We had a great time and would love to do it again!
Written: Jan 30 '07 (Updated Feb 04 '07)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Ports of call, stateroom in a good location, good food in dining room and poolside
Cons: Ship rocked and swayed, too many things cost extra, buffet food not so great
The Bottom Line: I recommend this cruise to anyone traveling without children, particularly those over 30 because that is who it seems like the Crown Princess caters to.
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| opinionatedjen's Full Review: Crown Princess |
A little information about the ship (for those who are new to cruising):
The Crown Princess is owned by Princess Cruise Lines, which is owned by Carnival Cruise Lines. The current Crown Princess set sail for the first time in June 2006. There was a previous ship by that name, so reviews older than June 2006 are for a different vessel. The current Crown Princess is in what Princess calls the "grand" class of ships, meaning it is among the largest in its fleet.
About us:
My husband and I (30-35 in age) were traveling with two other couples (24-30 in age) on the Crown Princess, January 6-13, 2007, sailing the Southern Caribbean Explorer itinerary. We were all from the Illinois and Wisconsin. This was my and my husband's first cruise. One of the couples we were with had been on other cruises before and invited us to join them on this one. I enjoyed this cruise immensely and look forward to taking another cruise in the future. Next time we will probably have our young daughter with us, so that will influence our choice of ship and cruise line, whereas it didn't this time. (We've heard the children's programs are better on Royal Caribbean and Disney.)
San Juan/Embarkation:
A note about January 6th in San Juan--it is the Epiphany, or 3 Kings Day, which is a big holiday there, like Christmas is in the mainland U.S. What this means is that cheap airfairs and hotel room deals are hard to come by during this time, so a lower price on a cruise either embarking or returning at this time is offset by the extra cost to get there or return home. We stayed for 2 nights before the cruise at the Caribe Hilton. It's one of the higher priced hotels in San Juan, but it is a resort with a private beach, nice pools, a spa, fitness room, play areas, game room, organized activities, a bar, several fancy restaurants, Starbucks, etc. Some of the rooms are fully remodeled and some are only partially remodeled. There is not much in the area around it; apparently the night life is in Old San Juan. Embarkation was very smooth. Pier 4 in Old San Juan is relatively new and clean. There was a liquor shop offering free samples of Bailey's and a perfume shop. Apparently you could take your purchases onto the ship without having to surrender them, just hide them in a backpack or bag of some kind. (Princess was very lax about bringing alcohol on the ship, which we liked.) We arrived around 1:15 pm and waited in line behind about 30 people. The line seemed to move at a reasonable rate. They had different lines depending on which deck your stateroom in on, but they seemed equal in length. A note to future virgin cruisers: Complete your Passenger Immigration Form online at least one week in advance of embarkation. This will save a lot of time, because if you don't, you'll have to wait while someone types all of the information into a computer. We noticed quite a few people in this situation (luckily not ourselves).
Our Stateroom:
We were pleased with our room, a balcony stateroom on the Lido deck, port side (L310). We did not regret spending the extra money to get a balcony because it made the room seem bigger and brighter. The balcony we had was fully covered, which was a good thing in my opinion, and had two aluminum chairs (no pads) and a table. The man next door played beautiful music on his guitar several times out on his balcony. We enjoyed breakfast on the balcony 3 times, by bringing food back from the buffet, which was on the same deck. We were very happy with our room steward Meralyn, who was very friendly and provided excellent service. We liked the location of our room very much because it was near the pools and food; it was a free upgrade from our original room on the floor below because we had a guarantee. I was worried that it would be a noisy location, since it looked like it was across from the elevators on the website diagram and because it was near the pools. It was not noisy at all and was not across from the elevators. However, the door is not well sealed, and had someone made noise in the hallway, we surely would have heard it. One minor drawback is that smokers congregated near that corner of the pool deck and so I had to walk through a cloud of smoke to get to the doors to the stateroom area. Our room was adequate in size for two people (not more), but we kept bumping into each other in the bathroom/closet area getting ready in the morning or for dinner. The room was furnished with a TV, refrigerator, desk, hairdryer (by the desk, not in the bathroom), two chairs, a small glass table, the bed (two twins pushed together) and two night stands. It seemed to me like there was too much furniture in the room; the small table or an extra chair could have been removed IMO. The beds had enough room underneath to store our large luggage, which was nice. The closet was sort of a walk in closet, so large enough for all of our stuff (we are overpackers), and had a tall cabinet in it with about 5 shelves and a safe. The bathroom was small (not a surprise), with a shower sink, shelves, towel racks, and shelves. In the bathroom we were provided with bars of soap, shampoo, and conditioner, all from the Lotus spa. The shower looked small, but it didn't bother me when I used it. The water pressure in the shower was good, you could adjust the flow pattern of the shower head, and the knob had temperature numbers on it (in Celsius) so you could remember where to set it. The shelves in the bathroom and closet were very handy. The safe worked fine until my husband accidentally pushed a button twice and unwittingly changed the combination. I would have liked there to have been a clock provided and the bedspread looked like something from an old Holiday Inn and didn't match the elegance of the rest of the ship. I did notice a creaking noise coming from the sliding glass door one night, but usually we were pretty tired so we probably slept though it the other nights. The hangers in the closet had to be pushed together to keep them quiet when the seas were choppy and the ship rocked around.
Dining:
We ate breakfast at the Horizon Court Buffet everyday because it was convenient and fast. We also had lunch there a couple times or at the adjoining Caribe Buffet. My opinion of these buffets is that they like almost all other buffets I've been to, some items are good and some items are not. I found notably disappointing: not fresh or raw sushi (lunch in the Caribe Buffet on the sea day) and very salty crab legs (dinner in the Horizon Court Buffet the first night). There was not a lot of change in the breakfast offerings on the buffet from day to day. The coffee in the buffet varied from just right to too concentrated (and syrupy) to too weak. We thought the freshly cooked pizza, hamburgers and fries by the pools on the Lido deck were excellent and had these for lunch or a snack quite often. Our dinners were in the Michelangelo dining room, which is for anytime dining. There's only one dining room, Botticelli, for traditional dining and it only holds about 360 people (quite large yes, but there are over 3000 passengers). Even though we made our cruise reservations in May, we were on the waiting list for the second seating (#5 out of over 200). In order for us all to sit together we made a standing reservation at the Michelangelo dining room at 8:30 pm. People who did not have a reservation at this dining room sometimes had to wait in line, but it was never very long when we were there. Our first waiter was adequate, but we did not like the drink steward at all (they are paired in teams). She showed her displeasure (using either facial expressions or the tone of her voice) that we did not order premium beverages (i.e. alcohol), which is very unprofessional. We asked to be moved to a different table and were very pleased with our very animated waiter, Jorge, and our drink steward, Joao, both from Portugal. Jorge told us that he had been working on ships since he was 14 (he's about 40 now), and he didn't like it when he tried a land job when his children were young. It's nice to know that he was working on the ship because he truly liked it. Most of the food in the Michelangelo dining room was very good, but occasionally I would get something I didn't like; no big deal, I would just order something else, or sometimes we would order a couple extras to begin with. I was impressed with the offerings of lobster tail, crab legs, caviar, prime rib, and tiramisu. We were able to special order delicious creme brulee, with the permission of head waiter Rui, also from Portugal. He was also very happy and entertaining to talk to.
Entertainment:
1. Princess Theatre: My husband saw the production show “Destination Anywhere” and thought it was excellent. He also saw the juggler and thought he was OK. The cooking demonstration by the head chef on the sea day was very entertaining. The galley tour that followed was just OK.
2. MUTS: They offered lounge chair covers, blankets, and popcorn on some nights and not others, using weak excuses when they didn’t. Of course the nights without were the two nights we did go to see the movie, so we were irked. Also, the view from some of the lounge chairs is partially obstructed by a railing, and my husband had to clean the glass beneath it. I didn’t find it too loud at night, but I thought it was way too loud during the day. Also, the MUTS screen overlooks a pool that is designated a family pool, but they played PG-13 movies during the day when kids were out there.
3. Skywalkers Nightclub: The Patter advertised a “non-stop dance party” from 10 pm to midnight with DJ E Motion. We showed up at 10:45 pm. The place was almost empty and the music being played was awful and not dance music. We stayed but saw many people peek in and leave. Then we hunted down the DJ who was not at the DJ booth. He said that he had to play “retro stuff” for the “older people”. Lame excuse. I don’t think he was aware that he was supposed to be playing non-stop dance music, and I don’t think he knows was dance music is. We requested a #1 hit song and he was unsure of the artist.
4. Crooners: We were not impressed with the piano players at Crooners.
Lotus spa:
I pre-scheduled a one hour Swedish massage online for the Monday of the cruise. It was wonderful. Even better, there was a folder with coupons in our stateroom that gave me 15% off a spa treatment on a sea day. Beware of getting a “tour” of the spa, especially on the day of embarkation. We agreed to this because we wanted to see the fitness center, and we ended up listening to at least three heavy sales pitches (one for teeth whitening, of all things). This is the only time that I thought Princess took it too far in trying to sell me something.
The Rest of the Ship:
The ship was beautiful! The layout was not that confusing to me, as others have complained. Sometimes the hallways had bends in them, but they run from front to back on all decks below deck 16 except one. The decks above deck 16 are outside, so its easy to know where you are on those. As I mentioned only one inside deck (Fiesta deck 6) had an area, the Botticelli dining room, that was disconnected from the rest of the deck, so you had to go up or down to get to the rest of the Fiesta deck. I got into that situation when I took the rear elevator down to deck 6 wanting to get to the Piazza. The elevators were all working as far as I could tell. The store that sold sundries ran out of sunblock halfway through the cruise and didn’t seem to have a lot of other things like medicines, so make sure to bring extra of this stuff. The public restroom stalls were remarkably large, with at least 3-4 feet between the edge of the open stall door and the front of the toilet. They were also always very clean and a record of cleanings was kept on the walls. Also, there were signs reminding us to wash our hands for 20 seconds in all of the public bathrooms. In addition, there were numerous hand sanitizer stations especially by the buffets and by the gangways. I counted that there were 6 pools: 1 for children, 1 for teens, 2 for families, and 2 for adults. The adult pools were where we hung out and they didn’t seem to be too crowded, but the one in the front of the ship by the sanctuary only had 9 deck chairs by it. The hot tubs (I counted 7 of them, one for teens the rest for adults) tended to be crowded and it seemed like at least one was shut down for most of the cruise. Blue and white striped pool towels were only provided by the stateroom stewards and not anywhere by the pools, so we had to keep asking for extra towels. The pictures that the Princess staff photographers took on the gangways and on formal nights were displayed in a special photo gallery. Our friends went down around 10:30 pm of the final night and got a better deal (buy 3 get 1 free) than they were offering that morning when I was there (buy 5 get 1 free). The mixed drinks on this ship, such as mai tais and martinis, were only $6.50, and the well drinks (7&7 for example) were only $4.50, which is less than most places in downtown Chicago would charge. However, the prices on the bottles of wine in the dining room seemed at little high. Although I do think the ice cream by the pizza place should have been free, since that probably kept me from gaining some weight I’m not upset. Also, we had to purchase a Coke card for $33/person to get sodas and I think those should have been included in the price of the cruise too. Overall I did not feel nickel-and-dimed (I feared that I would), but Princess certainly has things that are extra virtually everywhere on the ship. The shipped rocked with the waves more than we expected—good thing we brought motion sickness pills!
Fellow Passengers:
The majority of people were Americans like us, but there was a large cross-section of people and age groups, but it did seem that on average people were a little older than us. There were quite a few large, multi-generation family groups. I heard there were about 140 children on board. There were 308 British passengers who flew in on a flight chartered by Princess. Not surprisingly, there were also quite a few Spanish speaking passengers, who I assumed were from Puerto Rico. I also saw a table of people speaking Russian and 2 different couples speaking French. Everyone was well behaved. We only noticed two people on separate occasions who didn’t dress appropriately, and one was very old and was probably confused (wore panties instead of bikini bottoms!)
Ports of Call:
I think this was a great itinerary! I would especially love to visit Bonaire, St. Kitts and Aruba again. Here are my experiences on each of the islands:
1. St. Thomas: We enjoyed a tour of the island with independent local tour guide Sunny Liston. We spent about 1 hour shopping in the downtown area. There were dozens of fine jewelry stores and watch stores, not cheap stuff, but supposedly good deals. Many shops had people out on the street trying to get customers to go inside the stores. Unfortunately, we were not at all interested in buying fine jewelry or watches and found the constant invitations to go inside stores a little annoying. Later we found out that you could get free beer or wine inside these stores if you asked. Also, the streets in this area were crowded and congested, which was also not my idea of a great time. There was also a flea market in the same area where there were fake designer purses, t-shirts, cheap souvenir trinkets, and fashion jewelry. Spent 2 hours at Sapphire beach. There are hotels along this beach, so it is nice and well kept. There are amenities such as showers to rinse off in, bathrooms, equipment to rent for snorkeling or water sports, a restaurant, a gift shop, and chairs to rent. Most important to us, there were no annoying local vendors. The water was clear, but there were some rocks (not too bad though). We enjoyed feeding a duck family too!
2. St. Kitts: Our only shore excursion through Princess was the Mountain Biking and Beach tour. This tour was run by Art, the owner of the only bicycle shop on the island. (If you’re wondering, we used Trek bikes.) He was very personable and gave us a good history and tour of the island. Unfortunately I was too out of shape for the many uphill portions of this ride and got a lot of rides in Art’s pick-up truck. I would only recommend this tour to people who work out or train at least 3 times a week, because it is a challenging ride (Art is proud of this, by the way!). Art and his assistants, Dennis, Matrix, and Royston provided us with bottled water along the way and at the beach, gave us fruit and guava juice. We spent 45 minutes at Frigate Bay beach. The water was clear and there were a lot of shells. We even saw a crab in the sand! Only two local vendors came along and the beach was almost empty. After riding back to the ship area, Art gave us a local beer, Caribe Lager. Overall, this island was very beautiful.
3. Grenada: My least favorite port. We took a water taxi ($3/person each way) to Grand Anse Beach. The second the water taxi pulled up to the beach, we were surrounded by very aggressive local vendors. Two of them followed us down the beach even though we had said we were not interested in what they were offering. We just kept walking farther down the beach until they gave up. After we chose a spot, more vendors came by—at least one every five minutes. Some didn’t seem to like it when we said no, even though we were always polite. They would bother us if we were in the water. Needless to say, this is not what I came on vacation for. The water was clear and there were very few rocks. Water sports and just about every other amenity was available for a price from the vendors.
I would like to bring attention to an incident I witnessed after getting off the water taxi, when it brought us back to the ship area. A woman who was with us in the taxi, slipped somehow as she was attempting to step off the boat onto the dock. She was dangling above the water, the top of her head at the same height as the dock. The two water taxi guys each had one of her arms, but they were scrawny and could not pull her up (she was very heavy). Meanwhile, the water was choppy and the water taxi boat was swinging back and forth, threatening to smash against her. Luckily, one of the passengers who had gotten off before her was a former volunteer firefighter, and strong. He ran down and helped pull her onto the dock. The woman was OK, but shaken a little. So, to everyone reading this: please be very careful getting on and off these small boats at the dock. It is more dangerous than it looks.
Also, another thing about Grenada—Princess offered a Water Tubing shore excursion. We signed up online very early, but were waitlisted. We found out on the ship that all of the spots for this tour were booked the very first day online!! And the waitlist was 2 pages long! The people at the tour desk told my friend that there were other independent operators who offered river tubing in Grenada, but we did not explore that option.
4. Bonaire: The content island. There was no welcome center here, like there was at the previous 3 islands, just a small booth. We started walking in the direction of some beaches, hoping to find a nice beach and somewhere to rent snorkel equipment. We arrived at the Plaza Resort Bonaire after about 15 minutes. We purchased a day pass for their beach and facilities ($15/person, $20 if you wanted a chair) and rented snorkel equipment ($10/person). The snorkeling was fantastic!! Lots of beautiful fish!!! We even saw an octopus and my husband spotted an eel!! The water was clear, but there was no sand underneath it, just rocks and coral. I highly recommend snorkeling at Bonaire! There are probably better locations on the island, if you do your research ahead of time (which we didn’t). Bring an underwater camera and waterproof SPF 50 sunblock for your back. After we were done, we walked to the downtown area, which was quaint and uncrowded. We were never approached by a vendor, or person trying to get us into a store. It seems that the people of Bonaire are content to let the tourists come to them, even though it is evident that they do not necessarily enjoy a high standard of living.
By the way, Princess offered a “Day at the Beach” shore excursion for $99/person. I heard that they went to the Plaza Resort Bonaire—the same place we ended up at. Clearly, we saved a lot of money doing it independently, even though it was unplanned on our part.
5. Aruba: Took at public bus for $2/person round trip to Eagle Beach. Our friends had done some research and said that this beach was ranked in the top 10 worldwide by a travel magazine. It certainly was beautiful, very sandy and soft. The water was not as crystal clear as the other beaches we visited, but the waves were gentler. There were two places to rent wave runners. We had fun on them ($57 for one person for 40 minutes; they accepted credit cards). One part of the beach had a lot of weeds that shed burrs, which we discovered by stepping on them, ouch. Also, it was very windy that day and it blew the sand around a lot and into our faces. There was a small snack cart and a van offering haircuts, but no bathrooms or showers, at least that we could see. No aggressive local vendors at all on the beach. The downtown area had lots of shops offering a wide variety of items.
Disembarkation:
Disembarkation seemed to start promptly and go smoothly. We had to be out of the staterooms by 8:15am. We headed to the buffet to eat breakfast and wait for out color and number combo to be called. The people with early flights were called first, followed by the people with shore excursions in San Juan. Then they started with the upper most staterooms and worked their way down, calling those with Princess Transfers (chartered buses to the airport) before those without. The line for settling accounts was very long that morning and we were glad we had done it the day before.
For more information, some good links are:
The official Crown Princess website has detailed diagrams of each deck (click on "deckplans")and other info (but not a lot of pictures): http://www.princess.com/ships/kp/index.html
For a lot of pictures of the ship with detailed comments by a passenger: http://cruisenewbie.com/photos/
For professional quality photos of the ship (very few comments though): http://www.smugmug.com/gallery/1849088#92713435
You will have to cut and paste the links into the address line of your browser (Eopinions wants it that way, not me). There are photos of a stateroom identical to the one we had on the 2nd website listed above and photos of the next higher category of stateroom, called a "minisuite", on the 3rd link.
Recommended:
Yes
Best Suited For: Friends
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Epinions.com ID:
opinionatedjen
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Reviews written: 1
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