Discovery Princess 12/30 New Year’s Rocking Eve Live Thread

[karatemom2]

2 hours ago, LACruiser88 said:

Too late now, they disembarked this morning.  🤷‍♂️

 

2 hours ago, memoak said:

If your husband has a credit balance on his casino account make sure and take his medallion to the casino and cash it out. 

  
Thanks for thinking of this reminder. DH doesn’t charge to account - just cash to chips. He plays table games exclusively - mostly Craps. I took his chips down and cashed them in last night. 

[memoak]

Just now, karatemom2 said:

 

  
Thanks for thinking of this reminder. DH doesn’t charge to account - just cash to chips. He plays table games exclusively - mostly Craps. I took his chips down and cashed them in last night. 

Good for you. We got Covid right after the restart and were quarantined on ship and in Canada. It took aover a month to get checks sent to us and that was with our CVP pushing things through for us

[Host CJSKIDS]

Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry to hear that your son and husband both got sick with covid.  What a way to end your cruise.  

Hope they recovered quickly and that you didn't end up sick.  

 

Sounds like you had a wonderful cruise before the illness came into play. Happy New Year!

[karatemom2]

We are home and so far I’m still testing negative. Hubby and son are feeling better but still not great. It’s nice to be back after an eventful cruise, so I’ll share some closing thoughts. 
 

All cruises have ups and downs - this one certainly did, but I will say it’s the first time we have come home from a cruise not that eager to cruise again soon. We do have a Norway cruise on the Sky scheduled this summer which is a bucket list item and something we are really excited about.  
 

But we left this trip realizing that cruising has changed for us. We no longer really want to cruise just for the cruise - it will be very much destination driven and with consideration of the timing from now on. In large part that’s because the onboard experience isn’t exactly as fulfilling as it once was for us. DH enjoys the casino, but it was way too crowded on this sailing. The food across the board from dining room to buffet was quite good, but service was dismal and very unfriendly. I don’t even know why Princess continues to offer room service - it’s unreasonably slow and then delivered with items wrong or missing. Either do it well or don’t do it at all. The only time we were able to get drink service was in the buffet - other than that we went to the bar and procured our own drinks. Service was nonexistent in the lounges - even when I tried in vain to flag someone down. 
 

The New Year’s Eve celebration was awesome and the Cruise Director was terrific - entertaining and energetic. But the rest of the entertainment staff and events were lackluster. Trivia’s were boring and uninspired with a couple notable exceptions hosted by the CD - most felt like a box being checked. Production shows repetitive and tired and the talent is inconsistent - although I still enjoy Spotlight Bar. The live music onboard was weak compared to our other Princess cruises. Comedian was just ok. Things like the Egg Drop Challenge, line dancing, and arts and crafts from kits are getting very old. Princess needs to consider how to go about keeping the onboard entertainment and activities more fresh, fun and engaging. 
 

We realized in retrospect that we have highly romanticized memories of our previous holiday cruises to Hawaii which were idyllic. This cruise, like the one we took last year on Discovery over Super Bowl weekend, was frenetic, overcrowded, impersonal and not the least bit relaxing. The Mexican Riviera is a different kind of destination and though we had fun on our excursions it was largely because we have enough experience with these ports to choose our activities wisely. 
 

Going forward we will likely not choose to cruise during these super high capacity dates and to destinations that are simply convenient as opposed to somewhere we really want to visit. And we likely will stick to longer cruises - 7 day or less itineraries just don’t seem to offer the same level of care or service as longer cruises where you have more time to get to know the crew. It kind of feels like a “move em on, move em off” mentality. 
 

Please note, these are just observations and lessons learned about how our preferences are evolving after years of cruising Princess. This is not to indicate we did not have a good time (well except for the COVID part).   
 

We loved our 360 experience, New Year’s Eve was a blast, our port days were really fun, food was very good and we enjoyed seeing the kids onboard having fun. Hats off to the kid’s staff who appeared to be doing a stellar job keeping the young ones through teens entertained. There were tons of kids onboard and we did not notice one issue with any of them. As parents who raised our kids on Princess cruises, I really appreciate the way they offer a stellar family travel experience. The Family Fun Fair they held in the atrium reminded me of when our kids were little and joining in those activities. 
 

We are still big Princess fans and loyal consumers of their product - but we can be honest about where we see room for improvement and aspects of the service we truly miss. 
 

That being said, we are beyond excited for our Land of the Midnight Sun adventure on the Sky in 5 months!

 

Thanks for following along on our most recent journey.