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Princess Cruise Line

MS Sapphire Princess

Your Rating:
Reviewed by: R. Frost
Date of Trip: January 9, 2008
# previous cruises: 10 to 20
Itinerary: Australia

The weather was a factor on this early Jan. cruise. mainly cool ,foggy,and rainy. It's mid Summer there so this was surprising. I would suggest waiting till a week or two later in January. We did have a Cyclone affect the Tasman sea crossing with rolling seas.

Most of the lounges were smoky. The Wheelhouse lounge was used for a lot of Trivia games-2/3 per day. They gave out a ticket if your team won and you redeemed them for prizes on the last day. Not that many people used the casino. They did have cheap machines to try 1,2, and 5 cent as well as the 25 cent variety. The pools were dominated by kids. We generally don't use them, besides it was cool on this cruise. The indoor pool was most used and on days when we had a rough sea then it was like a wave pool.

Food was pretty good,only had one meal (steak which was tough). We had personal choice dining. We found that sitting at a table for 8 to be a LONG drawn out meal. 2.5 hours on two occasions. We missed 2 shows because of this. We then went to a table for 2. We found a great waiter in the Santa Fe dining room-"Fast Jerry" who was very prompt at getting us our food in a timely manner. We did try all 4 Personal choice dining rooms. Did not use the $$ dining rooms.

Generally a smaller cabin than most ships, however the balcony was big with four chairs and a table. Unfortunately we had smokers on both sides(pipe and cigarettes.) Passageway near our cabin was also smoke smelling due to these smokers. Sound proofing was not too good as you could hear voices from adjacent cabins and the toilet flushing even farther away. Toilets seemed to not always flush-push the button and they would flush anywhere between 5-15 seconds later.

No big headliners on this cruise. Same old singer and dancer shows(4) Juggler, Hypnotist, and a few singers we never heard of. Cruise staff was very good at customer service desk. We had big luggage issues (so did a lot of other passengers) and the customer service desk helped out a lot.

Mostly went on tours. Most were very expensive on this cruise as was the pricing in Australia and NZ. Not much time for shopping on any of them. As this was the first cruise of the season the tours leaving the dock area were terrible due to the personnel not having a clue on what bus you should be on. The staff onboard was good but the dock area was chaos! Mostly US cruisers on these tours probably due to cost.

A big variety in general. Mostly US and then Asia. Only has one couple from the LA area we hung out with.