20251228 Sunday, December 28, 2025 Disembarkation and the Long Trip Home

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.  

20251227 Saturday, December 27, 2025. Final Day at Sea

20251227 Saturday, December 27, 2025.  Final day at sea

A lot of us stayed up late last night hitting the club action around the ship.  John and Iram tried to get through all the tequilas on the bar menus last night, so we were surprised to see them at the morning trivia because we barely made it there after getting up ourselves after 9am.  It turns out Iram was a bit hung over and after the trivia she had to lie back down for a bit before resuming the day’s activities.  But thanks to some key answers, we did win the morning trivia, getting some bottle stoppers in a string bag.  

Ben and Janet spent most of the sea day doing various trivias including a general music trivia that we could have won, had Price been around.  We got out-scored by only one point, and Price knew two of the answers we missed.  We also missed winning a Broadway Musicals trivia by one point.  On the one we missed, we had debated between 2 possibilities but Ben had chosen poorly and should have picked Janet’s because she is always right.  There was a new word Bee trivia in which you have to write down the correct word from a dictionary definition.

Ben and Janet ran into and pretty much kidnapped Lifen to do the Galley tour. There was a very long line from the Piazza to the Soleil dining room kitchen which probably took 20 minutes to get through.  The galley tour was just a walk in a U from the starboard entry to the kitchen and out the port side entry.  Along this route were 4 dedicated staff only elevators connecting kitchen, prep and storage areas on 3 floors.  Much of the prep work and the bakery are all downstairs in areas not included in the tour.  The corridor we walked along was lined by cages filled with liquors and some other finishing ingredients, lots of assembly and warming counters, and racks for holding dishes.  There was one person actually assembling croque monsieur sandwiches that we could see actually at work. 

There are some static displays of vegetable carvings, seafood arrangements and dry goods along the corridor, and the head chef was there to greet people and answer questions.

Ben, Janet, Tom, Ciara, Sam and Price all got together to have lunch at Alfredo’s, which is a casual dining venue featuring pizza and pastas.  It was nice to have sit down table service, and the service was a lot better than at O’Malley’s Irish Pub. The food was also better.  Of the two casual dining venue choices on the ship, Alfredo’s is the best.  The Plus Package includes one appetizer or starter (soup or salad), one main (mostly pizzas and a few pasta dishes), and one dessert.  Everyone got pizzas, and we had enough of a selection that everyone could sample all the premium pizzas on the menu plus Ciara and Tom had their own custom creations. While the pool deck has decent pizza, the Alfredo’s pizza was better in quality and had far more options for toppings and sauces.  

We finished up the day with the 4:30pm general trivia.  We missed winning that one by just 2 points.  We didn’t know what John Walker invented in 1825, which sea creature eats itself when stressed, or the second official language in Israel besides Hebrew.  

We then retreated to our staterooms to pack everything back into our suitcases, which will have to be out in the hallways tonight to be taken off the ship.  Ben, Janet and Price depart at 6:50am.

We resolved to try to see the 7pm Farewell Variety show, and while it took a while for everyone to show up (Janet, Ben, John, Price, Ciara and Iram all went into the theater together and saved some seats a half hour before show time. Andy, Lifen and Sam showed up about 5 minutes before show time, and Tom came in several minutes into the first number) We did manage to sit in decent seats and watched the show.  

This started off with the production dancers and singers rising up from the pit and doing a number.  There was then a performance by a different acrobatic couple doing similar balance, strength and coordination routines on the floor, on straps and on a ring suspended from the ceiling.  

The assistant cruise director and cruise activities director “Liberty” did a vocal solo backed by the Sun Princess band.  Janet and Ciara both thought we had seen her on a prior cruise, and Janet recognized one of the male dancers from a prior cruise as well.  

From the Princess Arena, we all walked into the Soliel dining room to do a drop in dinner at 8pm.  While there was a big line at our usual Eclipse dining room on deck 7, there was hardly anyone waiting at the Soliiel dining room on deck 6, just one floor down.  

We found the experience in Soliel to be much better than in Eclipse.  We were seated quickly, and the waiters were much more experienced and professional.  We got through dinner in under 90 minutes rather than 2-1/2 hours.  

After dinner, we had to rush to get our suitcases out into the hallways.  We said our good byes because different groups are heading to different airports at different times.  All in all, it was a very pleasant way to get the families together for the holiday season.  We still don’t have a plan put together for next year.  John and Iram have been wanting to get us to do a Golden Triangle tour in India, so we will drag our feet on doing another Christmas cruise next year.  

20251226 Friday December 26, 2025 Cozumel- Tulum

20251226 Friday December 26, 2025 Cozumel- Tulum

The ship pulled up to Cozumel’s Puerto Maya cruise ship port which is quite the facility.  There were at least 6 other cruise ships in the immediate vicinity with two Carnival cruise ships on the next slip, and two Royal Caribbean cruise ships on the next one over.  There were at least two other ships moored a little further off.   We arrived alongside at 10am. 

We booked an  excursion to visit the Mayan ruins at Tulum, which is on the mainland about a half hour’s drive further south.  This meant we had to take a high speed catamaran from Cozumel to Playa del Carmen on the mainland.  This was a pretty lumpy crossing that took about 40 minutes.

Once on the mainland we loaded up onto a bus with a couple other families for a total group size of 24.  This took us to Tulum while our guide “Julio” explained some ground rules at Tulum.  Mostly, he advised everyone to leave any back packs, plastic water bottles, binoculars and camera gear other than smart phones because no plastic water bottles or wrapped food are allowed.  The authorities are mostly concerned with littering, but also will charge extra fees for “professional” photography or videography usage. 

 
Julio then launched into a series of sales pitches starting with water containers sold at the entrance which are prefilled with ice water, and obsidian bracelets and cartouches.  He handed out forms for people to fill out so that custom bracelets and cartouches can be made during today’s visit, and picked up at the end of our visit.  It seemed a bit tacky to be hard selling souvenirs  up front.  

Once we got to Tulum, Julio was most concerned for everyone to know exactly where to pick up their obsidian bracelets and cartouches, and which store to purchase other obsidian items and the water bottles from. The water bottles weren’t even water bottles, but simply snap top souvenir plastic water cups with attached straws.  When we asked if we could use the bathroom, we had to use one inside a store and he made sure we spent at least 10 minutes in the store before we could go to the Tulum archeological park site. 

There was a cue for electric transport carts and not many carts running so we could have spent a half hour standing in line, or seven minutes walking, so we walked to the site.  The road and path was well paved and shaded so that was not an issue at all. 

 
When we got into the site, there are a few structures that are recognizable as buildings, while most are little more than foundations.  There is one larger structure with an observatory that aligns with the sun on the summer solstice.  It is a bit asymmetric and looks a bit like a Picasso take on the Flintstone house. 

The structures at Chichen Itza are certainly more impressive and better restored.  We got a brief introduction to some Mayan cultural practices including dental chiseling and skull molding, as well as human sacrificing, but it was a pretty cursory introduction to the Mayans. 

We walked past 3 of the best preserved or restored structures and had 5 minutes to take photos on the bluff side overlooking the ocean.   Julio then took us back out to the shops at the front of the complex for another 10 minutes of shopping before getting us back onto the bus.  Between the archeological site and the shops, Price spotted an agouti in a small clearing in the woods along the pathway.  This was a large rodent that looks like a cross between a squirrel’s head and rat’s behind. 

It was good to have seen the ruins at Tulum because we had not seen them when we went to Chichen Itza and several other sites in the central Yucatan with Ben’s mom in the early 2000’s.  It was an interesting thing to do off a cruise ship in Cozumel, but I wouldn’t have recommended it as a primary trip objective.

The excursion continued a little way back towards Playa del Carmen at the Azul Cenote.  This cenote is attached to a fairly long surface opening that forms a very short surface river.  After we got off the bus, we walked a short distance to a landing on the cenote where a bunch of yellow plastic canoes were tied up.  As you walked down the stairs, you had to watch out for zip line riders who were landing on the same dock.  Janet nearly missed getting in a collision with an inbound zip liner.

The short surface section of the cenote that we paddled canoes down was very scenic, both above and below the water’s surface.  You did have to be careful to avoid some shallow rock formations. 

After getting off the canoes, we walked a short distance to the actual Azul Cenote, which was a fairly large pool with a deep part adjacent to a cliff that was probably 10’ high.  Ciara was the first of our family to jump off the cliff.  Janet, Price, Tom, Sam and Ben also all jumped.  However, the path from changing pavilion and entry deck for the cenote was paved with gravel which was painful to walk on, and most of the jumpers left their sandals at the top of the cliff and didn’t want to repeat that walk.  

There were a few small fish swimming around the cenote that looked like large aquarium guppies, and Price and Ciara did manage to spot a small turtle swimming around as well. 

 
After our Cenote swim, we had a late lunch at the same venue where they served chicken and pork dishes with rice, beans, tortillas, salsa, guacamole and salads.  Soft drinks, beer and churros were extra.  The food tasted pretty good, but not particularly memorable.  

The drive back to Playa del Carmen and the ferry back from there to the cruise ship terminal on Cozumel was smoother and we discovered some much nicer first class seats at the front of the ferry which we got to sit in.  

We mostly scavenged around the buffet and pool deck venues for dinner.  Ben and Janet watched a production show Viva la Música which featured Latin-American music like Gloria Estafon , as well as other more unusual Latin Americanized versions of Wrecking Ball by Miley Cyrus and Kiss by Prince, which were interesting.  

It was a very high energy show and it ended with the audience being invited onto the center floor to join the dancers and singers.  A lot of audience members were dressed all in white from an earlier deck party event, and they didn’t seem to hesitate to join in on the dancing.  

Ben wandered around the ship’s venues and discovered a movie playing in the dome like a second Movies under the Stars, and also found the ship’s main pool to be busy even at 10pm with kids during the Movies under the stars.  It is unfortunate that there is no late night pizza aside from room service which is $9 extra.    Ben did try some of the room service menu items just to see how they turn out.  There is a chicken vegetable soup, chicken fingers and quesadillas that are complimentary.  

It didn’t take too long at 10pm for the room service to arrive.  The wait was probably less than 10 minutes.  The chicken noodle soup did arrive hot and on a plate covered with a saucer.  Some had spilled onto the plate but the soup was good.  It had a clear well seasoned chicken broth with a few shreds of napa cabbage, a couple of peas and some diced roasted chicken pieces.  

The chicken fingers were breaded in light krispy batter, lightly seasoned and with your choice of sauces.  The honey mustard and ranch were pretty much just like what you’d get at Dairy Queen.  The BBQ sauce was thin and probably closer to HP Brown sauce than Kansas CIty BBQ sauce. Despite being room service, the fries were also decent, at least initially.  

The Chicken quesadillas looked appetizing with toasted and slightly crispy flower tortilla shells.  The filling was surprisingly light on cheese, and heavy on cilantro and jalapenos.  The salsa it came with was very bland and more diced tomatos and onions with bits of cilantro and no peppers.  They did come with round tortilla chips like what they serve in the downstairs buffet, but somehow they managed not to be stale.  

If the ship offered a rotating selection of soups via room service, that would satisfy Ben’s particular late night craving for a bowl of soup.  The chicken noodle was certainly satisfactory, at least this time around.  

Tomorrow our last day at sea as the ship sprints back towards Fort Lauderdale and the end of our Christmas Cruise.  We did receive our disembarkation luggage tags today.  So Sad!