Observations from onboard Ruby Princess from a Novice Cruiser (long)

[anon2k2]

Long, so TLDR: The cruise was a good experience marred by the Main Dining Room service

 

I am in the last full day of a cruise on the Ruby Princess and thought I would share my observations with others who don’t have a lot of experience with cruising or with Princess. My observations do include both positives and negatives about my experience, but not really for review purposes; it’s rather intended to give people a view of my experiences. I’ve split it up into major categories that I had questions about before I got on board.

 

A little about my background, at least as far as travel goes. I’m a mid-fifties man, living in the US. I have much more experience in overall travel than most, as my jobs and my interests have taken me all around the world multiple times. I’ve flown over 2 million miles to 50+ countries and on dozens and dozens of airlines. I’ve stayed in accommodations ranging from cheap dive-motels with questionable sanitation practices to higher end offerings like Ritz-Carlton. However, I haven't cruised much at all, with my sole experience being a cruise 20 years ago on Norwegian.

 

I am also blessed to be healthy, in excellent physical condition, and have no allergies to foods or other environmental factors. My observations and experiences are through that lens.

 

Medallion/App
The medallion is amazing when it works as it was envisioned (or at least as I imagine the corporate folks imagined). Which is about 50% of the time. The overall experience of having a tracker that helps the service crew seamlessly serve and charge passengers is a great idea that falls down under simple use. For example, at a busy bar, there is a tablet-like-device that shows the bartender everyone in range to be ordering a drink so they can click on the image of the appropriate passenger to charge. It scrolls the pictures so slowly that it’s way more efficient for them to ask your cabin number, key it in, then wait for your specific picture to show up.

 

The positive ability is that at all of our ports of call, the medallion was all that was needed to get into the port and back onto the ship. No need to fish out ID, even though I carried an ID anyway. In less crowded service situations, the medallion is great, and staff knew who I was and my cabin, many times before I initiated the conversation, they would start with “Hello Mr. X, how can I be of service?”

 

The iPhone App is hit or miss. There are some nice basic things about it, like the ability to order food or drinks from anywhere on the ship. However, there’s also some frustrating things, such as not being able to see the dining menus when out on a shore excursion. For some reason the menus only appear while onboard and connected to the MedallionNet wifi. It’s hard to believe that’s such a proprietary piece of information that it can only be accessed from within the confines of the ship.

 

Staff
I had overwhelmingly positive experiences with all the staff. The friendliness and help was on-point, and the overall experience was great. Not a lot else to say.

 

Activities
I was worried about being stuck on a ship for extended periods of time, and especially with the number of sea days. I was pleasantly surprised by the amount and range of onboard activities to while-away the hours. I really never found myself bored or wanting for organized activities. The shows and live music were varied and short enough to allow “sampling” of all sorts of entertainment that I would not have tried in a different situation.

 

I went out at each port to either independently explore or on independent excursions. These all went off without a hitch. Everything at the ports was well organized and it was easy to get off the ship and get back on. I think we had good luck with the weather as well, so not much went astray. We did miss our very first port, Falmouth, due to rough seas, but went into Ocho Rios as an alternate port.

 

Ship Amenities
The Ruby Princess is clean, and my understanding is that the ship dry-docked a couple of months back for a refresh. I have no reference of what things were like before, but the furnishings were in good shape, clean, and functional. 

 

The pools and hot-tubs were in good order, although the swimming pool at the top of the ship near the Spa was not open at any time during the voyage. There were plenty of deck-chairs and tables, and the other bars/lounges throughout the ship were easy to access and provided any combination of calm or active most would wish for.

 

Dining
The most negative view I have of the cruise is of the Main Dining Room service. While the staff was very helpful and friendly, the service was exceedingly slow. This was at both the Da Vinci and Botticelli Dining Rooms. Of my 6 dinners in those MDRs, the fastest was 2:05 and the longest was 2:45. One evening I left at 2:30 before dessert had been served. Attributable, I think, to the slow service was that the food was cold or tepid whenever served. I never had a course other than dessert that was the temperature that I would have expected if the meal had been at an on-land restaurant. It really spoiled the experience since the food itself in the MDR was good and would have been even better at appropriate temperatures.

 

Other dining venues were fine, service was quick and food at the right temperature. Both the Salty Dog venues, the Pizza and Coffee on the Lido Deck, Vines, and the pop-up Crab Shack had efficient service and good food.

 

I did three specialty dining meals, and those were great. The quality and quantity of food was very good, as was the service. If you’re comparing  them to two/three Michelin Star restaurants, they are not going to compare well. However, if you compare them to a nice “date-night” restaurant in your home-town, they are not out of their league.

 

The Casual Dining venues were limited, but I did try Vines and Salty Dog Gastropub. Both were good experiences as well. Which leads to an assessment of

Plus/Premium.

 

Princess Plus/Premium
After debating the cost/benefit ratio, I purchased the Premium package with the cruise. I knew that some of the drinks I generally enjoy would have been an upcharge on the Plus plan, and that I would have had a pretty high bar tab without a package. Overall, there’s no doubt I got value from the Premium package, chiefly through the beverage package. I imbibed in well over $100 per day in adult beverages, so any other package benefit was a bonus.

 

A word of advice is that on the Ruby Princess, the Casual and Specialty dining venues are extremely limited. While I understand that it’s different on other, larger ships, there are only two specialty dining venues (Crown Grill and Sabatini’s) with a pop-up Crab Shack for lunch one day. The casual dining venues are Salty Dog Gastropub and Vines, neither of which is open for lunch. So having “unlimited” access to casual dining is really not something that factors into the analysis for whether a package is “worth it” or not.

 

Overall
Would I do a cruise like this again? Probably not. While the experience was a good one and something I don’t regret, it wasn’t an epiphany that made me completely rethink how I take my vacations. I still prefer to fly somewhere and do a more in-depth exploration of a location. But I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it for others, especially if they don’t have a lot of experience traveling and the cruise goes to locations in which they’re interested.
 

[Lady Arwen]

Thank you for taking the time to share your fair and honest experience on Ruby Princess.  

[sun&sea]

Thank you for your review. We are sailing on the Ruby at the end of the month. It has been many years since we have been on this class of ship. Your information was helpful!

 

Janet

[shiner6]

Thank you for your review. We have also purchased the Premier package and are wondering if it is worth it. I am somewhat disappointed in the dining choices and concerned about availability because it is a sold  out cruise. Wondering how difficult it might be to book those casual and specialty restaurants included in the Premier package.

[anon2k2]

On 12/31/2023 at 11:11 AM, shiner6 said:

Thank you for your review. We have also purchased the Premier package and are wondering if it is worth it. I am somewhat disappointed in the dining choices and concerned about availability because it is a sold  out cruise. Wondering how difficult it might be to book those casual and specialty restaurants included in the Premier package.

I found the specialty and casual dining venues to be very available. The night I was at Sabatini’s at 7PM the place was half full, and similarly for Crown Grill. The Salty Dog Gastropub was a little bit busier but at no time did I ever see it completely full. Vines was completely empty at 5 when I went to get a pre-dinner glass of wine and charcuterie.

[SargassoPirate]

I'm one to find a workaround on things and I tried one that worked on a recent cruise on the Regal speed things up in the MDR.

 

Very simple.

 

SWMBO and I ordered our starter and main and requested they be delivered at the same time.

 

 

[TRLD]

On 12/29/2023 at 4:38 AM, anon2k2 said:

Long, so TLDR: The cruise was a good experience marred by the Main Dining Room service

 

I am in the last full day of a cruise on the Ruby Princess and thought I would share my observations with others who don’t have a lot of experience with cruising or with Princess. My observations do include both positives and negatives about my experience, but not really for review purposes; it’s rather intended to give people a view of my experiences. I’ve split it up into major categories that I had questions about before I got on board.

 

A little about my background, at least as far as travel goes. I’m a mid-fifties man, living in the US. I have much more experience in overall travel than most, as my jobs and my interests have taken me all around the world multiple times. I’ve flown over 2 million miles to 50+ countries and on dozens and dozens of airlines. I’ve stayed in accommodations ranging from cheap dive-motels with questionable sanitation practices to higher end offerings like Ritz-Carlton. However, I haven't cruised much at all, with my sole experience being a cruise 20 years ago on Norwegian.

 

I am also blessed to be healthy, in excellent physical condition, and have no allergies to foods or other environmental factors. My observations and experiences are through that lens.

 

Medallion/App
The medallion is amazing when it works as it was envisioned (or at least as I imagine the corporate folks imagined). Which is about 50% of the time. The overall experience of having a tracker that helps the service crew seamlessly serve and charge passengers is a great idea that falls down under simple use. For example, at a busy bar, there is a tablet-like-device that shows the bartender everyone in range to be ordering a drink so they can click on the image of the appropriate passenger to charge. It scrolls the pictures so slowly that it’s way more efficient for them to ask your cabin number, key it in, then wait for your specific picture to show up.

 

The positive ability is that at all of our ports of call, the medallion was all that was needed to get into the port and back onto the ship. No need to fish out ID, even though I carried an ID anyway. In less crowded service situations, the medallion is great, and staff knew who I was and my cabin, many times before I initiated the conversation, they would start with “Hello Mr. X, how can I be of service?”

 

The iPhone App is hit or miss. There are some nice basic things about it, like the ability to order food or drinks from anywhere on the ship. However, there’s also some frustrating things, such as not being able to see the dining menus when out on a shore excursion. For some reason the menus only appear while onboard and connected to the MedallionNet wifi. It’s hard to believe that’s such a proprietary piece of information that it can only be accessed from within the confines of the ship.

 

Staff
I had overwhelmingly positive experiences with all the staff. The friendliness and help was on-point, and the overall experience was great. Not a lot else to say.

 

Activities
I was worried about being stuck on a ship for extended periods of time, and especially with the number of sea days. I was pleasantly surprised by the amount and range of onboard activities to while-away the hours. I really never found myself bored or wanting for organized activities. The shows and live music were varied and short enough to allow “sampling” of all sorts of entertainment that I would not have tried in a different situation.

 

I went out at each port to either independently explore or on independent excursions. These all went off without a hitch. Everything at the ports was well organized and it was easy to get off the ship and get back on. I think we had good luck with the weather as well, so not much went astray. We did miss our very first port, Falmouth, due to rough seas, but went into Ocho Rios as an alternate port.

 

Ship Amenities
The Ruby Princess is clean, and my understanding is that the ship dry-docked a couple of months back for a refresh. I have no reference of what things were like before, but the furnishings were in good shape, clean, and functional. 

 

The pools and hot-tubs were in good order, although the swimming pool at the top of the ship near the Spa was not open at any time during the voyage. There were plenty of deck-chairs and tables, and the other bars/lounges throughout the ship were easy to access and provided any combination of calm or active most would wish for.

 

Dining
The most negative view I have of the cruise is of the Main Dining Room service. While the staff was very helpful and friendly, the service was exceedingly slow. This was at both the Da Vinci and Botticelli Dining Rooms. Of my 6 dinners in those MDRs, the fastest was 2:05 and the longest was 2:45. One evening I left at 2:30 before dessert had been served. Attributable, I think, to the slow service was that the food was cold or tepid whenever served. I never had a course other than dessert that was the temperature that I would have expected if the meal had been at an on-land restaurant. It really spoiled the experience since the food itself in the MDR was good and would have been even better at appropriate temperatures.

 

Other dining venues were fine, service was quick and food at the right temperature. Both the Salty Dog venues, the Pizza and Coffee on the Lido Deck, Vines, and the pop-up Crab Shack had efficient service and good food.

 

I did three specialty dining meals, and those were great. The quality and quantity of food was very good, as was the service. If you’re comparing  them to two/three Michelin Star restaurants, they are not going to compare well. However, if you compare them to a nice “date-night” restaurant in your home-town, they are not out of their league.

 

The Casual Dining venues were limited, but I did try Vines and Salty Dog Gastropub. Both were good experiences as well. Which leads to an assessment of

Plus/Premium.

 

Princess Plus/Premium
After debating the cost/benefit ratio, I purchased the Premium package with the cruise. I knew that some of the drinks I generally enjoy would have been an upcharge on the Plus plan, and that I would have had a pretty high bar tab without a package. Overall, there’s no doubt I got value from the Premium package, chiefly through the beverage package. I imbibed in well over $100 per day in adult beverages, so any other package benefit was a bonus.

 

A word of advice is that on the Ruby Princess, the Casual and Specialty dining venues are extremely limited. While I understand that it’s different on other, larger ships, there are only two specialty dining venues (Crown Grill and Sabatini’s) with a pop-up Crab Shack for lunch one day. The casual dining venues are Salty Dog Gastropub and Vines, neither of which is open for lunch. So having “unlimited” access to casual dining is really not something that factors into the analysis for whether a package is “worth it” or not.

 

Overall
Would I do a cruise like this again? Probably not. While the experience was a good one and something I don’t regret, it wasn’t an epiphany that made me completely rethink how I take my vacations. I still prefer to fly somewhere and do a more in-depth exploration of a location. But I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it for others, especially if they don’t have a lot of experience traveling and the cruise goes to locations in which they’re interested.
 

I suspect that the reason for asking for cabin number is not so much due to the screen being slow as it is part of the process to make sure it is correctly charged. During the first cruises after medallion was released they did not room number and billing errors occured fairly often 3 or 4 per cruise.

Now that they have gone to asking for room number or last name, the billing error rate has dropped tremendously. Have not encountered any errors in past 5 cruises since they have gone with that practice. Seems consistent process even at a location with few around.

 

On Princess ships we have found that speed of the MDR depends upon dining time and the fill rate of the tables around you. If the tables around you are full things are very slow. On the other hand if you dine either very early or very late and the tables are relatively empty things tend to go very quickly. Though if you dine early, when it opens courses will slow down as the tables fill. We find in such cases that it will take as long for desert course as it did for 2 courses at the start.

 

 

Edited January 2 by TRLD

[888sydney]

On 12/29/2023 at 11:38 PM, anon2k2 said:

 

Princess Plus/Premium
After debating the cost/benefit ratio, I purchased the Premium package with the cruise. I knew that some of the drinks I generally enjoy would have been an upcharge on the Plus plan, and that I would have had a pretty high bar tab without a package. Overall, there’s no doubt I got value from the Premium package, chiefly through the beverage package. I imbibed in well over $100 per day in adult beverages, so any other package benefit was a bonus.

 

A word of advice is that on the Ruby Princess, the Casual and Specialty dining venues are extremely limited. While I understand that it’s different on other, larger ships, there are only two specialty dining venues (Crown Grill and Sabatini’s) with a pop-up Crab Shack for lunch one day. The casual dining venues are Salty Dog Gastropub and Vines, neither of which is open for lunch. So having “unlimited” access to casual dining is really not something that factors into the analysis for whether a package is “worth it” or not.

 

Thanks for the review. For Premier package, which Casual Dining venues are allowed? Crab Shack not allowed as Casual dining? Seems like no venue open for Casual Dining lunch time?

 

[wallyj]

28 minutes ago, 888sydney said:

Thanks for the review. For Premier package, which Casual Dining venues are allowed? Crab Shack not allowed as Casual dining? Seems like no venue open for Casual Dining lunch time?

 

Crab Shack is NOT a casual dining venue. I believe the fare is about $30/person. I am sure you could use 1 of your SD credits with Premier, but your are not getting as good value as Crown Grill is $39.

 

The Sapphire introduced Ocean Terrace to serve the set Sushi menu on Sea days, so wonder if they will do the same on sister ships?

 

Currently with only Vines and Gastropub as Casual dining on Ruby, no casual dining available for lunch, unless they introduce Ocean Terrace like they have done on Sapphire.

[1412p0oi]

On 1/2/2024 at 12:10 PM, SargassoPirate said:

I'm one to find a workaround on things and I tried one that worked on a recent cruise on the Regal speed things up in the MDR.

 

Very simple.

 

SWMBO and I ordered our starter and main and requested they be delivered at the same time.

 

 

I had actually wondered about that! Like can I just say to the waiter that these are the foods I want to eat for the meal and ask that all be brought to me at the same time? As I hardly ever go to any restaurant that serves courses, I'm used to just have a dish come to me once.

 

This was a great review that definitely gave me some ideas for my upcoming cruise, as I eat early, eat fast, and am dining solo. I want to make sure to make the shows and not be waiting for 2 hours.

Edited January 13 by 1412p0oi