Places You'll Go: Royal Princess Ship Inspection

Good morning travelers.... I'm baaaaa-aaack!!!! Ft. Lauderdale was amazing. Okay, I have to admit. I'm actually writing this blog in Ft. Lauderdale sitting at the pool bar of my hotel while waiting for my ride to the airport. Here's a photo of what I am forced to endure while working. Hey, it's a tough life but these are the sacrifices I make for you guys. Someone's got to do this, right? So, since I finished my last ship inspection on Monday at 1:45 pm and my flight didn't leave until 8:15 pm, there was no point in suffering or just sitting around doing nothing. So, I wrote a weeks worth of blogs for you, my faithful follower, while I waited.

In case you missed yesterday's blog, (which I finished writing a few minutes ago) we discussed my rushed ship inspection on Royal Caribbean's Oasis of the Seas. Again, I will say that the rushed inspection was not the fault of Royal Caribbean, but my inspection mate who only sells high end luxury cruises and therefore, had no interest in spending time on a moderately priced cruise ship. Also, I don't fault her at all, if I could make a living only selling high end luxury cruises, I wouldn't want to waste my time else where either.

With all of that said, on Saturday once I had a ship inspection under my belt, I felt that I could go out on my own for my Princess ship inspection. This particular tour was on board Royal Princess the newest and most luxurious ship in the Princess fleet. You might recognize the name of this ship simply because The Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton is the godmother and christened the ship as her last official act prior to the birth of Prince George last fall. On board they have this beautiful display case containing the dress she wore for the event and the broken champagne bottle. In case you were wondering the dress seems to have been linen from what I could tell through the glass display case. Also, it is TINY. Based on that dress if she weighed more than 85 lbs at 8 months pregnant, I would be amazed. I'm pretty sure that my left thigh weighed more than she did at the end of her pregnancy.

Travel agents waiting for the ship to clear.

Anyway, we were on board the Royal Princess. We had to wait about 30 minutes to allow the ship to clear. Federal law does not allow anyone to board a cruise ship (even visitors or workers) until all passengers from the previous cruise have disembarked. So, if you are a cruise ship straggler, be aware that you are probably being cussed each time you finally manage to leave a ship. If that doesn't bother you, then good for you. But I would like to think that those people holding things up just didn't know that they were affecting others. When we finally got on board, they turned us loose and just told us what time to meet in the dining room for lunch. We had almost an hour before lunch, so I decided to start on the Lido deck and work from there to see all that I could in the time I had.

Before we go any further, I feel that I should tell you that Carnival owns the following: Carnival, Princess, Costa, Holland America, Cunard, Seabourn and they go in that order from least luxurious and expensive to most luxurious and expensive. I would equate Princess along the lines of Royal Caribbean in price and luxury level. As far as Princess goes, this is their finest ship currently. They have a new ship coming out soon, the Regal Princess the sister ship of Royal which will be close to identical to Royal. This was a lovely ship with some amazing features that anyone who enjoys luxury and being pampered would find wonderful.

Believe it or not this is a pool bar on the Lido Deck. Sweet, huh?

As with all Princess ships, they feature Movies Under the Stars, but the movie screen on this particular ship is apparently bigger and better than the others. The pools are nice and about what you would expect. I think that in the upper decks the thing I found the most wonderful was Horizons, which is the Princess name for the buffet. Hot and cold food areas were sectioned off. Deserts and salads were away from other buffet items. Many things were under glass. After having been on a Princess ship recently the week following a minor norovirus outbreak I think this is probably Princess' answer to concerns over germs.

The cruising industry is continually faced with publicity concerning norovirus outbreaks when the reality is that norovirus occurs everywhere in day to day life and no one pays attention to it. However, if it occurs on a ship, it is treated as though the plague has broken out. So cruiselines are taking more and more action to insure that passengers are protected in every way possible. After all, the last thing you want to have happen while you are on a vacation of a lifetime is to come down with a stomach bug.

The big Movie Under The Stars screen in the pool area.

The sports deck is very nice and has lots of outdoor running and walking space for my marathon friends. I can tell you from experience that running on board a ship is harder than running around White Rock. I don't know why, but it is. So this might help you in your post cruse workouts. Here's my theory regarding that, you run in an oval. So during half the run you are running the same way the ship is sailing. During that time, with each step you take, you are going further than a step taken on land. I mean, seriously, if you are traveling at 20 knots and you are running, then you're probably running at 22 knots (that's 25 mph!!!). That's some serious running, my friends! (Okay, I don't want to hear from any of you scientific types. I know my theory has flaws, but I'm still working on it.) Anyway, on that sports deck you will also find this state of the art fitness center with a studio for pilates, zumba and such. There's something for everyone.

One of the things I visited on the Lido deck was the Seawalk. I'm not generally afraid of heights. But I must say that it freaked me out a little. It goes out over the water and the floor is glass. So, the net affect is that you feel like you are walking on air a few hundred feet above the waters surface. This photo was taken while the ship was docked obviously, so you can see the cement dock below me which I think screwed with my mind more than walking above water. After all, water would be softer than cement if the glass suddenly broke, right? The photo below is what it looks like as you are walking through if you don't look down.

Between running to the public venues I was able to sneak into a few cabins. We weren't invited to visit the cabins, but the doors were open while the cabin stewards were preparing them so I snuck in and took a few photos. I think you will agree that while small, they are pretty darn nice. Most of the cabin stewards were very friendly and helpful even though I was interrupting their work as they prepared for passengers. One of the cabin stewards did grumble a little bit when I got in his way, but I just acted like I didn't hear him. And then smiled and thanked him as I left the cabin. The cabin below looks very much like the one I had on board Caribbean Princess except that the TV was above the fridge rather than mounted on the wall.

This is a normal balcony room. Very small with no real room to sit. The only chair blocks the balcony

To the left is the bathroom for that balcony room. The shower is the size of a postage stamp and you can ALMOST turn around in it without injury to yourself. Below you will see the much more comfortable Deluxe Balcony. That sofa folds out into another bed. So if you are going to have three people or more in the room and you wanted a balcony you would need this. Also, if you would like to be able to turn around in your room, this one would probably be a little more up your alley. I was pleasantly surprised to find that this room also had a bathtub (pictured above on the right) in the bathroom. Talk about luxury!!!!

After all of that, I started working my way down to the dining room we had been told to meet in for lunch. But on my way, I ran into a few other areas of interest. I came across some seating areas and bars including the Crown Grill and Wheelhouse Bar. In the Wheelhouse Bar, I found the most amazing wine tasting area pictured below. I had to post a photo on Facebook while I stood there to show my travel buddy what she and I might consider a cruising mecca of sorts. She said it brought a tear to her eye. That's me in the tasting room down to the right.

When I finally made it to lunch, I must say that I was very impressed by the dining room and the meal. First of all, there are several dining rooms and although I didn't get to the others, this one was fairly small. Not the huge dining rooms that I have grown accustomed to on ships. It was more like a dining room in a large restaurant. On most ships the dining room can be 2 or 3 stories tall and hold hundreds of tables. This one was one level and probably had 30 or 40 tables. But again there were several dining rooms on the ship where you could have assigned dining. We were seated at tables surrounding a beautiful table which was set apart. We were later told that it was the Chef's Table. Guests who wish to, can dine at this table for a fee where they will be joined by the Chef who will go over each course of the meal with them and the maitre 'd. I have seen a chef's table on a Royal Caribbean ship before and it was in a separate room so that others couldn't observe and listen to what was going on. So I was surprised that this one was in the middle of the room. Then the maitre 'd came around and told us that they were about to close the curtain and sure enough a beautiful beaded curtain enclosed the entire table. Apparently once all the diners are seated, they close it off to the rest of the dining room so that the chef can address the diners who have paid to sit there. It was really amazing. If you chose to pay for this experience, your wine is included in the price as well as a cookbook autographed by the chef. It was a little over $100 and I think it would be totally worth the price.

On board the Royal Princess my meal consisted of Cold Smoked Salmon and Sauteed Crawfish Tails followed by Chateaubriand of Beef Tenderloin with Milky Chocolate-Hazelnut Souffle for dessert. It was all delicious. Princess served wine with our meal which was very nice and the entire dining experience was wonderful.

Following lunch there was a little time left to visit a few other areas. One interesting note, I went to the ladies room after lunch and was pleasantly surprised by the public wheel chair accessible area. Basically, behind an automated door within the ladies room was a separate self contained wheel chair accessible restroom that a lot of businesses on land would do well to emulate. Those photos are below all the food photos.

I would really love to sail on this ship. I think that if you are into any sort of luxury you would enjoy being on board this ship. Best of all, you can cruise this ship at a very affordable price. I took so many more photos of other public areas of the ship that I'm just going to post them randomly below. If you have questions about what you are looking at, just let me know.