Live from Emerald Princess, April 16 - May 4, 2023, full Panama transit

[jaycruising]

1 hour ago, floridacruiser14 said:

Enjoying your review. We will be on this ship in June to do a Coastal California cruise. Are you able tell me if there are cabanas in Sanctuary and if so the cost and/or possible pictures. Any information will be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

 

There are no cabanas up there. We are up there tomorrow again, I will take photos then. 

[latebloomer56]

Thank you very much for your live report. We are looking at LA to NY in Aug. Love Princess and have done the canal once long ago. We would have slightly different ports but the ship looks great.

[travelin.sisters]

got a few days behind & just read from Costa Rica on...I feel relaxed & happy as if I had been on the cruise with you...your words & photos make it come alive, thank you!!

 

[JGmf]

I would like to add to the chorus of thanks and praise for your live review, the spectacular photos, and the easy-breezy writing style you have.  Thanks a bunch!!!

[jaycruising]

On 5/1/2023 at 4:38 PM, latebloomer56 said:

Thank you very much for your live report. We are looking at LA to NY in Aug. Love Princess and have done the canal once long ago. We would have slightly different ports but the ship looks great.

 

On 5/1/2023 at 8:33 PM, travelin.sisters said:

got a few days behind & just read from Costa Rica on...I feel relaxed & happy as if I had been on the cruise with you...your words & photos make it come alive, thank you!!

 

 

7 hours ago, JGmf said:

I would like to add to the chorus of thanks and praise for your live review, the spectacular photos, and the easy-breezy writing style you have.  Thanks a bunch!!!

Thank you all so much, I appreciate the kind words and it helps keep me motivated!

[jaycruising]

May 1, Puerto Vallarta

 

 

I woke up this morning as I could feel the thrusters (or whatever the technical ship term is) as we were pulling into port. 

 

 

We had booked an excursion through the ship and our meeting time was 8:40, so we had a bit of time before we had to get going. We had our usual port day breakfast in the international cafe, I love the ease of it

 

We we’re doing the Puerto Vallarta City tour booked through the ship and met up in the michaelangelo didning room with about 100 others. 

 

[Olympic Crow]

Thanks for the time you invested in this travel diary. I looked forward to every update. Have a good rest of your cruise.

[jaycruising]

We got loaded onto our bus and started making our way to the malecón. Our tour guide provided a lot of information about the area. Here are some photos of interesting sights I took along the way!

 

I love the architecture 

 

 

This one is more about the bougainvillea, the the building

 

 

 

 

[jaycruising]

First stop was the Malecón 

 

 

 

This guy is made from sand

This one is my favourite 

 

[jaycruising]

10 minutes ago, Cruising2024 said:

Thanks for the time you invested in this travel diary. I looked forward to every update. Have a good rest of your cruise.

Thank you so much, it has been my pleasure and will be a great way for me to look back too!

[jaycruising]

After the malecón we headed on foot towards the Church of our Lady of Guadalupe., many interesting sights along the way

 

 

 

I took a bunch of pictures here so I played around with the editing 

 

I have to give credit for this shot to my DM

 

 

 

i love all the bright colours!

 

[roboref]

Bring Emerald on to LAX, don't be late, I will be waiting to get on! LOL. Very nice job! Thank you so much. I most enjoyed the food pics and reviews.

[jaycruising]

16 minutes ago, roboref said:

Bring Emerald on to LAX, don't be late, I will be waiting to get on! LOL. Very nice job! Thank you so much. I most enjoyed the food pics and reviews.

I don’t want to, we have had such a great time, the other guests and crew have been fantastic. 

[jaycruising]

We had a few minutes to explore the church

 

 

 

 

 

We then headed back to the square

 

We zigged and zagged through the streets to find our bus

[jaycruising]

Some sights as we made our way to the obligatory silver store

 

 

I loved these yellow flowers, so bright!

 

Next door to the silver store was a furniture store which really caught my eye so we headed in there. 

 

 

 

 

 

We then went into the jewelry store, it was fine but I just don’t like that kind of stop, most of the stuff in there isn’t my style and I am not fond of pushy sales people. 
 

Observations getting on the bus… love that the bus has laminate flooring and that they just cut out a square for the gear shift. 

 

Not sure the transmission still worked when we got back, so much grinding 

[gottagocit]

Nice job with this thread Jaycruising. It’s hard to believe we are on our final day before disembarking tomorrow morning. 
 

I want to add a few thoughts about this voyage. We have thoroughly enjoyed our first cruise since the start of the Pandemic in March 2020. The entire crew and staff of the Emerald have been wonderful. Without exception they have all worked so hard to make sure everyone had an amazing cruise. We have already filled out more of the comment cards (positive) than we have for any of our previous 16 voyages and have a couple more to do today. 
 

The staff has told us the number of passengers were approximately 2,200 on this voyage or about 800 below capacity of 3,000ish. In general the ship never felt overcrowded with the possible exception of the piazza during some of the fun activities held there. 
 

Yea they do appear to be understaffed in some areas but it’s a hard wielding group based on our observations and the ship seems to be in excellent condition. The entertainment team is so energetic and make the simplest onboard activity fun. 
 

The food has been excellent and nicely varied day to day in our opinion. We’ve eaten in the main dining rooms almost every evening (except formal nights and a couple other evenings) and the staff there was excellent. We were able to reserve a private table for 3 each day after seeing the menu at pretty much our first choice of time (usually early).
 

The future cruise desk is one area that has increased staffing making it much more accessible and helpful than on any of or previous voyages. Gone are the days of one person with limited office hours each day and a long line of people waiting to see them. With a rotating staff of 4 people they’re usually open on sea days from 8am-8pm and port days 2pm-8pm. 
 

Our cabin steward had been fabulous and serviced our cabin what seemed like several times per day and kept it spotless. 
 

We’ve seen some awesome shows by very good entertainers including 3-4 comedians and singers. A couple of the production shows weren’t our favorite but other two were very good. 
 

The voyage itself was very memorable as the Panama Canal route was one we’ve wanted to take for years. It didn’t it disappoint. We did a mix of a couple ship tours, renting cars twice and doing walk-abouts and enjoyed each port stop without brewing the bank. 

At the start of our voyage we didn’t notice any signs of sick passengers but over the last several days we can hear awful congested coughing around us in some venues and some still have no regard for spreading whatever they have to others and insist on being at every event while coughing over and over without any pretending to cover their exhaust port in the least. It is very frustrating to witness such disregard for others and their selfish actions. Luckily there weren’t a lot of such passengers but one is too many these days.  We’ve seen some isolation cabin around the ship with their small tables in front of the doors but usually no more than 3-4 for deck. 

In summary we have had a great cruise and are happy to be back cruising again although we do have a couple land based trips planned later this year. Thanks to the staff of the Emerald for making it a great cruise and thereby ensuring we will be cruising again with Princess in some fashion but still won’t give up on asking for the return of the coffee cards and some of the amenities lost by loyal passengers. We did purchase (and book) two future cruise deposits onboard so I’m counting on no further eroding of our perks to keep us coming back. 

And please find a way to “encourage” sick passengers to stay in their cabins and to use better hygiene while onboard. Yes I know this is a large ask…

 

[jaycruising]

25 minutes ago, gottagocit said:

Nice job with this thread Jaycruising. It’s hard to believe we are on our final day before disembarking tomorrow morning. 
 

I want to add a few thoughts about this voyage. We have thoroughly enjoyed our first cruise since the start of the Pandemic in March 2020. The entire crew and staff of the Emerald have been wonderful. Without exception they have all worked so hard to make sure everyone had an amazing cruise. We have already filled out more of the comment cards (positive) than we have for any of our previous 16 voyages and have a couple more to do today. 
 

The staff has told us the number of passengers were approximately 2,200 on this voyage or about 800 below capacity of 3,000ish. In general the ship never felt overcrowded with the possible exception of the piazza during some of the fun activities held there. 
 

Yea they do appear to be understaffed in some areas but it’s a hard wielding group based on our observations and the ship seems to be in excellent condition. The entertainment team is so energetic and make the simplest onboard activity fun. 
 

The food has been excellent and nicely varied day to day in our opinion. We’ve eaten in the main dining rooms almost every evening (except formal nights and a couple other evenings) and the staff there was excellent. We were able to reserve a private table for 3 each day after seeing the menu at pretty much our first choice of time (usually early).
 

The future cruise desk is one area that has increased staffing making it much more accessible and helpful than on any of or previous voyages. Gone are the days of one person with limited office hours each day and a long line of people waiting to see them. With a rotating staff of 4 people they’re usually open on sea days from 8am-8pm and port days 2pm-8pm. 
 

Our cabin steward had been fabulous and serviced our cabin what seemed like several times per day and kept it spotless. 
 

We’ve seen some awesome shows by very good entertainers including 3-4 comedians and singers. A couple of the production shows weren’t our favorite but other two were very good. 
 

The voyage itself was very memorable as the Panama Canal route was one we’ve wanted to take for years. It didn’t it disappoint. We did a mix of a couple ship tours, renting cars twice and doing walk-abouts and enjoyed each port stop without brewing the bank. 

At the start of our voyage we didn’t notice any signs of sick passengers but over the last several days we can hear awful congested coughing around us in some venues and some still have no regard for spreading whatever they have to others and insist on being at every event while coughing over and over without any pretending to cover their exhaust port in the least. It is very frustrating to witness such disregard for others and their selfish actions. Luckily there weren’t a lot of such passengers but one is too many these days.  We’ve seen some isolation cabin around the ship with their small tables in front of the doors but usually no more than 3-4 for deck. 

In summary we have had a great cruise and are happy to be back cruising again although we do have a couple land based trips planned later this year. Thanks to the staff of the Emerald for making it a great cruise and thereby ensuring we will be cruising again with Princess in some fashion but still won’t give up on asking for the return of the coffee cards and some of the amenities lost by loyal passengers. We did purchase (and book) two future cruise deposits onboard so I’m counting on no further eroding of our perks to keep us coming back. 

And please find a way to “encourage” sick passengers to stay in their cabins and to use better hygiene while onboard. Yes I know this is a large ask…

 

Thank you, and I agree with all of the points you have made, but most importantly about the crew, they have just been absolutely fantastic, they are so happy to get you almost anything you are looking for or want or need. The entertainment team has made me laugh so hard on more then one occasion that I had tears in my eyes. 
 

And yes the coughing has been a little much as well. 
 

Thank you for sharing your observations!

[jaycruising]

After leaving the jewelry store we began making our way up the coast, the sights were very nice and not an area I had been in previously (even though my last visit was about 16 or so years ago). I still could not get enough of the bougainvillea along the way

 

 

I also really like how they built hotels or condos with rooms just facing the ocean and none on the back facing the mountain and road

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then we made a stop at an overlook of where they filmed The Night of the Iguana was filmed, and for me this is where the tour lost me.  This movie is almost 50 years old and aside from the stacked rocks you can’t really see anything from the set, and there were much better lookouts we could have stopped at earlier. But I don’t think those included a man who had a couple of iguanas that you could hold and take pictures with and some cheap souvenirs, of the 4 for $10 variety. 

 

 

There were some cool houses up on the hill

[jaycruising]

Next we headed into a restaurant in a small village along a river. It was really cute. As we went in they showed us the platters we could order and they were between $60 and $120 US and of course didn’t tell us of anything else. They did give everyone a very strong margarita and chips and salsa. 

 

 

The brown one was pretty hot!

 

We decided to order a couple mango margaritas and they were a very generous pour, all I could taste was the tequila 

 

And we split an order of beef tacos, they were just okay 

 

Then we made our way back to the ship and got there around 2, our return time on the tickets was 1, but not a big deal. 
 

 

I have to say this was imo our worst tour of the trip. It felt like it was more of trying to get us to buy things then show us what the city has and reminded me why I also don’t really like ship tours and will try and stick with local tours if I can in the future. 

[jaycruising]

Once we got dropped off back at the ship we made a beeline over to Walmart to pick up a couple things. It is less then a half a mile to get there.

 

I love Mexican cheetos, I’m not sure, they seem to just have a different flavour, a little kick to them. And we also picked up some mango and pina colada jello, a couple flavours we can’t get at home. 

 

Then we made the hot walk back over to the ship after we finished shopping. But we stopped to look around the shops in there. I bought a really pretty handmade bag. 

 

I thought this tequila bottle was pretty cool, I didn’t buy it

 

And they had a lovely umbrella roof and some nice photo spots in here. 

[jaycruising]

Once back on board went to our cabin for a bit to cool off and then went and wandered the ship to take different photos of the port area. I wish I had done this before Huatulco, but I learned something for next time

 

 

 

You can see the umbrella room from above

 

 

 

 

 

[jaycruising]

Back to the cabin to enjoy sail away from our balcony. Here is a little Timelapse I did

 

 Some other views

 

 

 

It was a pretty sail away, all the mountains in the distance. 

As I went back in the cabin I found these horrible papers under our door signaling that our awesome adventure would soon come to an end. 

 

[jaycruising]

Was time to make our way to dinner, but we stopped at Explorers lounge so I could grab a drink. All of a sudden I heard a squeal out of DM she had spotted a pod of dolphins out the window, so quickly grabbed my drink and headed out, they were playing and having the best time. Unfortunately just too far away to get a decent picture 

 

So we headed off to dinner. I did unfortunately forget to take photos of the menu but it was my least favourite all around meal of the cruise. 
 

I started with the salmon vol a vent

 

Then the papaya cold soup

 

Then the risotto, it was very bland

 

This was a mango dessert and don’t really have any flavour either

 

Fernando one of the head waiters came by and asked about it, I just said not my favourite and then he told me if I didn’t like the menu just to let him know and he would get me something. The staff has just been amazing!

 

After dinner we headed to explorers lounge for the liars club game and oh my it was funny they had the tears coming!

 

Tonya, Nick and Victoria were our panel

 

 

and Lucy was our host

 

 

 

Again, they have just been fantastic 

 

After the game we actually just headed to the cabin to bed, I was exhausted and had a terrible headache. 

[FirsttimecruiserMac]

Thank you taking us along!  
We’re you able to upload your photos and videos using the Wi-Fi available on board?
Safe travels home.

 

Edited May 4, 2023 by FirsttimecruiserMac

[jaycruising]

1 hour ago, FirsttimecruiserMac said:

Thank you taking us along!  
We’re you able to upload your photos and videos using the Wi-Fi available on board?
Safe travels home.

 

Thank you!

 

Yes I did it almost all using the onboard wifi. It was fantastic until we got to Mexico, and then it was jus ok.