so nice in Victoria I totally could have watched ANYTHING if it was playing... but alas... no

[skrodle]

Thanks so much for your positive review. We are sailing on 9/18/14 on the Golden Princess on a Coastal with a stop in Santa Barbara, so I posted your review on our roll call. This will be our 5th cruise on the Golden, one of our favorite ships.

 

we booked the 4 day coastal with Santa Barbara for Feb on the Crown on this cruise.

 

the only thing I dont like about the Golden is no thermal suite (which I only recently discovered on the Caribbean) and that the sauna is outside by the pool, not inside with the changing room. Other than that, I loved the ship.

 

Billy Hygate the CD... now he was a bore.... but thats a whole 'nother thred ;)

[Woobstr112G]

OP;

 

Thanks for taking the time to post your review.....:):):)

 

Bob

Edited September 9, 2014 by Woobstr112G

[lovevacadays]

Thank you for your review. I can't wait to sail the Golden in about 9 weeks. I have never sailed her.