20251228 Sunday, December 28, 2025 Disembarkation and the Long Trip Home
We were late getting our suitcases out in the hallway last night. This was supposed to be done by 8pm, but we were at dinner at that time. We got them out at 10 pm. Janet was concerned because they were still outside our room door at midnight, but they were gone when we got up at 5:30am.
Our party had several different departure batches. Ben, Janet and Price were scheduled to disembark at 6:50am because they had a flight that was scheduled to depart at 9:38am. Because we were in the earliest departure group, we didn’t encounter problems with getting food from the buffet, and Ben picked up his flat white espresso drink at the Gelateria across from Princess Live, rather than the much more crowded International Cafe. In the early morning, only a handful of ship’s officers regularly stop there for their espressos. There were no other passengers around when Ben got his espresso drink made.
Janet had to stop by Passenger Services to file a missing laundry claim form. Somehow, one piece of underwear that went into the laundry disappeared. The passenger services desk seems awfully small for such a large ship, but fortunately, there weren’t many people with issues at 6 am, so we didn’t have to wait for someone to help. They were very accommodating in helping Janet fill out a form. In the end, they simply credited our claimed value for the missing item to our accounts, which should come back to us in the form of a check with any other credits.
It was also convenient that the Passenger Services desk was right next to the Gangway for disembarkation. Thankfully, disembarkation was a whole lot less crowded and disorganized than embarkation was. Customs and immigrations simply required a facial scan, and we were waved right through. Our bags were all exactly where they were supposed to be, and signage and staff knew exactly where to lead us to queue for the airport transfer buses.
We did end up sitting on the bus for about 20 minutes while it filled up with passengers, but traffic was light. In the meanwhile, we got notification that our flight was delayed by 35 minutes. As we arrived at the airport, we got another notification further delaying the flight another 30 minutes. As we checked in, we were notified that our flight was completely full and that we were encouraged to check all carry on items for free. So Ben pulled his medications and coat out of his carry on, and we checked all our bags, just carrying our backpacks.
The security area had signs separating people into CLEAR and everyone else. There was no real line on either side, but when we got up to the TSA Agent he saw we all had TSA PreCheck. He then shunted us into the CLEAR lane, which did allow us to bypass a rather significant line for the x-ray machines. That did save us quite a bit of time.
By the time we got through security, we got yet another delay notification. Then after sitting at our gate for an hour, the gate agent announced another hour delay because the flight crew had not arrived. We got more and more worried about our connection in Atlanta, which started as a 3 hr layover.
Ciara and Tom arrived at the airport without a hitch, and their flight to Chicago got off right on time.
We finally got off the ground 2-1/2 hrs late. As we got closer to Atlanta in the air, we saw our estimated landing time was now the same as our flight was scheduled to start boarding. Originally, our flight was supposed to dock at terminal A, with our connection in terminal B. But during our flight, we got reassigned to a new gate in terminal B. Still, we had to literally run from gate B3 to B16 to make it onto our flight because they cracked our cabin door open at 2:35pm and the Delta Ap informed us that Gate B16 would close for boarding at 2:40pm. As we got there, breathless, they were still boarding the last zones for the plane, so it turns out we might have not had to run quite so hard. Tom and Ciara were already home by the time we arrived in Atlanta.
Even though they closed the cabin door and finished seating all passengers, the plane sat at the dock another 15 or 20 minutes for some unknown delay. We hoped it was to allow our bags to be quickly transferred onto the plane, but on our side of the plane, we could see nothing going on outside the plane.
The flight was just under 5 hrs, but we had been hoping to get a meal service because we didn’t have any opportunity to get food in Atlanta. All we got were two beverage services and tiny packages of Cheese-Its and Sunchips.
Our flight ended up arriving about a half hour late, but our shuttle pick up time left us with enough time to grab something at the McDonalds inside the airport. As the plane was taxing towards the dock, we got email notification that our luggage was still in Atlanta, so we did have to stop by the Delta Baggage desk to file a claim and arrange to have our bags delivered to our home. They said the bags were placed on another plane that would arrive later in the night, but we had to catch our shuttle.
The shuttle trip was pretty uneventful except for a woman who had a dog with her on the front seat. The dog insisted on barking at anyone it saw, including the Ferry Toll booth operator and ferry workers directing traffic. The shuttle was also completely full, so quite a few single strangers were forced to double up in seats.
We ended up getting home about the same time as Tom’s Parents and Sam, whose flights were much later, and John and Iram, whose flights left at 8pm. John and Iram spent 3 hours trying to find a rental car in the airport, and finally ended up finding a Turo pick up outside the airport so they could visit the Everglades for a bit.
In the end, this was a nice trip to get our families all together for the holidays. Nothing got resolved about what we will do next Christmas, but John and Iram want to try to plan a trip to India to visit Iram’s family. We would certainly welcome any excuse to travel to India, but that is probably too expensive and time consuming for many of the other members of our Christmas party. So we’ll see what happens.
While we were excited to check out Princess’ new Sphere class ships, we were disappointed by several aspects. The crowds during embarkation were close to intolerable. The Eatery Buffet’s cafeteria style serving lines and very limited cuisine options were also a huge fail. Compared with all the other Princess Cruises ships we have been on (this was our 24th Princess cruise), the food was inferior. Even in the main dining rooms, the menus were pretty static, repeating after just 2 nights. There was no attempt at regional cuisines or themed dining. And our table service in Eclipse was just bad. Our waiters were inexperienced and seemed to lack motivation. Our one night as drop ins at Soleil showed that with good wait staff, we could get through dinner in less than 90 minutes instead of 2-1/2 hrs every night.
The Ocean Now magic has been gutted by restricting delivery to your stateroom or only select bars around the ships. What's the point of getting your drink order handed to you when you are already standing in line at the bar? They no longer deliver to any other public areas on the ship except for the pool deck where there are two bars. They also stripped out most of the Ocean Now deliver menu. You can’t get any espresso beverages with Ocean Now room service- only drip coffee and tea. There are also only 4 cocktails and 3 soft drinks you can order. They do have a chicken noodle soup, chicken fingers and hamburger on the menu, but no hot dogs or other sandwich items, and no breakfast items outside of the door tag breakfast menu.
There were some pluses that the Sphere Class ships deserve some praise for. The balcony staterooms are significantly improved. There is more storage with plenty of drawers and shelves. We ended up using only a fraction of available space, but this was just a 1 week cruise. If we had been on a 21 day repositioning cruise, we probably would have made use of many more of those drawers and shelves. There are now easily accessible electrical outlets at each night stand and at the desk, so there is no need to bring extension cords or splitters. There are also USB A and USB C charger outlets at both night stands and at the desk.
The new staterooms do still have motion sensor foot lights in the night stands. These are still too bright, and too sensitive. If you hand or foot drifts off the edge of the bed, it will wake you up when the light comes on. Ben did discover that hanging a small hand towel from the handle on the small drawer in the top of the night stand can block the sensor so it only goes of as you foot hits the ground, and reduces some of the light.
There is also a motion activated LED strip light under the bathroom sink activated by a motion sensor in the hallway. Fortunately, this arrangement doesn’t blind you like the overhead hallway lights in the older Princess ship staterooms do. If you keep the bathroom door closed, there’s plenty of light to see safely coming through the crack at the bottom of the bathroom door.
The Dome and bow lounging areas stand out as significant new public areas. However, many families tended to stake out and camp in these areas. The ship was so poorly staffed that it was not possible to enforce the No Camping rule which allows staff to remove personal items from deck chairs that remain unoccupied for more than 30 minutes. Some families tied up whole sections of these areas for the entire duration of the cruise. Because the dome is climate controlled, it can be very pleasant when it’s either too hot or too windy outside. There is a stage and screen at the front, but the acoustics under the dome are terrible. Movies look great, but the audio is unintelligible due to severe echoing.
The fitness center is too small for this size of ship, while the Casino is altogether too large, occupying a huge chunk of the forward part of the ship. This ship seems to be optimized for secondary revenue production, rather than for passenger comfort and luxury experience.
All of the aspects of the trip that we found disappointing were directly attributed to cost savings by cutting staffing severely. We hope this is unique to this particular ship, but if these cuts have been rolled out across the fleet, this may be the last of our long line of Princess cruises. Over this same time period, Viking Cruises had managed to maintain the same high level of service and quality with absolutely no decline in quality or experience despite also being faced with the same pandemic related challenges Princess uses as an excuse.
