Regal Princess (Part 3)
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Entertainment
I am going to be honest. We didn't go to any of the shows. They did have 3 "feature" shows throughout the cruise ("Burn the Floor", "Fiera", and, well, I can't remember the name of the other one) as well as a number of other entertainers such as a comedian and a Beatles cover group. Completely honest. We didn't see those either. Actually, we did sort-of see the Beatles cover band. They did a dance night in the Piazza, and that was fun. I am not really a Beatles fan, but I will say that it does seem at least that everyone knows the songs. I will say that the people that we talked to really enjoyed the shows, but, that is one thing that unless it's DCL, I'm not really a main showroom type, and even on DCL, if it's the umpteenth time that "Dreams" is playing, I'll skip that too...
So, what did we do? Well, I enjoy movies and this year has been so hectic, that we haven't seen many. So, I took the opportunity to watch a bunch! We watched Crazy Rich Asians at "Movies Under the Stars" (known in Princess' lingo as MUTS), and like Carnival, princess provides free popcorn. They also have nice lounger covers for the loungers and these really nice blankets you can check out. The Vista Lounge also doubled as a movie theater during parts of the week. We saw "A Star is Born" there. Also, once a movie is shown in either area (MUTS or Vista), they will add it to the on-demand video system in your stateroom. We also saw "Instant Family" (really liked that one), "Bohemian Rhapsody", and "The Favourite" (a bit strange). We missed "Old Man and the Gun". So, it wasn't quite DCL's dedicated Dolby Movie Theater, but I would say that the experience watching movies was better that what I experienced on either Carnival or RCCL.
(Editor's Note: One of my favorite cruise memories was in 2004 on my DD's first cruise, which was a Western Caribbean on the Grand Princess. I remember watching "Master and Commander: Far Side of the World" in the Princess Theater. It was late at night and the ship was going between Haiti and Cuba and the seas were up. It was fun because as the ships in the movie were tossing and turning on the screen, we were doing a much more sedate version of the same thing. It was almost like an unexpected 4D experience.)
So, if you like Trivia, you will enjoy this ship (though no "Ship on a Stick" for you Carnival folks). There were at least 3 trivia sessions a day in what they called "Princess Live", which is sort of set up like a TV studio. The trivia was all themed (Disney Trivia, Motown Trivia, 70's Trivia, etc.) and was very popular. They also used this studio to host most of the "Game Shows", my favorite of which is "Yes/No", but they had the obligatory Match Game and Love/Marriage, etc.. Just down the hall from there, there was what was called "The Library", which in addition to being well stocked with books (more than I can remember on other lines), had just about every classic board game and then some that you could think of and had a really nice table in the middle of the room that always seemed to be in use. Jenga was popular as was Monopoly. One nice touch in here was that each morning, they would put out game/puzzle sheets that you could work. I took the Sudoku ones a couple of times.
I can't really remember all of the entertainment, but I will say that it seemed as though there was something going on all over the ship all of the time. For instance, we went to the Vista Lounge one night to see if there would be a movie there and as we walked in the place was packed. So I peeked in and there was an Irish band doing a sing-along of Irish songs. I will say that some of that may have been the only NSFW stuff we encountered on the cruise. But, it sure was fun. (Not knowing the schedule was our fault. We really didn't do a good job checking the Patter or the info screens). Things like this would go on all over the ship. We'd leave there and go by the Wheelhouse Bar/Crown Grill area and there would be a band or steel drum player there, then as you got to the Piazza, there would be some sort of entertainment there, and that really varied. One night you could have "The Beatles", the next a DJ, and the next, a string quartet. BTW, before you put down the string quartet, when we caught them, they were playing a lot of music from "Game of Thrones", which I am a big fan of, so I just found myself sitting there momentarily lost. I forget sometimes how good the music is on a string quartet, because you just don't hear it much anymore. Also, the Piazza gets a lot of traffic for the "Pop-up" acts as I call them as both the International Cafe and Alfredo's are located right on the Piazza. For those that have been on a Radiance RCCL ship, I would equate a lot of this to what they did there in the "Centrum", but I enjoyed most of the Princess acts better.
One unique thing that Regal Princess has is a feature in the middle of the pool deck that does sort of a mini-Bellagio show by using coordinated fountains and light shows. They did the show we went to to Michael Jackson music, and quite honestly, after about 3 minutes, we were good. While interesting, I'm not sure who thought this would be great on a cruise ship, but hey. I have seen where on the new Sky Princess coming out later this year, that area (between the two family pools) is being redone, which is a nice segue into a discussion about the pools. There aren't any slides on the ship, but there are 2 pools are of a nice size one in the family area and one in the adult area and 2 smaller pools (one in the family area - and while that one is small it has a large like 6" deep wading area around it - as well as a small one on the aft of the ship - for you Carnival folks, this one reminded me of the size of the one on the Serenity area of the Sunshine). One thing I like about Princess' pools is that they are freshwater. Also, the adult pool is especially nice and we never seemed to have trouble finding open loungers. I will say, though that the adult pool was unexpectedly deep (something I see they are also changing on the ship coming out this year - it will have 2 levels in the adult pool). I am 6' 3
and was on my toes to keep my entire head out of the water. I believe that the family pools were not quite as deep... Also, by the pool is what Princess calls the "Skywalk". If you have been to the CN Tower or Space Needle and been out where they have the glass floors that you can look down through, this is similar. It is actually a curved, cantilevered walkway that extends out over the water on each side of the ship, though one is a separate "walk" and the other is a bar. Even though it is a bit of a gimmick, I will say it is still a bit unnerving being say 17 stories up looking straight down.
The Cruise Director on this ship was named Lexi, and we really didn't see much of her (as we didn't go to many of the shows). I did hear that she was not the usual CD and that the ones that are were on vacation. That wasn't a really big deal, because I can only think of 2 CD's that I think made much of a difference (Jamie Dee on Carnival Sunshine - OMG was she awesome, and Brent from Australia on DCL - who is now at California Adventure, I believe...)
Regal Princess also has a very nice casino, and it's right sized in that it didn't feel either too large or too small as they do on some ships. It was a nicer casino that we had on the last 3 non-DCL cruises that we had done (Serenade of the Seas, Carnival Sunshine, Emerald Princess). It had a lot of penny games, but also had a nice variety of slots. It also had the usual compliment of table games, including a "Virtual Poker Table" which was pretty cool and always seemed to have some folks sitting there and playing (I suspected they were there awhile). A general comment is that the last few cruises I've been on, the blackjack tables sort of sit empty, which I think is a combination of minimums that are too high (one night, the minimum there was $15 - no one was playing!) and that BlackJack only pays 6 to 5. As a statistician, I understand that a casino is actually a volume business. I actually think that if they dropped the minimums to say $5 and went with the typical Vegas 3 to 2 payouts, they'd have a lot more people playing and would probably make more $$, but hey, I am not in charge...
I wanted to save this for last. My ABSOLUTE favorite thing about the casino was:
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Kid's Area's
So, here's the crux of the issue for some DCL cruisers. Will my kids have fun? To me (well, my DD), that answer is yes, but it is a different kind of experience. I will start by saying this. If you are looking for an amusement park at sea (rock walls, ropes courses, bumper cars, waterslides, etc.) then Princess is probably not the line you want to travel. However, that is NOT to say that they don't have a really good program for the kids, it's just different. I will say that most of the experiences I can share are from the teen perspective because we only have 1 child, and she is a teen. That being said, we did see some of the younger ones throughout the voyage and they all seemed to be having a blast.
So, most of the official Kid's club areas on Regal Princess are located on the back of Deck 17 and are sort of in their own area. The clubs have a theme in conjunction with Princess' partnership with the Discovery Channel, even down to the Kids Counselors having both Princess and Discovery Channel logos on their shirts. Having been on Emerald Princess last year, it's clubs were not updated to the newer club look and I can say that the Regal Princess was far superior. First off, the clubs themselves were a good bit larger on Regal Princess than on Emerald Princess (or what they had on Serenade of the Seas). The teen club (where we went to sign in our DD) was called "The Beach House" and was really nice. Upon first glance, it looked like a a very nice large hangout room with the obligatory foosball tables, etc. However, I went around the corner and saw this!
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In addition to skee-ball (have to admit, I was jealous about that), they also had the Xbox setups, etc. There was quite a lot to do in there. In addition to that, the teens had their own deck space similar to what you might see in Vibe on the Dream/Fantasy. It had the same nice thick loungers as the "Sanctuary" and had a quite large dedicated hot tub for the teens. My DD spent a lot of time up here. They had fashion shows, games, scavenger hunts, movies, etc, throughout the whole week. My DD is not a science person, but they had something in there about how they made some of the "Shark Week" shows. I would have loved to have seen that... (They had a lot of Discovery Channel related things, related to Shark Week or Mythbusters or Deadliest Catch - BTW, in Alaska, I think that they actually meet people from the show...)
Some have asked how many kids there are on Princess, and I think that varies by itinerary and time of year, but we were one fo the initial Spring Break weeks and there were quite a few kids on board. There were over 150 teens (13-17).
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Another thing to mention about the clubs is that they are strict about their age limits. On this cruise, one of the 18 year olds was friends with some of the teens, but they would not let her into the club. Same for the other two age groups. There were two other large areas for kids. One for younger kids (3-7) that also had an outdoor play area and one for tweens (8-12). I didn't go in those clubs, so I can't comment on what they did except for the fact that they always seemed to be full of kids and the kids seemed to be enjoying themselves. I think that these clubs may have even more of a "Discovery Channel" vibe. I not sure what all they did, but I did run across the younger kids one day. They had them paraded outside one of the main restaurants all in chef's hats and chef's jackets. I think that they had been in the main kitchen doing some kind of cooking with one of the head Chefs. I thought that was kind of a cool experience.
Didn't see a lot of kids "hanging in the stairwells" as I have seen on some other cruises (Kids activities are not in the Patter. In your stateroom on embarkation, you receive a schedule of activities in your room for your specific age group along with an introduction letter from the main counselor). Also, the pools were popular with kids (as they always are), but the main pool seemed large enough that it never seemed like the "People Soup" that you sometimes get on the Dream/Fantasy. Up on Deck 18, there is a sports area that has a full-size basketball/muti-use court (by the way, WHAT is "pickleball"?) that always seemed to have a game going on. The jogging track went around this deck and it was 7 times around for a mile. Better than the Serenade's 16 laps for a mile, but not as nice as those wonderful promenade deck runs on DCL where either 2.5 or 3 laps is a mile. Around this whole circuit, they had freestanding exercise equipment (sort of like what Carnival has out). One really interesting thing was that on one side of the basketball court, they had a full golf driving range net set up. I found myself up there more than a few times hitting golf balls. It was a bit unique and I liked that. I could hit a driver, 5-iron, 7-iron, whatever. There was also a putting green on one of the decks that doubled as a bocce ball court.
So, if there's no "amusements" per se, will my child enjoy Regal Princess? Well, our DD said at the end of the trip, "I love DCL, but I think that Princess is my favorite". I asked her why and she said it was because she really got to know a lot of people pretty well over the week. She said that while she enjoyed Carnival Sunshine, for instance, most of the other teens are out doing "stuff" and not together, so you didn't get to meet as many people. Also, she said that sometimes, if there are 300-500 teens, it can get overwhelming. She just seemed to enjoy the pace of it all. It was more "organized". Games and activities were available, they'd take them down to Princess Live to do Karaoke (or they'd do it in the club - actually, on the Emerald, some of the girls in the club practiced in the Passenger Choir which rehearsed all week and then gave a performance in the Piazza). I likened it to a post before about how maybe going on Carnival/RCCL was like going to the Magic Kingdom or Hollywood Studios whereas Princess feels more like going to Epcot or Animal Kingdom. They are both enjoyable, but different experiences.
She also really, really, really loves the Alfredo's Pizzeria, so that has something to do with it as well.
General Thoughts
Regal Princess is a really nice cruise ship. We've always liked Princess, but I will say that it will be hard to go back to the Grand class after sailing on this ship. Things just seem a bit nicer and the space/passenger ratio is better. Princess, in general, I find to be a very relaxing cruise line. For Regal Princess in particular, I find that there is something about the experience that just sneaks up on you about the trip. You get on the ship on Day 1 worried about if I am going to like this or like that. What do I need to see, What do I need to do, etc. And, quite honestly, I feel that way on a number of ships, including the DCL ones. However, on Princess, by say Day 3, I start thinking, I am really enjoying this ship and by Day 7, you wish you were staying on another week. It's just relaxing. I found that on this ship in particular, I didn't need to be on any timetable or rushing about to something here or there. I could just wander and I would happen into something and have a blast, kind of like with the Irish band. Now, yes, we did plan some things, like MUTS and the Yes/No gameshow, but in general, you could just go to different areas of the ship and if you didn't find something you like, you could just wander somewhere else and you would find something going on. I really enjoyed the cruise and the ship.
A few random musings...
- Princess plays just the right amount of "Love Boat" vibe on the ship without being cheesy. In addition to the horn, some Love Boat episodes are on demand on the TV. I saw the one where a female college student tries to hide-away in Gopher's cabin. I caught myself thinking "What cruise line has rooms this size!" There were 5-6 episodes on demand, however, they DID NOT have the awesome Love Boat/Fantasy Island crossover episode... At any rate, the main cast of the show are the Godparents of the ship. Apparently, the inaugural sailing of Regal Princess (2014) was quite something. They had the whole crew on as well as a number of the more common guest stars (Charo, Florence Henderson, Loni Anderson, Lorenzo Lamas, etc.). Apparently, they let Ted Lange make drinks, let Gavin MacLeod do the noon Captain's update, let Lauren Tewes greet people on the ship, etc., and what a lot of the crew talked about was apparently Charo did some kind of spanish guitar concert and was awesome. For those of a certain age... that would have been a lot of fun...
If they were smart, they'd rename the Vista Lounge to the "Acapulco Lounge"...
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- If you are a fan of iTV's "The Cruise", both Dirk and Scott were on our sailing. I got to meet both and got a picture with Scott (though it's on my wife's phone)...
- There is a nice, nautical feel to Princess. Every day at noon, the captain will come on the announcements and give the nautical position of the ship, the weather conditions, and the bearings of the ship. He also would usually describe some aspect of sailing that would be interesting as well.
- Announcements. There just aren't many. It's a nice change from the constant barrage you might get otherwise. Also, announcements will not play in the rooms unless the TV is on the bridge cam channel
- We did not visit the Spa, so I can't comment on it. A quick note, it is actually on Deck 5 forward, so it's a bit different than a lot of ships that have it on a high, forward deck. Also, the fitness center is separate from the spa. It's up on the same deck as the Kid's clubs. I can say that the fitness center was very nice...
- Like DCL, Princess manages to have a setup before you get back on the ship where you can get a nice, cold water and a nice, cold refreshing towel. It's a nice touch. Those folks in the Carnival Vista tender line in Grand Cayman that was a mile long (which was right next to ours, which had no wait) were definitely giving us side-eye as we walked right up to tender embarkation, got our water and cool towel and immediately boarded our tender...
To DCL lovers, I would recommend new ships. They are in better shape and definitely have more to offer.
