Mini-review: Golden Princess Alaska Inside Passage, September 13-20 2014

[Vexorg]

Me and my friends just got off the last Golden Princess Alaska sailing of the season and made it home (man, it's so nice not having to fly across the country to get home after a cruise for once.) I thought I'd post a few thoughts on the trip:

 

Our group: This time around, I sailed with the two friends who I frequently travel with, as well as two of their brothers and their sister-in-law All of us are in our Thirties, and one of the passengers in the other cabin has some special needs relating to a mental handicap. I shared a cabin with my friends, and the other three shared a cabin as well. My friends had cruised a couple of times on Princess apiece, and the people in the other cabin were all first-time Princess cruisers. I do not believe that any of us had been to Alaska previously.

 

The ship: As others have said here, the Golden Princess is looking a bit rough around the edges these days (especially the pool areas), but don't let that worry you. She's still a very nice ship, and I never really felt crowded on board the ship. In fact, I think there's something about the older Grand-class ships that I like better than the newer ones. The Sapphire is still my favorite of the Princess ships I've sailed, but I'd definitely put the Golden Princess up there. Perhaps the biggest issue I had with the condition of the ship was that the voyage info channel you typically have on Princess ships was not working, which made it really hard to figure out where you were. Apparently this cruise was hosting the World Bingo Championship, but it looks like it was just a few hundred people and didn't really affect much aside from tying up the Vista Lounge during most of the time at sea.

 

Our cabin: Interestingly enough, even though this is my ninth Princess cruise, this is the first time I sailed in an interior cabin (typically I sail in OV cabins, with a couple of balcony cabins here and there.) We did surprisingly well, although keeping track of the time is definitely an issue since it's so dark in the room. To be honest, I don't think any of us slept particularly well on this trip, but it wasn't the fault of the room.

 

Entertainment: Overall there seemed to be less activities on this sailing than I'm used to, which I'll probably attribute to the Bingo group taking over the Vista Lounge for most of the time spent at sea. Entertainers included a magic show (Hawley Magic, who did shows in the main theater one night and a show in the Vista Lounge another night) and a comedian I didn't get a chance to watch. Production shows were British Invasion (I don't think I'd seen that one before, I quite liked it) and one other one I don't quite recall.

 

Weather: In general the weather was about what you'd expect for this time of year (Alaska seems to be about a month and a half ahead of Seattle in terms of temperatures dropping and rain.) On the one hand, the fog made it a bit tough to spend too much time above decks due to the foghorn going off every couple of minutes. On the other hand, the patchy fog made for some spectacular scenery, especially in Glacier Bay. I took a ton of photos. For the most part the seas were actually pretty calm (the day in Glacier Bay in particular was amazingly smooth) and it wasn't until the last couple of days after leaving Ketchikan that we really got any significant winds and waves.

 

We actually did get to see a whale from the ship while on approach to Vancouver on the last night. We were in a table by the port side windows of the dining room and one of the people in our group spotted a spout, causing people to rush to the windows. We saw the spout several more times, and several people even saw a tail.

 

Casino: I'll usually throw at least a few bucks into the slots when I go on a cruise, but this time around I ended up not gambling at all. Thanks to the bingo group on this sailing, I don't think the casino was exactly hurting for business.

 

The passengers: While looking at door tags in the halls it seemed like the vast majority of passengers on this sailing were blue and gold cards, with a relatively small number of platinums and just a handful of Elites. The most traveled passengers on the ship were at 420 days, which seems rather low compared to some Caribbean sailings I've been on where the number is closer to 700. Given the fact that just about everyone is back to school, there were few children on board (according to the bulletin board in front of the youth center, there were only 15 passengers between 3-12 on the ship, and I don't think I really saw any teens.)

 

MUTS: Movie selections on MUTS included the 2014 Godzilla movie, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Malificent, The Fault in Our Stars, The Princess Bride, Mamma Mia, and a few others. In addition to this, on Sunday they showed three football games, as well as the Monday Night and Thursday games. One nice thing about the Golden Princess compared to some ships (most notably the Crown/Ruby/Emerald) is that they didn't feel the need to have things playing constantly on the screen all the time. Mostly they just left ambient background stuff on during the day with no sound. At least one evening movie had to be cancelled due to fog because the screen was interfering with navigation. Having the foghorn going off every couple of minutes would probably have made it difficult to spend much time out there anyway.

 

The food: On this particular cruise we ended up eating a significant majority of our meals in the MDR (including breakfast and lunch most days it was offered), which is not something I typically do. The service in the Donatello dining room (where breakfast and lunch were served) was top-notch. The Bernini dining room (where we had dinner most nights) wasn't quite up to the same standards in terms of service, but overall the MDR food was very good. The food in the Horizon Court seemed to be so-so at best, but we only ate there a handful of times anyway. Nobody in our group ate at any of the specialty restaurants on this trip.

 

Ashore: In Juneau, we decided to rent a minivan big enough to hold the entire group and spent the day wandering around the area, doing a hike at Mendenhall Glacier, then visiting the Shrine of St. Therese, the Fish Hatchery and the Walmart (to get the stuff we forgot to bring.) Given the size of our group this was probably the best way to do this. In Skagway several of us did the Adventure Park and Zipline tour (highly recommended) and then wandered around town for a while. In Ketchikan we all went to the Alaska Lumberjack Show (good, but a little expensive for what it was.) In Victoria we got in an hour late due to delays from the fog, so there wasn't time to do much. We took the shuttle into town and browsed around the shops a bit.

 

I will probably have more things to add as I think of them, but overall I really enjoyed this trip. Next up, me and my friends will probably be doing a couple of short cruises (apparently I'm just about due for a status-cruise or two to get to Elite, and one of my friends is a couple cruises short of Platinum) and then we booked an Island Princess Grand Mediterranean sailing for next May while onboard.

Edited September 20, 2014 by Vexorg

[Kamloops50]

Are you sure it's the Golden Princess? The Golden in currently in Seattle and will sail for Vancouver this PM.

Looking at the ship cam and it's docked in Seattle.

Edited September 20, 2014 by Kamloops50

[lovevacadays]

Thank you for posting your review. I will be on the Golden in 9 weeks. I can't wait!

[Woobstr112G]

Thanks for taking the time to post your review. I enjoyed reading it....:):):)

 

Bob

[Lerin]

Are you sure it's the Golden Princess? The Golden in currently in Seattle and will sail for Vancouver this PM.

Looking at the ship cam and it's docked in Seattle.

 

Yes, exactly. As the poster mentioned he just finished this cruise and was easily able to get from port to his home in Bellevue, WA.

 

Thank you OP for the review. We will be on Golden in a few months when she heads south. Looking forward to it

[icat2000]

Thanks for your review. I can't wait until the Golden Princess is home ported out of Melbourne for the Summer of 2015/2016.

[Vexorg]

One other thing I didn't cover in my previous post:

 

- If there was one issue I had with this cruise, I would have to say that I did not care for the way disembarkation in the ports was handled. On this ship, the photographers are actually stationed in front of the gangways to take photos of everyone before they even get off the ship. This causes significant backups and long lines trying to disembark, and then when you go to the photo gallery later there's so many of these photos that even if you had any inclination to buy cheesy photos if you with some guy in a bad moose costume it would take you an hour to sort through the 1,500 photos anyway. I felt that this was a very poor way to handle this, especially when on every other ship I've been on they do this on the dock after you're off the ship. And who in their right mind wants to buy photos with the perfume shop in the background anyway when there's perfectly good scenery they could use outside instead?

[shredie]

It's not always possible to sidestep the photographers, but we do so when we can. I agree with you that the system for displaying the photos is chaotic.

[Orangefan]

Hi Vexorg !

Thanks for your review. I was supposed to have been on the Golden the end of May to Alaska. I will spare you the long details but after 2 days of our flights being cancelled we were not going to be able to fly in on the third day and make the departure time. Luckily we had air travel and cruise insurance but was very disappointed not cruising. While I would like to do the inner passage and leave out of Vancouver. The water is supposed to be calmer through the inner passage. Unfortunately, Princess doesn't have many ships going round trip out of Vancouver, most are going northbound or southbound. I was wondering how you found the travel going on the open waters and not the inside passage.

Luckily, my next trip is a b2b in the beginning of November on the Regal out of FFL.

Sali

[RickEk]

OP, fyi, MUTS in Alaska is much more sedate than elsewhere... I believe there are noise restrictions (or possibly more respect for nature since the ship travels close to shore a lot of the time).

[bhopal21]

Luckily, my next trip is a b2b in the beginning of November on the Regal out of FFL.

Sali

 

I assume you mean FLL Fort Lauderdale since FFL is in Iowa?

 

Mike:)

[Vexorg]

For the most part the seas were pretty calm, although they did pick up some after we left Ketchikan.

[4cats4me]

One other thing I didn't cover in my previous post:

 

- If there was one issue I had with this cruise, I would have to say that I did not care for the way disembarkation in the ports was handled. On this ship, the photographers are actually stationed in front of the gangways to take photos of everyone before they even get off the ship. This causes significant backups and long lines trying to disembark, and then when you go to the photo gallery later there's so many of these photos that even if you had any inclination to buy cheesy photos if you with some guy in a bad moose costume it would take you an hour to sort through the 1,500 photos anyway. I felt that this was a very poor way to handle this, especially when on every other ship I've been on they do this on the dock after you're off the ship. And who in their right mind wants to buy photos with the perfume shop in the background anyway when there's perfectly good scenery they could use outside instead?

 

 

I agree! We were really ticked off with this on the Grand, also, three weeks ago

It caused unnecessarily long lines to disembark. Just ridiculous. Many others were quite ticked as well

This absolutely should be done outside

[jsiegel]

One other thing I didn't cover in my previous post:

 

- If there was one issue I had with this cruise, I would have to say that I did not care for the way disembarkation in the ports was handled. On this ship, the photographers are actually stationed in front of the gangways to take photos of everyone before they even get off the ship. This causes significant backups and long lines trying to disembark, and then when you go to the photo gallery later there's so many of these photos that even if you had any inclination to buy cheesy photos if you with some guy in a bad moose costume it would take you an hour to sort through the 1,500 photos anyway. I felt that this was a very poor way to handle this, especially when on every other ship I've been on they do this on the dock after you're off the ship. And who in their right mind wants to buy photos with the perfume shop in the background anyway when there's perfectly good scenery they could use outside instead?

 

I agree and I mentioned it on my survey. In one port I was able to dodge past the photographers because the moose was losing his head and the photographer put down her camera to help him. For the others I gave a polite "no thank you" as I continued walking, after being help up in line to get off the ship. All very annoying. But doubt things will change, even if Princess does bother to read the comments on their post-cruise surveys. They must make enough money on those cheesy pictures to make it worthwhile to hold so many people hostage.

 

Jackie

[nana541]

For the most part the seas were pretty calm, although they did pick up some after we left Ketchikan.

 

 

It was Rockin a bit, the Captain of the Westerdam said he ordered that up just to rock his passengers to sleep that night! :)

 

 

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[I object 2]

Hi Brian! It was nice meeting you at the meet & greet on the Golden last Sunday. Glad to hear you and your friends enjoyed the cruise. We also had a great time....fog horn and all! ;) The on-board future cruise promotion was too good to pass up, so we booked a b2b Caribbean cruise for January 2015. It will be nice to escape the snow and ice for a couple of weeks. Take care!

 

Jan

[Vexorg]

Me and my friends booked a 12-day Island Princess Mediterranean cruises for next May while on board ($150 each in OBC for the first two passengers and $1,000 fare for the third passenger, pretty good deal.) We had originally planned on doing this one on NCL because the prices on the Princess Mediterranean sailings were so high, but the prices came down enough that we decided to switch to Princess. I suspect the airfare on this one is going to be sky-high, but that just comes with the territory.

[Cruisin Oma]

Me and my friends booked a 12-day Island Princess Mediterranean cruises for next May while on board ($150 each in OBC for the first two passengers and $1,000 fare for the third passenger, pretty good deal.) We had originally planned on doing this one on NCL because the prices on the Princess Mediterranean sailings were so high, but the prices came down enough that we decided to switch to Princess. I suspect the airfare on this one is going to be sky-high, but that just comes with the territory.

 

 

Hi Brian -

Nice meeting you. You'll have to let me know what you think of the Island. She's my favorite ship!

 

Question - wasn't our voyage considered an inside passage voyage?

 

 

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[Vexorg]

Apparently we will be on the Island Princess right after a 45-day rehab that is expected to make some pretty significant changes to the public decks and Horizon Court, so it will be interesting to see what the ship looks like afterward. I thought she was pretty nice when we sailed on her previously though.

 

And yes, this was considered an Inside Passage cruise, but I think that refers more to the ports than the route. Based on the itinerary shown on princess.com the ship still sails in open waters from Seattle to Juneau and from Ketchikan to Victoria.