The Caribbean Princess is my second favorite Princess ship. The last time we sailed with her was back in 2014 out of Bayport in Houston for our Western B2B cruise. She is in great shape for her age (Bermuda...2004) and the crew onboard do a great job with the daily upkeep and maintenance. She will be going into dry dock in March for I believe two weeks and it looks like it might be at the end of that month. On the exterior front hull, she will be getting the Princess sea witch logo just like the Royal Princess has. I heard she might also get new soft furnishings. She will be fitted with the new Medallion technology with miles of cables installed, but the new technology will not go live until sometime in March 2018. There is rumor that she may get the interactive TVs (to go along with the Medallion tech) like the Regal and Royal have. Looking forward to sailing her again in 2018.
Here she is in Bonaire:
Our mini suite cabin is located on the port side about 9 cabins from the front of the ship. We enjoy being this far forward and enjoy feeling the ship’s movement. Years ago when we first started cruising we always preferred mid-ship. Now that we are seasoned cruisers, we enjoy the forward spot which also turns out to be cheaper than mid-ship. On the decks that have cabins, you can always tell the port side from the starboard side. The port side carpet is blue and red while the starboard side is all blue:
In our cabin, we have two TVs: one facing the bedroom and the other facing the living space. It’s been an ongoing issue as one of the remotes will certainly turn on both TVs at the same time and also change channels when one is in the middle of watching a movie.
Here you can see we have the Princess vinyl protection luggage mat over our bed. Our cabin steward place this on our bed on the last sea day. That is not a nice thing to do to us first thing in the morning. I know, I know...it’s packing day:
We love being in a mini suite for the extra room and living space. This extra space comes in handy to dry our snorkel gear and store our beach stuff.
We try to keep our cabin neat so our cabin steward is in and out quickly. I won’t mention what I’ve seen in other cabins. Just picture…a tornado. My early morning hours are spent here while I blog about our adventures:
Our cabin is one of the few that can be configured for up to 4 people. Besides the bed and the pullout sleeper sofa in the living area, there’s a bunk bed that pulls down from the ceiling. Cool, huh? When I originally booked this cabin, I wasn’t too sure what the ceiling and bunk bed (when stored) would look like. Would Hubby, who is tall, hit his head while walking towards the balcony? I’m happy to say that the bunk bed is nicely stored and flushed with the cabin ceiling. There’s a special key that unlocks a panel. Sorry, I forgot my photog moment and so…no picture.
We love having a balcony. It’s a great place to relax and listen to the ship cut through the swells. It’s a great place to find some solitude away from our fellow cruisers. You can also have quick chats with your balcony neighbors without spending a lot of time with them. Eventually, they will go back to doing what they are doing. Or I can leave the conversation and go back to doing what I was doing. We enjoy having our own place to watch our ship sail into port. Okay, the photographer loves having the freedom at the railing without having to elbow my way into a good spot. Enough said.
It’s also a great place to take a nap or siesta and it doesn’t matter what time of day. Trust me. The gentle rocking and rolling will make one very sleepy:
From our balcony, we can wave to the boats that go by:
We can use our GoPros to see what the water looks like below us:
We see none of our balcony neighbors are out, so we enjoy the view towards the back:
And enjoy the view towards the front:
We became Elite in the middle of our B2B last year on the Regal Princess. Shiv, our cabin steward on the Regal and one of the best we’ve had, spoiled us. He explained to us what’s available and how to partake if we wanted to. For example, as an Elite member, we are given a free bar setup each cruise:
Since we do not drink liquor, beer, or sodas, I call room service to remove the bar setup. I can have them replace it with a bottle of wine or two coffee cards. It usually takes a few hours for them to stop by our cabin and do the swap for us.
Also included with our Elite status is free laundry. On this cruise we opted out of this. Yes, we’ve used this service on our cruise in 2016 and let’s just say we got back some extra laundry that did not belong to us.
Princess has a laundromat on each cabin deck and on each side of the ship (port and starboard side). I typically do one load of laundry during our B2B cruises. I figure I can take a two hour break from all the cruising activities (like napping, eating, napping, and more eating) and have fresh clothes for the next week. Also, the walking back and forth from cabin to laundromat and vice versa counts towards the minimum 10,000 daily steps required. Burn baby burn.
For this cruise, I’ve swapped my normal cruise wear to more dri-fit type fabrics. It lightweight, moisture wicking tech, and dries quickly. That way I can use the bottle of Woolite (I purchased prior to getting on the ship) to do hand washings in our cabin sink. There’s a handy clothes line in the cabin shower that I can use to hang dry my clothes. I also bring with me plastic clothes line clips to hang our swimsuits and rash guard shirts. It’s part of my nightly routine just like brushing and flossing my teeth. I make sure I do the hand washing after the cabin steward turns down our bed for the evening. That way he’s not hitting his head on our clothes while trying to clean our bathtub or refilling the soap and shampoo dispensers.
As an Elite, we have the ability to have afternoon tea in our cabin. We have not done this, yet. There is so much food available around the clock at various dining venues that by 3pm we are not hungry for more food. Maybe next year we’ll try it. I heard they bring A LOT of food with the tea. Maybe we will skip dinner. That will be an important food decision for next year.
Before I forget and while I’m on the topic of cabins, I wanted to share the bed configurations.
Most of the cabins can be configured for two twin beds:
Or move the two twin beds together to make a queen:
I was able to take a few pictures of some rooms during our turnaround in Ft Lauderdale.
More to come!
No comments:
Post a Comment