Where are Mrs and Mrs, waiting for their Golden Princess review !!

[NSWP]

OK guys, now where are our Mrs and Mrs? Not heard from them for yonks. Waiting for their

Golden Princess review. Not 'banged up abroad' in Japan are they? lol.

[GUT2407]

OK guys, now where are our Mrs and Mrs? Not heard from them for yonks. Waiting for their

Golden Princess review. Not 'banged up abroad' in Japan are they? lol.

 

Posted a few days back.

 

10th. Jan.

[MicCanberra]

I think the school holidays may be taking there toll on them and keeping them far too busy to surf on CC.:D

[Aussieflyer]

Posted a few days back.

 

10th. Jan.

 

Where? I can't find it. Interested to see if their view of the ship is like mine.

[MicCanberra]

Where? I can't find it. Interested to see if their view of the ship is like mine.

 

I think GUT meant that they had made a post on the 10th rather than posting the review.

[NSWP]

I think GUT meant that they had made a post on the 10th rather than posting the review.

Morning Uncle Mic, got your land legs back? I fear Mrs and Mrs review was that hot, it self destructed, lol. OR the censors got it, snip, snip, lol.

[mrs and mrs]

mrsandmrs

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by mrs and mrs View Post

LOL, right-on.

 

In retrospect, lets try and put some positives into this, its easy to knock, but after a couple days, will try and grab some goodness, remembering we paid a bargain basement price, to visit some far flung destinations, that some only dream about.

Embarkation.

Quite a circus, but ok considering that some didn't arrive until half an hour from sail-away.

Lost buses of people driving around the container port ,instead of the cruise port.

 

This was quite scary considering that it took some 7 hours to arrive, when it was meant to take 3.(fog ,pollution, accidents, grid-locked roads. When you pay good money, you surely expect the drivers to know where they are going. Cross-country ,thru alley ways, off beat villages, dirt-tracks. We were slightly put at ease, seeing princess buses doing the same, but not much, when you tell the driver to stick with those buses, and alas off every-one goes in different directions . Saw 2 horrible accidents. At least our driver was careful.

 

 

Ship.

Odd, took some getting used to, not a deal-breaker.

 

Ok, when your used to the Sun, Sea and Dawn, its like walking out of a small shop into a huge dept store. As I said not a deal-breaker. In retrospect the ship is beautiful.

 

Tours.

Long, queues, waiting, travel times, lots of walking, waiting, in sweltering heat.

 

The logistics off organising 2500 people to go on tours, must be mind-boggling, but the tours themselves constantly ran out of time, where your time was reduced at places. The plus was, you were guaranteed, to get back to the ship. The buses were always new, well air- conditioned, and comfortable. The tour guides were, informative, friendly, but absolutely scared that they would lose some-one. We had one stuff-up, were we missed part of a tour, which was annoying, but in the end, didn't matter as all we missed was queues and crowds.

 

Food

M.D.R

Great if you like having 3 to 4 courses stuffed into you over half an hour.

Quality as the boss sad, not bad, medium.(what ever that means)

 

Probably more like 3/4 hour ,but was stilled rushed.(annoying).I actually asked one night if they could make it quicker as my soup hadn't quite made my stomach yet, so they did. The sarcasm went straight over their heads, but were pleasant and friendly. I'm still out on the quality, but hey one doesn't get the option to eat in a restaurant every-night . Im still giving it the tick of approval. Annoying little things, like 4 same salads ordered and 4 different salads arrive, all missing something.

 

Buffet

At times fantastic, at times ordinary.

If you like under-cooked red meat that is still mooing this is for you

If I see another breaded prawn again ill scream, or any sort of prawn.

Curries awesome.

Rock hard eggs, english bacon only once and the rest was good old deep-fried American bacon.

Heaps of butter and rolls, mdr and buffet

Pastas that were screaming for a sauce.

The Tasmanian Barramundi was interesting.(sorry from where)

All in all wasn't to hard to find something.

 

Still very good, but lacking in green cooked vegetables, with , zucchini, beans being the standard fair.

Rock-hard Bok-Choy, Rock-hard asparagus, and broccoli non-existent.

But was easy enough to find and put together a meal.

I guess I'm being a bit picky

 

International Café.

What a great concept, sure takes the pressure off room service.

Watch for Diabetes Australia to set up a booth, as people gorge themselves on iced doughnuts and cakes.

Coffee gets its own section, further down

 

Really is a wonderful concept, where else can you get 24 hr food, at no extra cost.

 

Crew.

This must surely have been a training exercise for the AUS summer.

All friendly, BUT,

 

As above. We don't pay a lot of money, for our steward to remind us daily how tired he was, etc, etc. We also don't expect the poor cleaning to be paid off with plenty of chocolate.

We don't enter a bar and ask for a mud-sling, to be told, that they don't know how to make one.

I'm not used to being told that, when ordering a $100 bottle of wine, that its a long way to walk, to get it.(sorry round the cnr/Bernini to vines).

Not used to being asked to return our glasses from the dining room to vines.

BUT all friendly, never rude.

Staff Highlights.(always name the good, never the ordinary)

Mostly bar and steward staff.

Micheal, Donabel, Diego, Qi-Wen, Nickola, Rogie, Polly,(1st cruise, wonderful young man from India).Ji-Aing (1st cruise from china, you'll get there son, LOL )

Mariana, our 2nd asst cruise director(lovely and good at her job, now off to Sea Princess.

 

Ship

In need of some maintenance, but not a deal-breaker.

Carpet being replaced through-out.

Main pool down for 4 days at hottest part of voyage.

Sanctuary, no-one ever there.

Sky-walkers, you'll need a packed lunch, just to find it and get there.

At night, Skywalkers is loud and dark, take a torch and a ship guide, will be helpful at 2 am

Pool Towels plentiful, new and fluffy.

Lounger hogs, everywhere, aggressive, possessive, you need to be up early, to beat these fanatics.

Lift rushers, would put a giants line backer to shame.

Queue jumpers, masters at their craft, adept, no-shame and will up anyone for the rent who object.

As above.

Oh did we mention rude people, will bump, push, shove you, judge you, talk about you, stare at you, no manners what so ever. Clique little pathetic groups everywhere.

We saw and spoke to Blue carders who were absolutely lost and disillusioned at their treatment by these Elitests.

This was balanced out by some wonderful, wonderful people. Mainly younger people in the 50/65 age group. Anyone seeing a thread here.

We have said it before, cruising is changing and so are the people, it seems some don't get it and hang on to their ever diminishing world.

 

Entertainment.

Ok if you have nothing else to do, or like listening to the same sets day after day.

A good sail-away one night, dancers and crew were awesome.

If tired head to the Sleep-house bar were a crew member will surely direct you to your cabin at one in the morning.

Ordinary shows, Knitters and Knatters was looking good.

 

In hind-sight, there was always something to do, but seemed fractured daily, with shows being cancelled, venues being changed, but all in all was ok.

 

Vines Bar.

Our fav place, grab a wine and the tapas and sushi are awesome.

 

yep, our new go to venue.

Cheers Horlicks and Peter.

 

COFFEE.

So bad ,so, very, very bad, even the coffee syrup in the buffet was the winner.

Oh did I mention that the coffee was bad.

 

Man,i cant even say anything good about this crap.

One plus grab a coffee card, dont use it up and you can get free brewed coffee with-it.

To Karen at the international café, good job babe under trying circumstances.

 

Cabin

Inside was awesome, smallish shower, but very good with heaps of hanging space.

 

Yep loved it.

Loved being invited for drinks and Hor-derves, in the suite next-door, wow isn't that the life .Loved being thanked by the 2 surrounding suites for being great neighbours to which the compliment was returned.Not sure what they expected (lol)

 

Fixed vs Anytime.

Huh seemed no difference, we had fixed, which we changed the time, which appeared to be anytime, which was actually fixed at a anytime time, which everyone seemed clueless to what we actually had.

Never saw anyone waiting after 7.00pm,in fact the dining rooms were about half full.

Formals, nice to see 99.9 % dressed to code.

Suggestion ,just do anytime, grab a drink at vines and stroll through at the buzzer time, to which we never saw a buzzer handed out.

 

Bizarre, but worked out and we learnt.

 

El Capataino

Very good and informative with midday announcements.

Hotel manager

always around, pretty cool actually, Cheers Francesco, or how ever you spell it.

 

Smokers vs non-smokers.

Hilarious at times ,until one woman smoker was assaulted in her area for smoking.

 

Ridiculous, where nons would deliberately day after day walk through the smoking area flailing their arms about and covering their face.(this after standing on street cnrs in the most polluted cities in the world).Got to the point where some smokers would wait in advance for the daily walk-through and done surgical masks and flail their arms about over the really bad, cheap perfume that was being worn by the nons.

Just a little hint, if your covering your nose, you are still breathing through your mouth.

Ended up being the best comedy act in town, until the nons toned it down, but to keep every-one on their toes, one would never know where these people would pop-up.

 

In summary

2 medical evacuations at sea(1 chopper,1 police launch)

About 6 evacuated in port

Several evicted for fighting.(rumoured to be a pensioner fight)

Fisticuffs over undies I guess

Lots of ambulances in ports.

Heard of one passenger throwing omelettes at the chef in buffet, screaming that they were not good enough.

The Beijing bark was every-where, affecting lots and lots of people.

Fairly understandably when you visit some of the most polluted cities in the world.

Almost everyone coughing and being ill for a couple to three days, only to half recover and have it return.

No NORO every-one very good at hand sanitising in food areas.

 

This wont go down as our best cruise, but was enjoyable.

Just lots of shell-shocked, sad, people.

 

Will post alcohol prices as soon as we find camera.

 

More good stuff ,the pizzas, pies, hot-dogs, chips, ice-cream, all free, and plentiful.

Big rushes at these events after tours and hungry people came back on board, which left the m.d.r and buffet emptyish for that night.

 

Photos.

Great deals $149 for all photos on board, which we missed but got the $199 deal .Awesome value, we ended up with 72 photos average $2.70 pic. Port arrival pics, formal, casual, dining,everything Outstanding.

Didn't do a spec restaurant,

Cheers Samatha from Reflections or whatever you call it.

 

So not the greatest cruise, but still good.

We jumped to Platinum, during this cruise.

Some may ask why this means so much.

To us it means that we can help new Blueys and show them that there are experienced cruisers, who will help, wont judge. Wont embarrass them or try and strong arm them, into feeling inferior.

We have experienced the goodness and help of many Elites,(and there are many of them), we also have experienced and witnessed appalling behaviour from some as well.

 

 

Ahh here it is, Uncle Les.Still stand by our review as being accurate and how we felt about the cruise.We don't really say much about the ship.Crazily we posted in the Where is Mic thread,:eek:

If anyone wants to ask a question, will do very best to answer.:)

[MicCanberra]

Morning Uncle Mic, got your land legs back? I fear Mrs and Mrs review was that hot, it self destructed, lol. OR the censors got it, snip, snip, lol.

 

Yes, hit the ground running. Getting back into the swing of things is taking it's time.

[MicCanberra]

Thanks Mrs and Mrs for the review. Sounds like you need a holiday.

Edited January 13, 2017 by MicCanberra

[GUT2407]

Thanks ladies.

 

I think the worst bit was being asked to take your glasses back to Vines:eek:.

[Lanwood]

Crew.

This must surely have been a training exercise for the AUS summer.

All friendly, BUT,

 

We noticed the same thing on the Golden the Previous month. I think there was an extra ordinary number of new contracts starting for the first time...

 

COFFEE.

So bad ,so, very, very bad, even the coffee syrup in the buffet was the winner.

Oh did I mention that the coffee was bad.

 

Man,i cant even say anything good about this crap.

 

That's funny. I'm a tea drinker, but I think you just quoted word for word the thoughts of my coffee drinking otherhalf....

[MicCanberra]

mrsandmrs

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Ahh here it is, Uncle Les.Still stand by our review as being accurate and how we felt about the cruise.We don't really say much about the ship.Crazily we posted in the Where is Mic thread,:eek:

If anyone wants to ask a question, will do very best to answer.:)

 

No wonder people missed it, that was back in October:p

Edited January 13, 2017 by MicCanberra

[makawe]

Thanks for the great review...but eek now you've made me scared of all the Elites...hopefully on my cruise I'll have 'Guardian Angel' Elites as opposed to 'Anti-Blue Card Demon' elites.

[Mr&MrsCookie]

Sorry the cruise wasn't as good as it could have been. Now I know one ship to stay away from. Surely the coffee isn't as bad as Solstice where everything is made with long life milk, yuk

[MicCanberra]

Sorry the cruise wasn't as good as it could have been. Now I know one ship to stay away from. Surely the coffee isn't as bad as Solstice where everything is made with long life milk, yuk

 

I would rate the Free Celebrity coffee worse than the free Princess coffee however, when it comes to the bought stuff from the Cafe', that is where I think Celebrity's is better than Princess's.

[MicCanberra]

Thanks for the great review...but eek now you've made me scared of all the Elites...hopefully on my cruise I'll have 'Guardian Angel' Elites as opposed to 'Anti-Blue Card Demon' elites.

 

Each cruise is different and as mentioned, relocation cruises often have personnel changes which can affect the service. This result's in people having a worse time and then taking it out on others. Most elite's that I have met have been like anyone else on the ship and you wouldn't know. However, some will always try to lord it over others, luckily, they are a small group.

[Blue Elephant]

Sorry the cruise wasn't as good as it could have been. Now I know one ship to stay away from. Surely the coffee isn't as bad as Solstice where everything is made with long life milk, yuk

 

 

Golden wasn't like that when we were on her in April, but here and now is the best predictor.

[Aussieflyer]

You were lucky to get a seat at the IC. I was on for the positioning cruise from Melbourne to Auckland in early December and the area was chockers all the time - people seemed to have staked claims and just sat there. Not helped but the use of the Piazza for naff entertainment all day.

Celebrity's Cafe Baci is much better located IMO.

[MicCanberra]

You were lucky to get a seat at the IC. I was on for the positioning cruise from Melbourne to Auckland in early December and the area was chockers all the time - people seemed to have staked claims and just sat there. Not helped but the use of the Piazza for naff entertainment all day.

Celebrity's Cafe Baci is much better located IMO.

 

I agree, and they expand the area for the Aussie season.:D

[NSWP]

Classic, thank you Mrs and Mrs. Post of the week is awarded... A free cruise on Golden Princess, complete with queue jumpers and the rest of the Bogans. May I apologise for the egotistic Elite pax?

 

We were on Golden in March 205, Buenos Aires to LA, via Cape Horn. She was in good nick then, good food, service and entertainment. Of course, 95% Americans on board, Princess make it right for their biggest market.

 

Thanks again.

Edited January 14, 2017 by NSWP

[MicCanberra]

May I apologise for the egotistic Elite pax?

 

 

Thanks again.

 

Luckily they really are a minority group, unfortunately it only takes one or a few to ruin the experience or put a taint on the cruise.

[NSWP]

Luckily they really are a minority group, unfortunately it only takes one or a few to ruin the experience or put a taint on the cruise.

900 of them their Elite pax on our last cruise Island Princess, inc Mr and Mrs Les.!! We had a few tender ports in Central America and so much demand from the Elites, they had a seperate Elite tender lounge and gave them numbers, some Elites were not happy with that. But can you imagine 900 Elite pax all demanding priority tenders? Chaos.. As such, with the ships shrorex and the Elite priority tendering, other pax took half the day to get a tender.

Edited January 14, 2017 by NSWP

[GUT2407]

You don't need to be elite to be rude either.:(

[NSWP]

You don't need to be elite to be rude either.:(

Correct and don't forget majority of pax on Mrs and Mrs cruise would have been Australians, with a few Asians chucked in no doubt. Laundry rage and Omelette rage too, how exciting, lol.

[MicCanberra]

900 of them their Elite pax on our last cruise Island Princess, inc Mr and Mrs Les.!! We had a few tender ports in Central America and so much demand from the Elites, they had a seperate Elite tender lounge and gave them numbers, some Elites were not happy with that. But can you imagine 900 Elite pax all demanding priority tenders? Chaos.. As such, with the ships shrorex and the Elite priority tendering, other pax took half the day to get a tender.

 

I didn't mean that Elite's were a minority group but that the rude ones were a minority, perhaps I was wrong.