Last week I was fortunate to be invited to join the Royal Princess to sail around Scotland (from Greenock to Edinburgh) for 4 nights. I must admit after watching the disastrous programme on the Royal Princess last year I was apprehensive to what I was going to find, however I can say having now been on the Royal Princess that the tv show did not do this ship justice and was a beautiful ship, with friendly staff and was immaculate with no areas showing any wear or tear.
Walking around the ship it became very apparent that the ship had an almost identical layout to the Britannia, so was easy for us to navigate round. The hub of the ship is the beautiful Piazza which is located on deck 5 and is where you will find the 24 hour International Cafe with complimentary pastries and sandwiches or salads, and also the Chocolate shop by Norman Love, daytime activities such as games or dance lessons take place here. In the evening the Piazza came alive with musicians playing to you, is also where the 50th anniversary celebration balloon drop will take place, and is also just a great place to watch the world go by.
We were lucky enough to have been given a balcony cabin and these were spacious and very similar layout to the cabins you would find on P&O – with the walk-in wardrobe area. The only downside for me was the shower had the horrible shower curtain as oppose to a glass door.
The unique areas to Princess is the Sea Walk – which is a walkway with a glass panel bottom (so not for the faint hearted), the movies under the stars is a great concept and the massive screen shows movies throughout the day and concerts, and then in the evenings the sun loungers get padded covers, and you can then snuggle under a blanket with popcorn and watch a film whilst at sea – fabulous idea if in the middle of the Caribbean or the Mediterranean but not so good when sailing round Scotland. There is also a fantastic dancing fountains show in the evenings.
One area of the ship I did fall in love with -although was a deadly place to spend to much time was the Pastry Shop, this is is within the horizon court/horizon buffet and had counters full of fabulous cakes and jelly. If I ever took my dad on a Princess cruise and needed to find him, this is where he definitely would be. Lucky the ship does zumba classes and had has a fabulous gym to burn all those calories off.
We were also lucky to be able to try a meal in one of the specialty restaurants and I chose to dine in the Crown Grill. I will write about this experience in my next blog – did my porterhouse 22 ounce steak beat me?
The highlight of my trip has to be the behind the seas tour which we were lucky to take and on the tour which took 90 minutes, we got to go to the bridge, behind the scenes in the theatre ie in the dressing rooms, down to the galley, crew bar and dining room and also the laundry room – I will write a blog about this experience but for $150 per person it was a fantastic experience and a real eyeopener that there is a whole different world below deck.
My only real criticisms of the ship was I thought the drinks in the bars were expensive as although the price in the menu shows $8.95 – they then add on a 15% service charge which then makes it $10.59 for the drink, they seemed a little short staffed in the Crown Grill, and for me the service in the main dining room was a little disappointing – the waiters were sending out dishes which were not as per the menu ie the Alfredo fettuccine was missing the Parmesan basket (one of the main attractions of the dish) and the response was “oh well, order it tomorrow and ask for it”. The waiter in charge of drinks was not very good at topping up drinks or missed people out together, and my last gripe about the restaurant was I asked if a particular pudding came without strawberries – i was assured the only strawberries was dots on the side of the plate and was a sauce. I trusted what i was told until I bit into this particular pudding and then realised there was a strawberry i had now half eaten which would be ok apart from being allergic and was then a little poorly during the night.
So the big question is would I go on a Princess cruise again – YES.
Next time I will let you know if the Porterhouse steak beat me
Kerry
xx