Day 32: 20231025 Wednesday October 25, 2023- Coral Princess Embarkation in Sydney
Checking in, the security people really gave Janet the 3rd degree because her ankle brace set off the metal detector, and a very enthusiastic X-ray technician spotted a Swiss Army knife and Leatherman tool in our carry on bag. We have had these in our “office supplies” kit for all of our 18 prior Princess cruises, so it was surprising that the security guy confiscated them and took them to the head of security to catalog them for holding and return at the end of the cruise. After the agent returned to his station, the head of security was swamped with paper work from a paring knife that was being confiscated from another passenger, and when I explained that the leatherman and Swiss Army knife meet TSA criteria for allowable (blade under 3”), he kind of rolled his eyes and slipped them back to me, mostly to save him the paperwork. Next time we’ll put them in the big checked suitcases.
Once on board, we discovered the Coral Princess to be very different from the Grand Princess. We had taken the Coral Princess on our very first Princess Cruise to the Panama Canal in 2015, and have been on many Princess ships since then. This was the first time we got a stateroom on the Emerald Deck, which is just one deck above the Promenade deck with all its public venues. There are several public venues on Emerald deck including the Internet cafe, Library and Card room. It is possible to walk from the aft elevator banks and stair wells to the forward elevators and stairwells on Emerald deck. There is also a distribution of public venues between decks 6 and 7 from the back of the ship to the middle of the ship. There is a larger lounge in the rear of the ship with 2 levels of seating and a larger stage called the Universe Lounge. The Explorer’s lounge is one deck down on deck 6, along with one of the specialty restaurants.
The stateroom is very similar to the one we had on the Grand Princess, but the closet hanging space is twice as much. However, the shower stall is about 20% smaller as a trade-off. We prefer the larger shower to the larger closet.
The promenade deck goes through a tunnel in the bow so you can’t walk around the bow like on the Grand class ships. But the promenade walk is all on one level with no stairs. There are nice public decks at the rear of the ship overlooking the wake on decks 10, 9, and 8. The elevators in the center of the ship open facing the rear of the ship while the forward and aft elevators open facing forward, so you have to think which elevator you’re on in order to figure out which is port and starboard and where fore and aft are. On the Grand Princess, all the public elevators opened so you were facing forward.
After unpacking some of our suitcases, we had lunch in the dining room and made arrangements to have a regular private table for 2 for the remainder of the cruise. Again, the Dine My Way app indicated this was impossible, so we appreciated Polly, the host in the Bordeaux dining room doing this for us like Esther did for us on the Grand Princess. One bit of good news was the rolls served at lunch were fresh baked, crunchy on the outside and soft and tasty on the inside- back to our expectations for Princess baked goods. There was simply something wrong with the bakery on the Grand Princess.
After lunch, we headed off the ship and walked around the waterfront and Sydney Opera House. There is also a free public garden (Royal Botanical Gardens, Sydney) adjacent to the Opera house. The weather was perfect (mid 70’s, sunny and with a light breeze). Also most of the walking was on the level with only slight inclines in the gardens and the grand stairs leading up to the Opera House or down into the arcades. Sydney is certainly a great cruise ship port because of how accessible the city is from the pier.
We returned to the ship and checked out the Elite Lounge, which was in the Explorer’s Lounge from 4:30-6pm. It was surprisingly crowded. These longer duration cruises do tend to attract more Platinum and Elite cruisers. From there we had dinner. It was nice not having to dig through Yelp reviews to find a place to eat for a change. Janet had a Cajun fried chicken and Ben had braised beef short ribs, which were both good meals. We were too full to even consider the dessert menu.
The sail away from Sydney was scenic, although the sky did fill with threatening clouds. This detracted from the photographic potential, but it didn’t end up raining on us as we left Sydney Harbor.
Janet checked out the Wake Show. This cruise director likes to do a riddle or puzzle question instead of crew or staff related ship trivia. Today’s riddle was: What is light as a feather, has nothing inside or out, but even the strongest man alive can't hold it up? (A Bubble)
The Princess Theater featured comedian Jeff Green, who was funny enough for an entertaining show with plenty of laughs. We then did our first trivia of the cruise- I’ll Take Trivia for 100. We teamed up with Sharon from the Grand Princess Vancouver to Sydney cruise, and an Australian couple John and Linda from Newcastle, a city just a little northeast of Sydney. We got a clean win on that with no need for tie breakers, but the prize was a bottle of champagne. Sharon took that bottle for her room mate since nobody else was particularly interested in a bottle of “Ship’s Champagne”.
We stayed in the Explorer’s lounge for the next event which was musical trivia through the decades. We also managed to win that trivia without need for a tie breaker, even though we didn’t do well with the late 90’s music of NSYNC and Destiny’s Child.
Our clocks go back another hour tonight, and tomorrow is a sea day.
