Cheapo Dad's Trip Report on the Majestic Princess (Maybe with few pictures added)...

[Coralc]

We were on a cruise Harry. (Navigator) Sorry. I am still catching up. We have found that the least expensive, clearance and tackiest Christmas ornaments are the most fun, memorable and enjoyable to have on the tree. Santa on a cable car, metal fish, beaded parrots. I am thoroughly enjoying your trip report. I will get caught up soon. ~Patti  😄

Edited October 9, 2022 by Coralc

[caribill]

1 hour ago, travelin.sisters said:

We actually had to line up on the Promenade deck on the Ruby Princess & practice putting on our life vests on my first Princess cruise in 2015. It was a pretty miserable experience standing outside in a line waiting for everyone to arrive so that they would begin & I was glad when that changed.

 

We have never had to do this outside on a Princess ship.

 

All muster stations are inside and that is where the life vest demo was.

 

We have had to do this outside on HAL, Celebrity, Carnival and RCI.

[travelin.sisters]

9 minutes ago, caribill said:

 

We have never had to do this outside on a Princess ship.

 

All muster stations are inside and that is where the life vest demo was.

 

We have had to do this outside on HAL, Celebrity, Carnival and RCI.

I know that many (probably most) people have not done outdoor muster drills on Princess & maybe it was never routine, but we did, here is a photo of my sister trying to get her life vest all put back together after it was over so she wouldn't trip on the straps & we could go back inside & return to our cabin...trust me, we weren't just randomly wandering the promenade deck with life vests before the ship sailed for the fun of it...

[JF - retired RRT]

6 hours ago, travelin.sisters said:

We actually had to line up on the Promenade deck on the Ruby Princess & practice putting on our life vests on my first Princess cruise in 2015. It was a pretty miserable experience standing outside in a line waiting for everyone to arrive so that they would begin & I was glad when that changed.

Interesting...we started cruising in 2013 and have never had that experience.

[Lido deck main]

Just wanted to say how much I am enjoying the review.  Love your sense of humor, (CDN=humour).  Love the pictures, both yours and your wife.  Great to see multigenerational family members cruising together.  I would rate this review as a 15/10, but I know your a finance guy and as that is impossible so reluctantly I have reduce the rating to 10/10.  Keep it coming.

[cr8tiv1]

11 hours ago, travelin.sisters said:

I know that many (probably most) people have not done outdoor muster drills on Princess & maybe it was never routine, but we did, here is a photo of my sister trying to get her life vest all put back together after it was over so she wouldn't trip on the straps & we could go back inside & return to our cabin...trust me, we weren't just randomly wandering the promenade deck with life vests before the ship sailed for the fun of it...

 

I want to know how you pull up photos from 2015.  I have photos "archived" in old computers.  Whenever I run out of space, I buy a new computer.  Photos rarely are migrated.  

[travelin.sisters]

22 minutes ago, cr8tiv1 said:

 

I want to know how you pull up photos from 2015.  I have photos "archived" in old computers.  Whenever I run out of space, I buy a new computer.  Photos rarely are migrated.  

I have a USB drive with all my old photos & the vintage photos that I am gradually scanning & sorting into folders by date for future generations--it is a tiny one that lives in the port & barely sticks out at all so that I can add new photos as I take & sort them (my current computer has almost no storage)

[harryfat1]

16 hours ago, travelin.sisters said:

thank you for sharing all the Majestic photos, I took so many but never figured how to share them in a way that seemed accessible to someone that had never been ...I really appreciate the way you include the deck plans...great memories of being on the Majestic in January thanks for your detailed, amusing & informative report

Thanks for the compliments. 

 

I believe you just finished up a live report thread on the Princess boards as I always admire people like yourself that can do live cruise reports.  I can't do the live reports as I have difficulties articulating my thoughts in real time - which is why it's taking me weeks to just get to day 6 of a cruise report over here.

 

All these extra stuff like screen shots of deck plans are difficult to accomplish on a phone during vacation.  Easier to do them back at home "post production".

 

Thanks again for your comments.  I see you have couple more Hawaii cruises booked going forward -  hope you enjoy those. I have been to Hawaii couple times previously but never on a cruise - too many sea days for my liking.

[harryfat1]

15 hours ago, Coralc said:

We were on a cruise Harry. (Navigator) Sorry. I am still catching up. We have found that the least expensive, clearance and tackiest Christmas ornaments are the most fun, memorable and enjoyable to have on the tree. Santa on a cable car, metal fish, beaded parrots. I am thoroughly enjoying your trip report. I will get caught up soon. ~Patti  😄

Hi Patti,

 

No worries.  Take your time reading.  These posts will be up for a long time - as long you pay your CC membership dues, you will be allowed to access them.  

 

Actually CC is very good in keeping old posts alive. All my posts going back to the 2014 Allure trip report are still around. I know you have been "catching up" from your various "likes" of my posts from few weeks back. 

 

Speaking of old reports, special thanks to you, Dani and Norris (Bimmer09) as you folks have been reading my blah blah blah stuff since 2014 and still following in the background.  Much appreciated.

 

I was looking at the Navigator of the Seas for Christmas sailing few months back when the prices were really low for a holiday sailing but I didn't want to commit to a second cruise until after we finished the Alaska cruise to see what the cruising world looks like with Covid.  Then after we came back from Alaska, the price sky rocketed when they lifted various testing and bans.

 

Now the price is too high so we will just drive down to So Cal for the holidays instead of doing a holiday cruise. But we are scheduled to go on RCI's Odyssey of the Seas in December next year to hang out with Ken and others.

[harryfat1]

8 hours ago, Lido deck main said:

Just wanted to say how much I am enjoying the review.  Love your sense of humor, (CDN=humour).  Love the pictures, both yours and your wife.  Great to see multigenerational family members cruising together.  I would rate this review as a 15/10, but I know your a finance guy and as that is impossible so reluctantly I have reduce the rating to 10/10.  Keep it coming.

Thank you for the kind words.  Glad you have been enjoying the trip report.  Appreciate the feedback.

 

Some nights I wonder if anyone is even reading all the dumb stuff I am uploading nightly as sometimes I feel like I'm just talking to myself.  Like the proverbial question - if one writes a trip report to post online but nobody reads it, does it become a diary/journal instead?

 

We are at day 6 of the trip report so not much more left to go. Day 7 will be short as I'm a sea day person and day 8 would have been a great exploring day in your home town of Vancouver as I had everything mapped out on what to do after we got off the ship - store our luggage at Canada Place, walk around Canada Place and water front.  Eat lunch in Chinatown and then take the Skytrain to the airport in the afternoon to catch the original 7:30 flight.

 

 

Well, that plan went to the toilet when we saw online 36 days out that our 7:30 flight had been cancelled by WestJet and replaced with a 12:30 PM flight.  So no touring of Vancouver.  No nothing post cruise.  Just get off the ship ASAP and rush to the airport.

 

Never a good sign when you see the big red highlights under flights and on the left hand side, it says 36 days until departure...

 

 

 

[harryfat1]

3 hours ago, travelin.sisters said:

I have a USB drive with all my old photos & the vintage photos that I am gradually scanning & sorting into folders by date for future generations--it is a tiny one that lives in the port & barely sticks out at all so that I can add new photos as I take & sort them (my current computer has almost no storage)

 

4 hours ago, cr8tiv1 said:

 

I want to know how you pull up photos from 2015.  I have photos "archived" in old computers.  Whenever I run out of space, I buy a new computer.  Photos rarely are migrated.  

 

3 hours ago, travelin.sisters said:

I have a USB drive with all my old photos & the vintage photos that I am gradually scanning & sorting into folders by date for future generations--it is a tiny one that lives in the port & barely sticks out at all so that I can add new photos as I take & sort them (my current computer has almost no storage)

We store all our photos from 2001 onward on external hard drives when we first bought our digital camera - some young kids nowadays don't even know what a digital camera looks like as cell phones have killed off that entire industry.

 

You can buy a 5 TB external drive to hook up to your computer as backups and 5TB stores A LOT of pictures.

 

5TB on Amazon is only $110 so it's not that expensive to back up all your memories

 

https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Portable-External-Hard-Drive/dp/B07VS8QCXC/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=5tb%2Bexternal%2Bhard%2Bdrive%2Bmac&qid=1665360415&qu=eyJxc2MiOiIzLjIyIiwicXNhIjoiMi41MCIsInFzcCI6IjIuMzUifQ%3D%3D&sr=8-4&ufe=app_do%3Aamzn1.fos.18ed3cb5-28d5-4975-8bc7-93deae8f9840&th=1

 

We also upload to Shutterfly to have backup of backups in case the hard drive dies as they eventually will.  The re-download back from Shutterfly isn't as good as the original quality but it's free storage so it's not perfect but it's free.

 

There are many online storage sites but I've been using Shutterfly forever.  They allow me to create my own special web site to host pictures from every vacation.  After I'm done here with my trip report on CC, I will create a special web page on Shutterfly with the pictures I want and share that special web page access with friends and families so they can see what we did on the cruise.  

 

That site will have much less detail as most people are not anal CC folks that cares to know all the info.  That site will also have more family pictures that I don't upload here on CC for the most part. 

 

This is all free so if anyone is interested in doing that for each of their vacations (you can have a special web page for every vacation), you can check it out online while you are backing all your old photos.

[cr8tiv1]

@harryfat1Thank you for the information.  I do back up my computer and hopefully, the photos are included.  I have so many external drives, I don't know what is in any of them.  But I never return to see if they are there.  There lies the problem of digital age.  I have boxes and boxes and boxes of slides, negatives, and photos pre-digital.  I have albums and albums and albums.  Slowly, I am dispersing the albums to their rightful owners.  But the digital images may be lost in electronic purgatory forever.  

 

My son-in-law's mother has one of those fancy cameras (so does he).  They must have a zillion photos of the grandkids.  Do they ever print them out?  No.  Do they display them...maybe one or two.  Do they make albums?  No.  What good are trapped photos?  Somewhere, a little voice is screaming to get out of the little black external drive/server box.

[harryfat1]

16 hours ago, Coralc said:

We were on a cruise Harry. (Navigator) Sorry. I am still catching up. We have found that the least expensive, clearance and tackiest Christmas ornaments are the most fun, memorable and enjoyable to have on the tree. Santa on a cable car, metal fish, beaded parrots. I am thoroughly enjoying your trip report. I will get caught up soon. ~Patti  😄

Oh, yeah, forgot to mention that we bought many 99 cents mini Alaska Christmas ornaments at the store in Ketchikan right by the ship.

 

I will show them to you and Dani over at the RCI thread next month when we take out the Christmas tree.  Can't believe we are almost coming to another holiday season already.

 

We also bought a Princess ship ornament to add to our fleet of cruise ship ornaments from previous cruises so will have that out as well.

[travelin.sisters]

57 minutes ago, harryfat1 said:

Thanks for the compliments. 

 

I believe you just finished up a live report thread on the Princess boards as I always admire people like yourself that can do live cruise reports.  I can't do the live reports as I have difficulties articulating my thoughts in real time - which is why it's taking me weeks to just get to day 6 of a cruise report over here.

 

All these extra stuff like screen shots of deck plans are difficult to accomplish on a phone during vacation.  Easier to do them back at home "post production".

 

Thanks again for your comments.  I see you have couple more Hawaii cruises booked going forward -  hope you enjoy those. I have been to Hawaii couple times previously but never on a cruise - too many sea days for my liking.

…has finally caught up with the rest of the party before the cruise ends & sheepishly wanders in to the potluck late, carrying a few random offerings inspired by the wonderful posts in this delightful thread…

 

 

…the love boat dream did not need improving or updating IMHO but the version on the Majestic certainly looked more appetizing than this thing on the Sapphire…

…your photo of the condiments in the buffet reminded me of the consternation among passengers & confusion to the crew when they served hotdogs with no mustard available (how unamerican)…we were not only the Sapphire’s return to service cruise but also her first on this side of the world (her current stops in Hawai’i will be her first even though I was told she has been to more ports than any ship in the fleet)…like the Majestic she shows the marks of being built for the Asian market, the first time I got in an elevator & looked to see what floor our destination was on I couldn't tell what button to push because it was only in Chinese…

…here is a mooring line for your collection (mostly taken for the cat to scare away any rodents)…

…I am surprised at your troubles with getting the same table each night as we have succeeded on the Grand, Majestic & Sapphire this year. The Grand & Majestic were nowhere near full, but the Sapphire was 80+%. Also on every Princess ship since we started telling them about our food allergy issues, the head waiter (now restaurant manager) has take over checking our orders & even bringing the menu the night before incase anything needs to be modified for our needs…

 

…thank you for the deep dive, behind the scenes info on how you do your photos & posts, it will help with mine in the future; I do like doing a live (or at least starting as one—mine is still in progress well after we are home because of the internet issues posting what I wrote & getting my photos to the computer—yes I travel with a computer, when you don’t have to fly, you don’t have to make as many choices about what to leave home) because it helps me remember the details as I go…thank you also for the Shutterfly info as I have been looking for a free cloud storage, my google & dropbox accounts are maxed & I was wondering about Amazon but will look into adding everything to my Shutterfly account…

 

…we will love Hawai’i, it is our favorite itinerary…being older (& perhaps lazier) we do cruise for the relaxation & so love lots of sea days watching the water from our balcony…we may cruise for different reasons but enjoy many of the same cruise things & I have had an absolutely delightful time at your potluck, art gallery & master class in many things…

[harryfat1]

3 minutes ago, cr8tiv1 said:

@harryfat1Thank you for the information.  I do back up my computer and hopefully, the photos are included.  I have so many external drives, I don't know what is in any of them.  But I never return to see if they are there.  There lies the problem of digital age.  I have boxes and boxes and boxes of slides, negatives, and photos pre-digital.  I have albums and albums and albums.  Slowly, I am dispersing the albums to their rightful owners.  But the digital images may be lost in electronic purgatory forever.  

 

My son-in-law's mother has one of those fancy cameras (so does he).  They must have a zillion photos of the grandkids.  Do they ever print them out?  No.  Do they display them...maybe one or two.  Do they make albums?  No.  What good are trapped photos?  Somewhere, a little voice is screaming to get out of the little black external drive/server box.

If you get a very large drive like a 5TB drive, you can just copy over all the old drives into the new drive as a way to consolidate them.  Unless those drives are very recent, doubtful all of them together will be 5TB so you can just consolidate them into one drive.

 

Create a file call: "Digital Pictures" in your new hard drive.   Then create one folder for every year and then month of the year with a naming convention like 01 2020 and then 02 2020.  So your drive will look like: Digital Pictures>2020>01 2020 or 02 2020 and so on.  Then you drop in all the old pictures from the old drive into that month and repeat for all old drives.

 

It will be a massive exercise for sure if you have lots of pictures but once you organize them by month and possibly by event if you have multiple events in the month (say weddings/birthdays/vacations), then you create even more sub folders in that month. 

 

But whenever you are done, you will have one place that has all your photo memories by date. That's how we do it and I can quickly find our 2009 Alaska cruise pictures quickly.  In theory, I can find any vacation picture we have taken as long as I know the date under this system.  

[cr8tiv1]

Thanks again, but my IT support (SIL/daughters) are all remote.  I have one 8 TB drive...HaHa...as if that wasn't enough, several 5 TB and decreasing.  

 

I don't have the patience nor the desire to take the time to organize.  Unfortunately, it will be one of those things my daughters will have to deal with when I am gone.  Higher on the priority list is decluttering the house.  Like that is going to happen any time soon.  Too many cruises planned.

[harryfat1]

1 hour ago, travelin.sisters said:

…has finally caught up with the rest of the party before the cruise ends & sheepishly wanders in to the potluck late, carrying a few random offerings inspired by the wonderful posts in this delightful thread…

 

 

…the love boat dream did not need improving or updating IMHO but the version on the Majestic certainly looked more appetizing than this thing on the Sapphire…

…your photo of the condiments in the buffet reminded me of the consternation among passengers & confusion to the crew when they served hotdogs with no mustard available (how unamerican)…we were not only the Sapphire’s return to service cruise but also her first on this side of the world (her current stops in Hawai’i will be her first even though I was told she has been to more ports than any ship in the fleet)…like the Majestic she shows the marks of being built for the Asian market, the first time I got in an elevator & looked to see what floor our destination was on I couldn't tell what button to push because it was only in Chinese…

…here is a mooring line for your collection (mostly taken for the cat to scare away any rodents)…

…I am surprised at your troubles with getting the same table each night as we have succeeded on the Grand, Majestic & Sapphire this year. The Grand & Majestic were nowhere near full, but the Sapphire was 80+%. Also on every Princess ship since we started telling them about our food allergy issues, the head waiter (now restaurant manager) has take over checking our orders & even bringing the menu the night before incase anything needs to be modified for our needs…

 

…thank you for the deep dive, behind the scenes info on how you do your photos & posts, it will help with mine in the future; I do like doing a live (or at least starting as one—mine is still in progress well after we are home because of the internet issues posting what I wrote & getting my photos to the computer—yes I travel with a computer, when you don’t have to fly, you don’t have to make as many choices about what to leave home) because it helps me remember the details as I go…thank you also for the Shutterfly info as I have been looking for a free cloud storage, my google & dropbox accounts are maxed & I was wondering about Amazon but will look into adding everything to my Shutterfly account…

 

…we will love Hawai’i, it is our favorite itinerary…being older (& perhaps lazier) we do cruise for the relaxation & so love lots of sea days watching the water from our balcony…we may cruise for different reasons but enjoy many of the same cruise things & I have had an absolutely delightful time at your potluck, art gallery & master class in many things…

No worries about coming in later to the potluck.  I always appreciate photo contributions – especially since you just came back from your cruise.

 

Wow, that Princess Love Boat Dessert is very…RED.  Other than Valentines Day, not sure if that has strong visual appeals the rest of the year.

 

I wonder how much autonomy each Princess ship has to do as they deem necessary to deviate from the “Corporate Standards”.  Between the desserts and muster drill and different meal time at MDR between Europe and North American sailings, it seems one could get a different cruise experience if they take one Princess ship versus another Princess ship.

 

Maybe it has to do with Princess ships are positioned all over the world and as such, Princess Corporate in Southern CA can’t realistically dictate what a Princess in Singapore must do to follow everything as per fleet wide standard?

 

Yeah, at least the Majestic Princess had mustard.  Now that I’m thinking about it, the only time Chinese would use mustard is with dim sum or dip in sauce as with cold cut appetizers at a banquet dinner. The dim sum and cold cuts would never show up at the buffet or hot dog stand thus they must never need mustards until the American cruisers boarded.

 

Thanks for the Mooring Line picture.  We have a Mooring Line Fan Club over at the RCI boards where we share various Mooring Line pictures from our cruises.  “The boys” would be interested to see this picture with the cat to scare the rodents away.  Ship version of the Scarecrow. What port was this picture taken?

 

We never even talked to a “white coat” head waiter guy no-one ever came over to our side.  On other cruises, I can’t wait for the guy to leave as he always shows up while we have food in our mouths and asking how was our day as if he knew us. Then on this cruise where I could have used him to help with 1) seating 2) food allergies, he’s nowhere to be found.

 

Technically I asked to speak to him on day 1 of the cruise but the gal wouldn’t let me talk to him.  In theory, I could have insisted to speak to any supervisor or walk up to any white coat on day 2 but I didn’t want to make a scene.

 

Maybe under the same umbrella of “different Princess cruise experience depending on which ship you are on”. 

 

We can have a separate thread on what we do behind the scenes as trip writers in preparing for our threads as not everyone understand the work behind “making the sausage” – apologies to the international readers for using the American slang.

[harryfat1]

Oh, yeah, people are here to read about Princess Alaska cruise...

 

Ketchikan has a very savvy tourism bureau and they provide a free walking guide map inside the store front right at the pier and online. Back in 2009, we followed more or less the map to tour the town and we wanted to do it again this time and take pictures of the boys to see how much they have grown through the years.

 

So for the rest of the town tour, I will be referencing landmark numbers based on the map if anyone wants to follow along.  We won’t be going exactly from #1 to whatever the last number is as some areas on the map wasn’t interesting to us but at least with a map to guide whomever is still reading this post (blog).

 

You can get the map downloaded from here:

 

https://www.experienceketchikan.com/ketchikan-walking-tour.html

 

It's going to look like this:

 

 

With description of each number on page 2 (Yeah, Good luck trying to read that so you need to download the PDF version from the web page):

 

 

 

Minor point is that the map is technically outdated as I think the actual physical map you get at the visitor center has extra places but for our purposes, let’s assume these are the right numbers as I’m too lazy to find the actual map and scan it.

 

As a point of reference, we came from the far-left side of the map past the Eagle Park (#34) so technically we visited that first but we will get it on the way back.  Being an anal bean-counter (I know, that’s redundant), I like to start with #1 and not #34.

 

#1 – Visitor Bureau.  Pick up the map inside to start the walking tour.

 

 

Hey, A FREE Map?  Yeah, Cheapo people like FREE stuff...I wanted to make it to the top of the hill where the front of the map is but we ran out of time/energy on our short stay in port

 

 

#2 – Welcome Arch.  Yeah, take your obligatory pictures here. Don’t be shy as everyone and their cousin is doing it as well as we saw many groups taking pictures here

 

 

Hey, look, what a surprise.  A jewelry store.  Never knew they would have jewelry stores in Alaska…Wait, is that Bob sitting in the husband-seat there?

 

 

 

[capriccio]

19 hours ago, travelin.sisters said:

We actually had to line up on the Promenade deck on the Ruby Princess & practice putting on our life vests on my first Princess cruise in 2015. It was a pretty miserable experience standing outside in a line waiting for everyone to arrive so that they would begin & I was glad when that changed.

Wow that was unusual!  We've sailed on Princess on over 25 cruises and have never had to stand outside.  I remember having to stand outside on a Royal Caribbean Cruise out of Port Canaveral on the day after Christmas 2001with my 80 year old father-in-law and I didn't think he was going to make it because of the heat and the crowds.

[harryfat1]

Ketchikan proclaims themselves to be salmon capitol and as such, you will see lots of salmon-based souvenirs.  We bought some from here but that’s for a later discussion

 

 

So you will either see jewelry stores or Salmon stores as you walk around town

 

 

I'm sorry, silly me.  There were Princess approved clothing stores as well...Don't even need to bring a wallet.  Just pay by "ding" your medallion.  

 

 

#5 – Whale Park. Small city area with totem pole

 

 

 

 

[big_schots]

Thank you for taking the time to write up an informative and entertaining cruise review.  You are a true CHAMPION of the everyman, average cruiser.  I’ve enjoyed your reviews for the past 7-8 years.  Even though probably only 7% of a cruise ship is suites, Cruise Critic gets around 70% of the truly detailed reviews from people sailing in suites, and who have the highest loyalty ranking on the cruise line.  I enjoy those reviews and appreciate the amount of work that goes into them but have a hard time relating to much of their trip reports.  They don’t always represent the where/what a regular cruiser experiences.  Your reports are a wealth of knowledge/ideas for less experienced cruisers, and I have directed a few “newbie” cruise, less affluent, friends to your reviews because of that.  I, like you, place a premium on entertainment, and know that RCCL does entertainment right, especially on those Oasis class ships.  But, Princess still does have a solid product.  Keep up the great work, and I always look forward to your next installment.

Edited October 10, 2022 by big_schots

[travelin.sisters]

20 hours ago, harryfat1 said:

 

 

Thanks for the Mooring Line picture.  We have a Mooring Line Fan Club over at the RCI boards where we share various Mooring Line pictures from our cruises.  “The boys” would be interested to see this picture with the cat to scare the rodents away.  Ship version of the Scarecrow. What port was this picture taken?

 

 

Maybe under the same umbrella of “different Princess cruise experience depending on which ship you are on”. 

 

the mooring line was in Puntarenas, Costa Rica Oct 2017...I can email it to you if you wish or feel free to grab it from here & share as you want

 

even the umbrella of same ship still different experience (as we had the same on the Majestic in January)...so much difference from trip to trip, but we still keep going back

[harryfat1]

11 hours ago, big_schots said:

Thank you for taking the time to write up an informative and entertaining cruise review.  You are a true CHAMPION of the everyman, average cruiser.  I’ve enjoyed your reviews for the past 7-8 years.  Even though probably only 7% of a cruise ship is suites, Cruise Critic gets around 70% of the truly detailed reviews from people sailing in suites, and who have the highest loyalty ranking on the cruise line.  I enjoy those reviews and appreciate the amount of work that goes into them but have a hard time relating to much of their trip reports.  They don’t always represent the where/what a regular cruiser experiences.  Your reports are a wealth of knowledge/ideas for less experienced cruisers, and I have directed a few “newbie” cruise, less affluent, friends to your reviews because of that.  I, like you, place a premium on entertainment, and know that RCCL does entertainment right, especially on those Oasis class ships.  But, Princess still does have a solid product.  Keep up the great work, and I always look forward to your next installment.

Thank you for the compliments and for reading along all these past years.

 

Appreciate the referral of having your friends read my trip reports.  For all your troubles, I will forward you my standard 2% referral fee of whatever CC pays me due to increased viewership from your friends.🤪

 

One of the primary audiences of my trip report are to the newbie cruisers as I am just a newbie +1 myself and since we never cruise on the same ship twice, I write every report from a perspective of a newbie sailing on that ship for the first time. 

 

For Princess, this is really easy as I haven’t sailed on a Princess ship since 2002 so I’m definitely a newbie to Princess. In case anyone checks my signature – the “repeat” of Westerdam on HAL is in name only as HAL recycles their ship names so we were on two different ships.

 

I vacation through my camera (cell phone) so I need something new to photograph on every cruise. Can’t do that on the “repeat” ship so every vacation will have that newbie excitement & perspective when I come back to write the next installment to share my experiences with future cruisers.

 

One never say “never” but we are the “One and Done” with all the ships we have sailed on.  Even my favorite ship, Allure of the Seas, we will never go back on her but will pick another ship in her class.

 

Princess offers a solid product. I just find the entertainment venue lacking/not within my demographics.

 

Yeah, I noticed a disproportionate amount of trip reports here are on the high-end cabins.  Very few reports are of inside/Oceanview cabins. 

 

My default cabin is Oceanview as I can’t do inside cabin.  The last time I was in an inside cabin was the 2002 cruise to Alaska and I was sick as a dog on my back for 1+ day.  Need to have some sort of horizon to look at to calm my stomach – besides wearing the sea band and taking meclizine & ginger products.

 

The Royal Class doesn’t have your traditional Oceanview like the Grand Princess or else I would have booked those cabins for our Alaska cruise. My previous 2 cruises on RCI were Oceanview and technically inside view as RCI classifies Promenade view as Inside view.

[harryfat1]

6 hours ago, travelin.sisters said:

the mooring line was in Puntarenas, Costa Rica Oct 2017...I can email it to you if you wish or feel free to grab it from here & share as you want

 

even the umbrella of same ship still different experience (as we had the same on the Majestic in January)...so much difference from trip to trip, but we still keep going back

Thanks for the offer to email but I will just do a screen shot to share over at the RCI site.

 

Nice to have something "different" on the next cruise as to keep things from being stale.

[harryfat1]

All Righty, onward with the Ketchikan walking tour:

 

#6 – Chief Johnson Totem Pole

 

 

 

 

So you would think the next stop is #7 - right?  Naw, that would make this walk too easy/boring.  We wouldn't want that, would we?

 

Let's go to #25 (Yeah, you need to find it on the map) - Bridge area to the famous Creek Street on the "back end"

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 11, 2022 by harryfat1