Thread: Sea Princess 14 day Carribean Island Cruise

14 day cruise on the sea Princess. Jan 2009. In will try and be as brief as I can but I could not find anything about this cruise when I went so I hope this may help.
My wife and I both 49 took my daughter 21 son 19 and future son in law 25. My second cruise on Princess my kids first ever cruise. Good 5* ship. Very clean and quality service from the staff.
We found 90% of customers were from UK-mainly North (manchester etc) Last year went on the Carribean Princess from Fort Lauderdale and were 90% American (much more interesting to talk to-sorry but I try to get away from UK when on holiday, with that many people on board it seemed like the whole of Manchester were on the ship.!!)
Most of the customers were above 55 and many in their 60's and 70's so this time of year is probably not good for the younger one's wanting company.
First I will go through the good and bad.
Pros- Good food. (anytime dining) changed menu every night for 14 nights. Good food elsewhere on the ship like pizza and steak house.
ALL staff were polite. helpfull and great fun and interesting to chat to.
Inside cabins were adequate for my wife, me and my 6'1" rugby player son. (pull down bed was the size of a normal bed so no worries there.)
Great well equiped gym for young and old.

Cons- Stupid sun bed arrangement. 2000 customers on board and no where near enough beds. If you read this Princess DO NOT wind people up by sticking a sticker on their chair saying you will remove the property and towel if not back within half hour. I witnessed the guys doing their job getting massive abuse from sun lovers who just got up to get a drink or visit the loo. What you should do is ask people to put their towels on the floor or in a collecting point thus leaving the sun bed empty so people will know when it is free. (people just left towels on the beds which made it look like they were taken. this did not help the many people looking for beds on 'at sea days')

Music and entertainment catered for the older clientel.

They will Charge you $11.50 each person automatically every day for a tip. Plus they charge you 15% for every alcoholic drink purchased as a tipping scam. If you are on a buget that really kicks your wallet especially when there was 5 of us, that's $850 and say about another $250 on the drinks bill and at the poor conversion rate of only 1.35 that's a lot of money. YOU CAN how ever tell them when you GET THERE that you want to opt out of the daily tipping noncense and you can get envelopes to put money in when you leave for various staff (Kitchen-Waiters-Laundery-etc) The drinks were expensive (also the rate did not help) a small bottle of beer was $4.95 or 5 for $20 PLUS 15% If you wanted a bottle of wine with your meal the cheapest would set you back $28 PLUS 15%.

The ships TV channel is very informative (IF YOU WANT JEWELLERY) They will go on and on everyday about how good the jewellery is on each island. We all purchased something such as rings and watches. They must have some tie up with Diamonds International or something as they promoted them every single day. we found that the further you went into town the cheaper the jewelley got! All good stuff though and a lot cheaper than UK even at the rate.
Most people wanted to know what else there was to do at each port such as beaches etc but the info was very little. (they seem to herd you to the places they have some tie up) sorry may be unfair comment but that's what it seemed like.
End of gripes.

Every Island we went to which was 12 always had a mass of touts at the dock entrance wanting to take you shopping or site seeing in a taxi. They are quite forcefull but hey- The ship does not stop there every day and they need to make a living. Just tell them politeley 'NO' and move on with out moaning about it. (it will only ruin your holiday !) Most of the Islands are poor but all the people we found were sincere and genuine. They will tend to rip off tommy tourist on the beach bars. (we orderd chicken and chips for $5 each and when we came to pay the bill they rubbed out the $5 and wrote $10 - No point in arguing!! That was Grandance? beach in Grenada.
We found organised trips expensive as you would expect but we always negotiated with a taxi (most are mini vans) for the whole day and take us anywhere we wanted to go and they would wait for you. This would save many Yanki Dollar!!

Dominica ( DOM-AN-EEKER) Very poor. We hired a one legged tour guide called 'Skippy' outside the port and he took all 5 of us to the rain forest, Shopping, The beach and then a bar and then 1 hour of site seeing for $70 taxi and $5 rain forest charge. Total for all 5 $95 as apposed to $395 if we just went on the rain forest trip as an organised tour with the ship!
Visit Champagne reef and snorkel. Loads of fish and plenty of bubbles rising through the rocks due to some volcanic activity.
Antigua (This time we went on an organised trip-Our only one) to swim with Sting Rays. Fantastic animals but a shame to see them in captivity. Island lovely.
Tortola 4 of us did the Scuba diving (we all qualified divers) swam through the RMS Rhone wreck-10th best dive site in the world! great but I have seen better.
St Marrten This is where we purchased most of our jewelley. HAGGLE to the point you are blue in the face and then HAGGLE some more. YOU WILL GET THEM DOWN. Get the price walk off to the next shop and do it again.
Samana Dom Rep. Heavy intimidating touting at gate. If you walk along the prom then be prepared to get asked all the way along! We hired a taxi for $60 for the whole day to show us round etc and to a beach.
Jamaica
Wow these guy's are off their heads. Good fun. Taxi for the day $75. went shopping (again) much cheaper the further you go. Do not shop around the port! 25 to 30% cheaper at the other shop malls.
All other Islands much the same.

Tips- Get a cabin in the middle as it rocks less than if you were at each end.
Cancel the tipping arangement -unless you are Bill Gates
Don't let the touts upset you-It's just their job.
Haggle for the best price on anything
On sea days get up early and grab a bed (8am will be too late!) and stick with it or they will remove your stuff!
If they put a ticket on your sun bed- dont kill the staff it's just their job and also don't make a seen - you will look stupid, simply-when they have gone just take the ticket off.
If you dive- book direct with the dive schools
and simply chill out and enjoy the people of the Carribean.


These Islanders really need a good lesson in Tourism. If you are reading this- Do not persistently wear down the tourist by bombarding them by coming up to them on the street every 30 seconds. If they want a taxi- THEY WILL HIRE ONE. If they want a straw hat- THEY WILL BUY ONE. If they want a painting of the fallen madona with the big boobies -THEY WILL BUY ONE. Please understand that us tourists like to walk along and enjoy the view peacefully with out you guys sticking your nose in our faces every 20 yards!!!!!
You will earn more money if you sit back and let us look.

Over all I would do the same trip again next week if I could.
Glenn
Ask any questions.

Hey Glenn!

Thanks for the report on your Sea Princess cruise.

You seem to have balanced it all out and enjoyed the good and dealt with the less than perfect.

Do you have another cruise planned?

(note: I am moving this to the Trip Reports area where more folks will see it)

Thanks for the report.

I'm guessing that Princess is trying to combat what many of us call the problem of "chair hoggs." These are passengers who go to the sun decks and throw down a towel and/or book on a deck chair and then disappear for hours. When other passengers arrive to plunk down for a rest in the sun, or to watch their loved ones in the pool, there are few available chairs. Some of the passsengers are too timid to remove the unattended towel and/or book and take over said deck chair. And find the crew members also too timid to do so (they get concerned that a chair hogging will try to get them in trouble). There's supposed to be a 30 minute limit of leaving a chair with the intent to get it back (like when you're in the pool or taking a restroom break).

Many passengers have been writing down a suggestion on the end-of-cruise comment surveys that Princess should put in cubbyholes so that people can put belongings when taking a dip, especially if they don't plan to sun themselves afterwards.

As to removing tips, many in non-American countries remove their tips without realizing how the system works. Unfortunately, rather than just adding the tips to the fare (for various reasons, which may include taxes and profits) and then paying the crew members a decent salary, the system is supposed to supplement through the tips the workers' salaries. Many of them send much of this tip money back home to their families. And many of these families are living in third world countries. Just the way it is.

And January does tend to be a good time to travel with fewer kids onboard, as, at least, in the US, the kids had two or three weeks of vacation from school in late December. So you may seen mostly toddlers or homeschooled kids on a January cruise.

Thanks so much for the report!