Day 3: 20230925 Monday, September 25, 2023-At Sea
When we awoke this morning, the ship seemed to be shuddering and lurching significantly less than last night. We are passing further south away from the center of the huge low pressure system that has been responsible for the weather and sea conditions. We saw another Princess cruise ship passing in the mist, heading the opposite direction.
As we left the room, Janet found a surprise hanging on the door. It was a Princess string backsack, which we have previously won as trivia prizes in earlier cruises and use to pack our shoes into. Inside the string bag backsack was a hardback photo album suitable for mounting photos from the cruise into. She had won the first Wake Show drawing as one of three entries drawn during last night's Wake Show.
Instead of hitting the morning trivia, we ended up at the Port Presentation for San Francisco because we went to the wrong venue. Breakfast was a quick grab and go from the International cafe. We did end up at the Music Through the Decades trivia later in the morning and the TV Themes trivia in the early afternoon. We did squeeze in a session at the gym between the trivia sessions.
In the afternoon, we attended the Grapevines wine tasting which is included in our Elite Captain’s Circle fare. Our table had two Canadian couples who were doing the 3 day itinerary who revealed that going to either Seattle or San Francisco to see a ball game and then flying home is a popular weekend getaway.
We napped for a bit after the wine tasting and then checked out the Elite lounge for pre-dinner cocktails. We weren’t able to make dinner reservations for a private party of 2 before 7:40pm on the computer but could have dined earlier if we had been willing to share a table with other parties. In the past, we have found that this can greatly prolong how long it takes to get your meal done, so we opted to dine in the Horizon Court buffet. This ship has a much smaller buffet selection than the Royal class ships, so we were a bit disappointed that we weren’t able to get into the main dining room. In the future, we’ll have to book our dinner reservations 2-3 days in advance to ensure getting a private table at an early seating.
The production show “British Invasion” was rescheduled for tonight and to our pleasant surprise, it was an entirely different show than what had been billed the same on the Royal class ships. The stage is smaller and doesn’t have elevators that can push actors up onto the stage from below, so the choreography is different. The songs were also different. The cast is well trained and talented, both dancers and singers. The show was very well executed and entertaining, even with the more modest production values.
The cruise director announced at the end of the show that 2000 passengers will disembark in San Francisco tomorrow, and that 600 or so of the current passenger manifesto will be continuing to Hawaii and beyond. A lot of the entertainment staff will be traded out in Hawaii. It’s not clear how many new passenger will be joining us in San Francisco to make the cross Pacific journey, but one of the room stewards seemed to think there would be plenty of new passengers boarding, so they’ll still have lots of staterooms to turn over every day.
We will cross under the Golden Gate Bridge at 5:15am. If the weather permits, hopefully the outside decks will be reopened. They have been closed even as of this evening, but we are sailing away from the rough weather and seas. I’ll have to set an alarm to see if I can get some video and photos as we go under the bridge in the very early morning hours.
