Feb 07 cruise
Written: Mar 06 '07
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Great sunny, mid winter break! Interesting and positive cruise experience.
Cons: No promenade to be able to walk freely. Racket from all day movie.
The Bottom Line: Cruise travel is best for people who are gregarious, like night life and entertainment but suitable for others as well.
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| robinmichetti's Full Review: Crown Princess |
My 2 twenty + daughters and I just got back from our first cruise together on the new Crown Princess. None of us is into the club scene, casinos, dancing, drinking or Las Vegas shows so we were a little concerned that we are just NOT cruisy types and might not enjoy ourselves. The good news is that you don't have to gamble in the onboard casino, dance under the stars or attend a glitzy show in the theatre to have a good time. Frankly we were exhausted from touring the islands every day and basking in the sun by one of the 4 outdoor pools so that by 9 pm we were happy to retire to our room with a few word games borrowed from the library. We do sound like boring types but we explored the ship in our little spare time when we were on board in the evenings or we lingered over dinner and chatted. A very pleasant pastime each evening was enjoying the excellent dinners mostly at the buffets which offered SO much variety that it was hard to hold back from sampling everything! Yes, the dining rooms were often crowded and it did happen on a couple of occasions that we had to walk a distance to find a table but it was always a very pleasant experience. The 'restaurants' offered delicious food!
The ship's decor is nothing short of stunning! There is a warm, tasteful, golden glow that is predominant in the colour scheme throughout. The atrium is a design marvel! It is 3 stories high topped with a stunning, round 'sun' shaped light set in a blue expanse that had small, twinkling lights within suggesting the sky. This was repeated in various other dining and public rooms in the ship and married well with columns, sea themed carpeting and floor mosaics, brass handrails and deep rich panelling. The public areas are sumptuous and beautifully appointed and make you feel as though you are in a luxurious hotel.
The staff is omnipresent and ready to serve but their presence is never really apparent because they do not mix with the guests. They are mostly from poor, Eastern European countries or the Philippines and have excellent manners. Of course you can always ask them about themselves and they will tell you that they work on the ship to be able to provide for family back home. They work 11 hour days, 7 days a week with a month off per year...around 1500 of them living in twos in small rooms with bunkbeds, 4 sharing a bathroom. They work hard in service to the 3500 passengers aboard the Crown Princess.
We had been advised by our cruise agency not to book the excursions with Princess and I am glad that we did not. THere are plenty of vans for a dozen or so people or private taxis for hire right at the port. They are government regulated for the most part and the fares are supposed to be set. We learned the hard way to check with the tourist board desk which you pass by once you enter the port area. (We are talking very, very small port area here...these are for the most part Third World islands.) Because photography is a serious hobby of mine, hiring a cab (at about $20 PER CAB per hour for 1 - 4 people) worked out best because we could stop when I wanted so that I could get out of the car (all air conditioned) to take pictures. We also could ask questions we liked and get to know the driver and the culture of the island. Those were highlights of the trip.
For me personally, it was difficult to witness the poverty. It was also embarrassing to be part of a huge group of people, thousands of us, all flooding these small islands...all of us white, 'rich' and priveleged and many of us rotund from overindulgence with our pockets full of the money these poor people need. It was often hard for me to appreciate the natural beauty of St Kitt's for example when I had to look beyond hurricane Ivan destroyed homes to see it. I felt very badly but my spirits were buoyed when we drove past a sign in St Kitt's that said that projects had been set up by the Canadian government to help restore and rebuild the island. St Kitt's is a member of the British Commonwealth like Canada.
As far as the tourist highlights I would say that visiting the tiny, uninhabited island of soft, white sand and turquoise waters called Klein Bonaire which was a 10 minute ferry ride from Bonaire where we snorkeled and saw about 20 varieties of fish was the biggest highlight for my daughters and me. (We recovered quickly from the prick like bites of what they call sea lice.) Other interesting things overall included coming into port in the early morning...a real thrill and pulling out at the end of the day. Also observing the architecture in San Juan, Aruba and Bonaire, seeng the adorable school children so immaculately dressed in their various, coloured school uniforms walking to school, huge amounts of 8 foot high cactus growing wild by the side of the roads in Bonaire, a view of Magan's Bay in US St Thomas from the mountain top, the moving guided tour by our taxi driver of the fort in Grenada where there was a coup in Grenada in 1979, seeing scurrying turquoise lizards, iguanas basking in the sun, shy but comical looking sand crabs, wild donkey roaming free in Bonaire, the hibiscus and other colourful flowers in abundance on every island...and the fun and laughs that my daughters and I shared. For them the highlights might have included sipping exotic drinks while they sunned in their bikinis by the ship's pool on our day at sea and at the end of other days when we got back to the ship.
I thought that I would feel confined or that other passengers would be loud and raucous and get on my nerves...but this was generally not the case. I did feel that our land excursion times were too short. We would get off the ship by about 10 only by the time we had breakfast etc...and then have to be back one hour before sailing time which was often around 3pm.
One curious but welcome requirement was that we wash our hands with a squirt of sanitizer from a dispenser set up as we entered the ship. They were also at the buffets which we appreciated because we knew that we were less likely to pick up germs from the utensils used by so many people.
Security seemed a bit extreme but we got used to it. When you enter or leave the ship you have to show ID which slows things down a bit so you may be cuing up for 10 minutes to get off or on the ship.
One main beef of two is that when you go to the breakfast buffet each morning you must pass through a very narrow and circuitous area that is poorly designed. Everyone has to dodge lawn chairs and scoot in and around chaises longues around an open air pool to get to the entrance to the buffet dining rooms. Not only that but that damnable movie screen is blaring and booming overhead on that particular pool all day long! You cannot even see what is being shown on the screen in the daylight so I think Princess should just spare us all and turn it OFF!
And the other beef is that the layout of the Crown Princess does not include a promenade which is a deck where one can walk around the whole ship. One could not walk more than 15 feet without hitting an obstacle; the end of a hallway, a staircase, people coming from another hallway, deck chairs etc.. Even on the pool decks at the sides of the ship there were transparent plexiglass barriers that one would have to navigate around. Being able to walk off those meals would have been a favourite activity every evening as we would normally do at home or on holiday, had we been able to do so. So that was quite a big disappointment that basically we could wander around the ship but that a real proper walk where we could talk and stop to gaze out at the sea, was not possible indoors or out.
I have to say that the heat was sometimes a bit much. I was very happy to get back to below freezing weather, blue skies and the sun of our northern, Canadian climate. But I think I would like a break every winter from now on and I would possibly go on another cruise...maybe through Mexico which would include some Mayan sites.
I would give this Southern Caribbean cruise experience an 85%.
Robin of Montreal, Canada
Recommended:
Yes
Best Suited For: Friends
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Epinions.com ID:
robinmichetti
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Reviews written: 1
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