Review: Royal Princess, Sydney (New Zealand), Nov 19, 2023

[photomikey]

Us

We are a family of three, myself (M47), my wife (F43), and my daughter (F13).  We've been on about a dozen cruises.  We prefer Celebrity (#1) and Norwegian (#2) but are generally agnostic, we travel during school breaks, but avoid summers (crowds/prices).  We chose this cruise (and most cruises) because of location, itinerary, and timing. 
Embarcation
Pre-cruise we stayed at the YHA Rocks in Sydney, it was clean and basic and a stone's throw from the pier. You could see the cruise terminal from the rooftop lounge and it was just a five minute walk to the pier. They were accepting luggage at 830a when I went out for coffee so we packed up and dropped off luggage about 10a. We did not check in or embark, we wanted to spend the day in Sydney. We came back around 2pm and found a moderately long line that was moving quickly. We had booked an aft penthouse and there were no alternate arrangements for suite passengers, we waited in line with everyone else. Our room was ready when we boarded. We sailed with 3,280 pax on a ship that at capacity will hold 4,250.

The Boat

The ship is in good shape overall.  They have huge TVs at every elevator bank and elsewhere that show a touchscreen guide to everything happening aboard.  It is ridiculously easy to use and if you touch your fob to the TV, you can save events you'll attend for later and pull them up on your phone or other touchscreens.  With one click you can figure out how to get from wherever you are to anywhere else.  Which is otherwise a challenge, because large swaths of several decks are taken up by non-passenger areas - you cannot get aft to stern on some decks and on certain decks you can only do so on the port or starboard side.  On many ships you get a feel for the ship after a day or two, and I have to say even after 13 nights I was still getting stuck at the restaurant and having to go up or down a flight of stairs to get to the rest of the ship.  The fobs (and the app, and the tvs) also help you locate your companions, and we were able to add other people we met aboard, so you could see where they were on the ship and go find them.  Really slick and I cannot underscore enough, really easy to use. The messaging in the app did not trigger a push notification, so you'd find out a day later that someone had been searching for you yesterday.
The Suite
We had booked a regular mini suite and bid on several upgrades. We bid on the aft penthouse and won. We were placed in an aft penthouse on an even numbered deck and some quick research showed the even deck aft penthouses have much smaller balconies than the odd deck aft penthouses. I emailed my travel agent after being awarded the upgrade and within about ten minutes I was moved into 9-726 (D726). (Do note that all the aft balconies on deck 15 are clearly visible from the public deck on 16.) Our balcony on 9 was in fact massive and about double the depth of the balconies above and below us. The penthouse is small by penthouse standards but huge by cruise ship cabin standards and we found it quite comfortable. I didn't find anything particularly worn or showing age in the room.
Both rooms in the suite have toe kick lights on a motion sensor so when you get up to potty in the middle of the night you don't trip and fall. It's a nice touch. It is odd that there are none of these lights in the bathroom, so you have to use the light switch.
The hand soap, the body wash, and the shampoo/conditioner are the same color, the same scent, and the same viscosity. After several discussions with my room steward, I was unable to convince him that our shampoo bottle was full of hand soap, and I gave up and bought some in town. I don't know who was right, but at least my hair got clean. 
The TV's in the room are new and top notch. (OLED I believe.) They are menu driven with tons of content, like Hulu or Netflix. There are a few live TV channels. There is some cruise related content. 

There is no "door" between the living room and the bedroom, there is a curtain.  As we had someone sleeping in the living room, this was somewhat disappointing, and it doesn't happen on other lines.
Booze
I am five years sober, my wife doesn't drink, and my daughter is 13. On our most recent Celebrity cruise we were pretty much relegated to canned soda and iced tea. On top of this... And I don't know exactly how to explain it - each visit to a bar to order something non alcoholic was met with some combination of bewilderment and disbelief. I am relieved to report that when I told my room steward we didn't drink alcohol that all the booze in our bar setup disappeared, and later that evening a variety of sodas and a couple 0% beers appeared in their place. Further, at the concierge lounge happy hour, the bartender on the first night assured me he'd have 0% for me the next night and sure enough he did. If ever my daughter joined me, he'd whip her up a drink, something different every time. Watermelon, mint, fizzy, etc.
Concierge lounge

Anna the concierge was top notch.  There were a couple bartenders in there regularly who were also great at service.  There was always great food in there and most importantly, an espresso machine to make decent coffee.  The happy hour was great for meeting other suite guests, many of whom we got to know over our time on the ship.  

Princess Plus

We booked just before Princess Plus had been revealed (or revamped, I'm not sure, I'm new to Princess). We are a family of three and the cost for us was going to be a couple grand.  We don't drink, so the drink package is not that important, we specifically didn't want WiFi, so that was out, and we thought tips were included in Australia (they're not, we were wrong), so we elected to not get the package. It was a good call and did indeed save us at least a thousand bucks.  We took that thousand bucks and bid on upgrades - unlimited free coffee, smoothies in the morning in the lounge, then free booze from 4 to 7 (?) each evening, with the bartender offering to send you home with a couple extras without you having to ask.  This plus the bar setup makes skipping Plus and bidding on a suite a pretty good option for most folks.

Food
The Lido was overall well stocked. The quality does decrease year after year but it was largely edible. The coffee machines onboard were nonoperational and they appeared to be making coffee in bulk from syrup and serving it in urns. I am a guy who will gladly drink coffee from a filthy gas station pot and enjoy it, but I found the coffee onboard undrinkable. The bacon also deserves a mention as inedible. Everything else was as to be expected at a buffet. The waffles were delicious. 

The restaurant food was good.  In the reserve section of the dining room, they had an additional entree each night, generally prepared tableside.  The service in the dining room was top notch, the food was average.  The service was a tad slow, but tolerable.  The matrie'd and the ass't dining room manager were very personable and friendly, we got to know them quite well.  We did not end up with a defacto server for the trip and we did end up with different servers each night.

New Zealand

The Kiwis are over-the-top friendly, and even in a small town that gets overrun with 3,000 tourists that only stay 10 hours, you would have folks stopping you on the street to say hi.  The Aussies call it a land with more sheep than people, which we found to be true.  It was beautiful.  It rained most of the time we were on shore and we made the best of it.  

Overall, a good trip.  I don't know that Princess is the right fit for us, but it was a good experiment and we appreciate the hospitality!

[crzncrze]

Thank you for your review. We will be taking this cruise next year, same timeframe and find insight from others to be invaluable. Are you willing to share your excursion experience?

[jenf22]

I realize I was not the one asked but we did a lot of New Zealand excursions through Viator when we were on Celebrity Australia/New Zealand in January of this year.  It was an amazing trip!

 

I agree with your comment about the coffee!  We discovered on our last Princess cruise if we did 1/3 coffee, 1/3 milk, 1/3 water and then added about 4 little flavored creamers the coffee was sort of ok 🙂  Worst coffee at sea!  BUT if you paid for a latte it was great!