Emerald Nov. 23-30 Review: Bad weather and poor service, but we had fun

[Mississippian]

We are back from our Nov. 23-30 Emerald Princess cruise out of Houston. I’m writing this review in the car on our way back to Mississippi, so the entire family is chiming in as I write. The weather was pretty dreadful, and we have some critical things to say. I suppose we will sound a little like the “Whiner” family.

 

Amid the whines we have some good things to say as well. As a family we each have from six to eight Princess cruises under our belts and one RCI cruise taken right after Katrina (boy, was that a bargain!). We obviously like certain things about Princess, and I’ve found that Princess prices are generally lower than RCI or even NCL, so it’s kept us from straying. But the lack of variety may be wearing a bit thin!

 

We took this cruise because we had a large cruise credit from a five-day cruise we took in January that offered a 100 percent cruise credit toward a seven-day cruise. After applying our credit we were able to book two inside cabins for approximately $200 each, all-in. Each cabin had a $125 onboard credit, so our cost to cruise was roughly $140 per person. We regular Princess customers often get a little frustrated about things, but I think the company makes less money on us regular cruisers. We don’t buy the photos, don’t take ship’s tours, and in general have learned how to cruise cheaply. Great for us, but less profit for the cruise line. So I do try to keep this in mind.

 

THE EMERALD PRINCESS: The ship was in good condition. It seemed to me to be an exact duplicate of the Ruby, which is a good thing.

 

PRE-CRUISE AND THE PORT OF HOUSTON: There have been a lot of complaints about the Houston port; it is less than ideal. But for us, it is a 9- to 10-hour drive from North Mississippi versus a 17-hour drive to Ft. Lauderdale. It is certainly worth a bit of inconvenience to save about 15 hours of total driving time. But we were a little late sailing, and because it takes a while to get out of Texas waters the casino is slow to open, alcohol selection is limited, Vines isn’t open, and so forth. All in all, not that big a deal. The parking was very convenient and only $80 for the week, so much better than Ft. Lauderdale.

 

For those driving in, there is a Kroger Signature store about two exits north of the cruise port that has a decent wine selection. We bought three bottles of wine and ended up bringing two of them back off the ship.

 

DRINK PACKAGE: I decided to buy the drink package, which was probably a mistake. In the past we’ve brought on wine and I’ve just poured at least half my drinks from my own supply. The drink package reminded me of the old “Drink or Drown” specials they used to have when I was in college, where we would drink as much as we could to get our money’s worth. For those who like mixed drinks the drink package might be a good deal, but for those who prefer wine, I suggest the tried-and-true method of bringing on a few bottles and buying some on board. As for beer, it’s fairly cheap; unless you plan to drink 10 beers a day the drink package isn’t worth it.

 

KID’S DRINK PACKAGE: The kids got the drink stickers and these are a great deal.

 

DINING: We rated the overall service on this cruise as the worst we’ve had on any of our Princess cruises. It was a full ship with lots of kids, so perhaps this was a factor. We found to our dismay that the Da Vinci dining room was converted into a traditional dining room for the first seating, and so was unavailable for anytime diners until 7:30 p.m. each night. Everybody wants to eat from 6 to 7:30, and so this meant a huge wait each evening. It wasn’t fair to the Anytime Diners at all. The line to get in the single Anytime Diningroom was really long at times, at one point extending almost all the way to the art gallery.

 

Our first night at dinner we decided to sit at a large table. When we arrived there was a mother and daughter who had the most sour look on them I’ve ever seen. We started to speak but they looked away, so we just kind of said “hi.” An older couple joined us and they were very nice. We had a good laugh a few times when we would see “The Dour Family” around the ship. After the first night the children said they wanted to just get a table for four, and so we did. We had no problem getting the private table save for the long wait just to enter the dining room.

 

The dining room food was fair to good. In some cases the poor service affected the quality of the food. For example, escargot was available one night, but it was served barely warm. And we all know the food isn’t what it was some years ago. I miss the cheese course. As for service, the kids had to ask for a refill on their Cokes several times before getting one. Just stuff like that that we’ve never experienced before. On the fourth through sixth nights the service did improve, for whatever reason. The main dining room menu for the fifth and sixth nights was really good; for the last night it was dreadful. So if you want a night to eat at the Crown Grill, put your reservation in for the last night of the cruise.

 

As for the buffet, I know there was a time when I would tell people how GREAT the Princess buffet was. It is not great today. I can’t identify what the lack is, but it simply isn’t good. The bacon was better than in the past, though, except that it had the tendency to be a jumble of bacon bits after a while. But it had a decent flavor and was cooked. But overall I have to give the buffet poor marks. It was decent enough, and filled us up for breakfast and lunch. I guess that is enough. The pizza served out on deck is good as always. Also, there are many complaints about the coffee. I find it to be just fine, or at least decent enough. My wife, who is a bit picky about coffee, says it is far better than most hotel coffee, even if it’s not the greatest in the world. I did find that the coffee dispenser was dispensing only hot water on two different occasions because the syrup had run out, which was a pain.

 

Another little annoyance was that there were no salt and pepper shakers on the buffet area tables; I suppose this may be for health reasons. Salt and pepper packages are available in the buffet area, but sometimes you have to hunt for them. Princess tends to way undersalt the food, and on my next cruise I will probably bring a small, personal salt and pepper shaker so I can get my food seasoned without a lot of hassle. One final buffet annoyance was that getting a table was sometimes difficult, but this is nothing new.

 

CRAB SHACK: We made reservations for the Crab Shack, held in the Caribe Café, in person. I’m not sure how one does this by phone as there doesn’t seem to be a prompt for it. They did have King Crab, and we got King Crab for two and the Imperial Steamer for two. The Imperial Steamer did include a couple of king crab legs, and the shrimp in the Imperial Steamer were larger and already peeled versus the smaller, peel-n-eat shrimp in the King Crab steamer. The service at the Crab Shack was not good, just like everywhere else on the ship, but we enjoyed the Crab Shack and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys crab or shrimp.

 

PORTS: The weather was terrible for much of the cruise. Nothing Princess can do about this!

 

ROATAN: We were going to go to Little French Key, but the weather forecast called for heavy rain so we just decided to walk around the port area. Unfortunately, Princess and Carnival have constructed their own port with an artificial tourist village. To me this really defeats the point of travel. I have no desire to visit some artificial tourist village where every perfectly painted building is owned by Carnival. However, you can buy beer, drinks, and trinkets in this tourist village.

 

BELIZE: We weren’t able to make the planned port call in Belize. The captain made an announcement that said there were winds of as much as 40 knots, making the stop impossible. We had really been looking forward to doing something in Belize, either renting a car or else taking a ferry to Caye Caulker. Oh well, we got a $10 refund on our port charges.

 

COZUMEL: We had no great plans for Cozumel. The weather did improve a bit, but the children refused to get off of the ship and we decided not to argue. Princess docked away from the downtown area (is this a pattern?), and so my wife and I set off walking toward downtown and decided to rent a scooter for a few hours. This was a great decision. I had not ridden one of these since I was 15, but we had a great time. We went south to a Bob Marley themed bar at the tip of the island; the waves were huge. We had a beer, then continued to circle the Atlantic portion of the island. The scenery was great. I would recommend this to anyone looking for a good time. The cost was $35 for one scooter plus $30 for insurance. I was afraid not to buy the insurance even though it was a ripoff.

 

ENTERTAINMENT: We only attended a couple of shows. There was a comedy/magic show that was really good (I was surprised). We saw a guitarist/comedian named Duncan Tuck who I loved; my wife, not so much. One of his shows was in the Princess Theatre, which is not a good venue for him. The other was in the Explorer’s Lounge, which is the right atmosphere. His humor was only fair, but the guitar playing was remarkable. Each show is different, so you can see him more than once. I’d like to see Duncan again, but his appeal is to a slightly older crowd and/or to people who love guitar music.

 

STATEROOM REVIEW, R508, R514: We loved our staterooms, both in terms of location and size. These inside staterooms are turned sideways and are larger than the typical inside stateroom. I actually measured it, and it was 190 sq. ft. The door opens directly into the room with no hallway, which does allow anyone in the corridor to see into the room. But it also means there is much less wasted space as there is no hall. There is more closet space and the closets have doors. I think I would rather have one of these rooms over some of the balcony cabins!

 

It was also nice to be able to just hit the stairs and go up one level and be right in the middle of everything. Or if you wished you could just go to the aft of the ship and come out at the Terrace Pool and bar area. The only downside was that there simply were not enough elevators in the midship area to adequately service the number of people trying to use them.

 

SUGGESTIONS FOR PRINCESS

1. In the gym, all of the exercise machines have TV screens for the patrons to watch, which is nice, except the best view is of the ocean! My wife reports that it would have been nice to have been able to use a machine that would actually allow her to see the scenery she came on the cruise for.

 

2. Every Princess ship needs a sports bar. If memory serves me correctly the Golden has a pub that usually has sports available. We sure would have loved to have been able to have watched a couple of decent football games. The TV guide in our room said that we had ESPN, but we did not. Two of the biggest football games of the year were played the last day of our cruise – the Iron Bowl and the Egg Bowl – and we weren’t able to watch either. Instead, Princess TV offered us Kansas vs. Kansas State and USC vs. Notre Dame. Who would want to watch these games? Better to watch two mules fighting over a turnip. Meanwhile, on MUTS, some Paul McCartney concert that gets shown on every cruise was playing instead of the Egg Bowl. It’s just insane.

 

I can’t imagine how many people would have crowded into a sports pub to watch the No. 1 ranked Alabama team play Auburn or the No. 4 ranked Mississippi State play Ole Miss. Princess could have sold plenty of drinks and made a profit. They could have served their customers. But the company just decided not to, leaving us very unhappy campers, or cruisers. It really doesn’t make sense not to have ESPN for the guests, and apparently Princess did offer it on the Emerald when it was in Europe.

 

3. I don’t mind paying extra! I’d love to be able to buy proper ice cream (not gelato, which I found to be not very good) and happily paid extra for it on the Golden some years ago. Everyone is desperate for really hard ice cream that they can bite into. I don’t mind paying to watch a football game. I don’t mind paying extra for a proper cheese course to follow my meal. I realize many people see this as “nickel and diming,” but I’d much rather pay a few dollars to get exactly what I want than to get what I don’t want for free.

 

DISEMBARKATION: We did walk-off disembarkation and were among the first to get off the ship. Although we have walked off before, we've generally taken our time about it. We cleared customs in a matter of minutes and were on our way in no time. As much as we like to sleep in, we plan to disembark as early as possible in the future and catch up on the sleep when we can.

 

CONCLUSION: We like Princess, but my guess is our next cruise is going to be something different. Either we’ll take a family cruise on another cruise line or my wife and I will try something new or perhaps try a smaller Princess ship. If nothing else, we can’t know how good or bad we have it with Princess unless we try something else.

[jean s]

Great review. We've done this cruise and agree with many of your comments.

[pablo222]

The line to get in the single Anytime Diningroom was really long at times, at one point extending almost all the way to the art gallery.

 

That, by itself, would have made me really, really cranky for the entire cruise.

[SassySpokane]

Thanks for the review. We leave next week. Can you tell me, was Sea day 1 or 2 the quietest as of daytime activities. I am trying to find a good time to organize a slot pull for our roll call.

[susiesan]

I'll be curious to read someone's opinion on one of the subsequent cruises on Emerald that is not over a holiday and does not have hundreds of children on board. I suspect this impacts the service levels on cruises quite a bit. Holiday cruises are not indicative of the true cruise experience.

[trabeler]

Thanks for posting your review. We were also on the same sailing with you, but were with a group of 8 and had early fixed dining in the Botticelli dining room. Service was on the better side from our prior experience, although on the 2nd formal night (Thanksgiving) the food was extremely slow... our waiter said that there was a huge backup in the kitchen due to too many orders for turkey.

 

Overall, we had a good trip, even though the weather was bad for a couple of days and we missed Belize. We were on the Thanksgiving week sailing last year from Houston and that week we left a day late and missed both Roatan and Belize, so this year was an improvement!

 

The ship did seem a little overrun by kids, however. We were told there were over 600 on board! We didn't run into any serious behavior issues, however.

[trabeler]

Thanks for the review. We leave next week. Can you tell me, was Sea day 1 or 2 the quietest as of daytime activities. I am trying to find a good time to organize a slot pull for our roll call.

 

I don't recall a significant difference in the two afternoons. Both seemed to have some dead time between 2 and 4:30 each afternoon.

[iggy's mom]

Thanks for the review. We leave next week. Can you tell me, was Sea day 1 or 2 the quietest as of daytime activities. I am trying to find a good time to organize a slot pull for our roll call.

 

 

There wasn't really a big difference in the daily schedule. All days seemed to have a bit of a lull between 2'ish and 5pm.

[swagsherman]

Thank you for the helpful review. I was wondering if you could answer a seemingly inane question for me? Is the buffet one big, long line to get food or are there stations to break up the crowd? I have cruised on NCL and Carnival and NCL had stations, Carnival did not. I found Carnival's single line set-up very frustrating. It made for very long lines, much like the ones at Carnival's anytime dining! Any meal we ate on Carnival was preceded by 45 minutes in line. NCL was much more pleasant. Thanks in advance!

[SassySpokane]

There are stations on both Princess ships I have sailed on.

[Loonbeam]

One note about the TV selection. You didn't note if it was available elsewhere on the ship, if not, the satellite service for that area may not have had it available (or if the weather is that bad, there may have been signal issues)..

[jeffdal]

I had an awesome time on the same sailing. I was surprised how low the moral was among the staff. Anytime dining at DaVinci worked out quite well on most nights at 7:30. Houston port was so easy and I was surprised from all the negative comments on here.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

[JimmyVWine]

With respect to the Anytime Dining situation, we use the fact that one of the ATD dining rooms is used for Early Traditional to our advantage. It seems that most people with ATD head for the dining room that is always used for that. Let them. A line develops and waits grow. But if you head to the other ATD room at 7:15, you will catch that dining room at the "changeover" from TD to ATD and have little to no wait. The entire dining room has to clear out and does so around the same time as the diners who are leaving all arrived at the same time. There is no staggered dining there so the clear out is predictable. We find that there are usually enough tables that empty out early due to people who dine quickly that a table is almost always available at 7:10 or 7:15. If you beat the 7:30 crush, you'll do fine. But even if you arrive at 7:30 it isn't bad. In essence, that dining room becomes a de facto "Set Seating" at 7:30 since the whole dining room turns over all at the same time. So while it may seem "unfair" that the dining room is used for Traditional, it actually can work to your benefit.

Edited November 30, 2014 by JimmyVWine

[SassySpokane]

Can someone confirm the formal nights for me?

[iggy's mom]

Can someone confirm the formal nights for me?

 

They were Monday & Friday.

[James in SA]

For those of you who carried wine on, were they collecting corkage fees in the terminal when you boarded? Thanks.

[reney313]

Thanks for the balanced review. I have found it is "easy" to get in a rut with one cruise line. For me, it works best if I switch it up every couple cruises. I enjoy both Princess and Royal Caribbean equally, and even a random NCL cruise mixed in. For now, the 3 lines serve me well and I appreciate each of their strengths. I do want to expand out at sometime in the future with other lines, but I suspect that would be based only on port intensive cruises.

[PathfinderEss]

Thanks for your review, how could you go wrong paying that price for your cruise.:D

[caribill]

DINING: We rated the overall service on this cruise as the worst we’ve had on any of our Princess cruises. It was a full ship with lots of kids, so perhaps this was a factor. We found to our dismay that the Da Vinci dining room was converted into a traditional dining room for the first seating, and so was unavailable for anytime diners until 7:30 p.m. each night. Everybody wants to eat from 6 to 7:30, and so this meant a huge wait each evening. It wasn’t fair to the Anytime Diners at all. The line to get in the single Anytime Diningroom was really long at times, at one point extending almost all the way to the art gallery.

 

I do not think it would have made any difference if the Da Vinci DR had been Anytime instead or early traditional.

 

All those people eating at that time wanted to eat early, so if it was anytime they would also have been in line to get in.

 

The problem with anytime is that if half the passengers decide their anytime is early, then two anytime dining rooms will not accommodate them and lines will be the result.

 

Ideally, those who want anytime will spread themselves evenly throughout the evening. That rarely occurs.

[GradUT]

JeffDal, can we get a report from you? Your posting during the week were so upbeat and that's what I want to hear before heading out on the Emerald in a couple weeks.

[SoCal Cruiser78]

Deleted.

Edited December 1, 2014 by Ryndam2002

[Dets_Girl]

We also were on this cruise. It had bad and good points.

 

We have done 4 Princess cruises and 3 on Carnival. We did a b2b on the Carnival Miracle last November - on the drive home yesterday we compared the 2, Carnival won hands down. The entertainment, the food, the ship & the crew.

 

The Emerald just seemed "tired" to us. Like they were just going through the motions. Paint chipping in places, seating all over the ship was “well used”, no bounce left in the cushions.

 

We had our first aft cabin, and had a problem with loud music from a neighbor, we called and the response was "Is it really that bad? Well we couldn't sit and enjoy our balcony. We did call and ask for assistance, so yes, we thought it was that bad.

 

We had balcony dining one evening - it was not as wonderful as the reviews I had seen led me to believe. I ordered my steak medium and the husband wanted medium rare. And both arrived rare, almost mooing on the plate. And the lobster, which I will admit I have not had many times, was tough and rubbery. The dessert was to die for, but the rest of dinner was mediocre at best. The servers were good, pleasant, as was the photographer.

 

Our dinner in the Crown Grill was fun. We sat at the counter and watched the chef's cooking. We enjoyed the banter with them and between them as the evening went on. Was 2 ½ hours for dinner, time well spent.

 

Overall, good cruise, hated to miss Belize as we were looking forward to visiting it again. But as the old saying goes, any day cruising is better than working.

[jeffdal]

We also were on this cruise. It had bad and good points.

 

We have done 4 Princess cruises and 3 on Carnival. We did a b2b on the Carnival Miracle last November - on the drive home yesterday we compared the 2, Carnival won hands down. The entertainment, the food, the ship & the crew.

 

The Emerald just seemed "tired" to us. Like they were just going through the motions. Paint chipping in places, seating all over the ship was “well used”, no bounce left in the cushions.

 

We had our first aft cabin, and had a problem with loud music from a neighbor, we called and the response was "Is it really that bad? Well we couldn't sit and enjoy our balcony. We did call and ask for assistance, so yes, we thought it was that bad.

 

We had balcony dining one evening - it was not as wonderful as the reviews I had seen led me to believe. I ordered my steak medium and the husband wanted medium rare. And both arrived rare, almost mooing on the plate. And the lobster, which I will admit I have not had many times, was tough and rubbery. The dessert was to die for, but the rest of dinner was mediocre at best. The servers were good, pleasant, as was the photographer.

 

Our dinner in the Crown Grill was fun. We sat at the counter and watched the chef's cooking. We enjoyed the banter with them and between them as the evening went on. Was 2 ½ hours for dinner, time well spent.

 

Overall, good cruise, hated to miss Belize as we were looking forward to visiting it again. But as the old saying goes, any day cruising is better than working.

 

LOL... "any day cruising is better than working" is what we kept on saying last week on the same cruise.

 

Our balcony neighbors were loud too. I think because they were yelling into the cabin And someone was smoking near us!

[jeffdal]

JeffDal, can we get a report from you? Your posting during the week were so upbeat and that's what I want to hear before heading out on the Emerald in a couple weeks.

 

Sitting at my desk and I can't stop rocking! :)

 

Yes, I had an amazing time and so did everyone in our group. I was really really upset about Belize. Almost had a meltdown. It was the reason why we booked the cruise and were looking forward to seeing the ruins. But, I realized quickly there was nothing I could do about it and we set out to have a great day of activities on board with our friends.

 

Here are some thoughts:

 

Houston Port: We got there right at 11AM and dropped off our luggage then circled back to park. We thought they could have done it better with the lay out but that process took us all of 15 minutes. We got parked so close to the terminal (probably since we ordered a cover for the car) that I could have just rolled my luggage up to the terminal. There was a line to go through security but again took us five minutes to get through. We got to the waiting area and overheard that they were boarding ahead of schedule and after registration we waited about 30 mins. I was seated and had a menu in my hand at DaVinci dining room at 12:20PM. The boat left late but that was after waiting for traffic in the channel to clear up and an emergency that caused us to go back to the dock after sailing.

 

Service and staff: Service was slow, morale was low and there were lines at bars. One of our friends said "who pissed this staff off". We heard several times that the cruise before us was a constant downer... so it may have been that.

 

Lots of kids: Whew! Wow! 600! But, I am not around kids and teens that often so my two favorite words were "adults only" and I found the Lotus pool and the Terrace Deck pool to be my favorite places. Most kids were well behaved but once in awhile there were some annoying, running packs of kids or one screamer ruining the entire afternoon at the Neptune Pool. While at the beach at Mahogany Bay there was a kid blowing a whistle and all it took was my buddy yelling out loud "will the kid with the whistle please stop"... and it stopped. It was interesting that the Captain did two announcements about guidelines for kids and we got two notices in our room about rules, etc. Friends of mine told us that the delays in room service were blamed on so many kids placing orders.. LOL. When there were children and teens who were super polite or pleasant, I would often compliment them.. Wow, that officially makes me old.

 

Food: It was hit or miss but there were some standouts on the menu. Tenderloin, prime rib, souffles, soups, scallops. Everyone at our table liked the turkey dinner. Afternoon tea was fun. Tapas and sushi at Vines were awesome too. Room service breakfast the balcony and daily fruit delivery to our room was nice treat. Trident Grill hit the spot and the pizza was fine. Horizon Court the one time I went for lunch was terrible so I never went back. Pub Lunch was lots of fun.

 

Stateroom and ship condition: I thought the ship looked great. Lots of fun spaces. Stateroom was much larger than I expected and the closet space was excellent.

 

Other highlights including maître d wine tastings...did both of them offered on cruise. The warm Lotus Pool. Chilling out at the Terrace Pool. Enjoyed my spa services... I went for acupuncture twice and it was great. The Ye Olde Pub Night at Explorers. Live band at Neptune Pool. Movies under the stars. Dancing past midnight at Skywalkers with a great DJ.

 

I want to do another!

[Mississippian]

A couple of people have mentioned that there were "work-arounds" to the problem of the Da Vinci dining room being turned into a traditional venue from 5:30 to 7:30 each night. I did use some of these, but I did not want to. As a practical matter we didn't want to wait until 7:30 to eat as the kids had things to do.

 

Two nights we simply waited in line to get in the Michelangelo dining room. The line on these two nights was not quite back to the spiral staircase in the atrium. I suppose we waited about 15-20 minutes, so it did not kill us, but it would have been nicer to have been able to get a buzzer and not have to just stand there. On the second formal night there was the ridiculous line back to the art gallery, so we just sent the children upstairs, and my wife and I went to Vines or somewhere for a glass of wine. The kids met us at 7:30 at the Da Vinci dining room.

 

It's just that the promise that Princess almost makes to us is that there is going to be one traditional dining room and that the other two will be for anytime dining for the entire evening. Taking one out of service for half the night just mucks up the system. We ended up pushing our dining time back to accommodate the change, but we weren't supposed to have to do that.

 

The cruise prior to our cruise was a bit of a disaster, with the ship staying in Houston for almost two days. It wouldn't surprise me if there were a lot of surly passengers, many of whom may have removed their autotips, or otherwise done things that were hard on crew morale. Perhaps the crew was overworked or whatever from this trip, for for our family the service was not good for much of the trip.

 

Changing the subject, but a lot of people mention the lobster served at dinner. Over a number of cruises I've found the lobster to be generally mediocre; on this cruise it was amazingly salty. But the jumbo rock shrimp and/or giant prawns that are sometimes served with the lobster or instead of the lobster always taste five times better than the lobster itself. So if you see jumbo shrimp or prawns on the menu instead of lobster some time, don't despair; it's a better option.

 

Also, someone asked about whether they were collecting corkage on wine. We did not arrive until 2 p.m., but at that time I did not see anyone collecting. I was a bit surprised about this.

 

It's also funny how people notice different things. I really didn't find the Emerald to be "tired" looking. There were a number of broken drink trays in the Princess Theatre that were taped shut. Two of the central elevators were broken for almost three days, which kind of gummed things up. But overall I found the ship to be in good shape, although my daughter said the decor was a bit dated.

 

One other unrelated item. Vines now has a cheese plate with grapes in addition to the tapas and sushi. I don't much care for the tapas served at Vines, and wish they were a bit more like the tapas served in Spain, namely simple bites or things like olives, etc. It was nice to have the cheese plate, though.