20251220-1221 Christmas Cruise on the Sun Princess.
The tradition of Christmas family reunions continues this year. We successfully got all of our kids, as well as spouses and girlfriend, and in-laws to cruise with us to the western Caribbean on the new Sun Princess.
The Sun Princess is Princess Cruises newest class of ships. The hallmark of the new class is both size and propulsion. It has grown to 177,000 gross tons with a capacity of 4,769 passengers and 1,600 crew. That’s more than 20% larger than the Royal/Regal class of ships.
Getting to the start of a cruise is never any fun, but at least this year, nobody ended up missing flight connections due to weather or other delays. We had to take a red-eye on Delta from Seattle to Atlanta, and then from Atlanta to Fort Lauderdale. None of us got any good sleep on the plane, even flying premium economy. The Chicago contingent had a direct flight from O’Hare to Fort Lauderdale, as did the New Jersey travelers. While the Chicagoans and New Jerseyites had to get up early, at least they got a few hours sleep the night before.
Being sleep deprived made the tribulations of checking onto the ship seem a lot more bothersome. In the recent past, we have been able to pretty much just walk right onto the ship without delays or crowds. Today, it was pandemonium from arrival at Fort Lauderdale to finally crossing the gangway onto the ship. This is probably directly related to the ship having to disembark and then embark 4,300 passengers instead of 3,560. Also, there appeared to be at least 5 cruise ships at port.
The biggest hassle was the security line to enter the cruise ship terminal. That was more than an hour to get through security and 2 hours to finally get onto the ship from stepping off the airport transporter bus. There were a few places where we had to just stand and wait while there appeared to be nothing going on. At the X-ray machines, all of the machines were halted for at least 15 minutes without any explanation. We have not encountered such a crowded and disorganized embarkation process in many years. It was as bad as what we remember of Norwegian Cruise lines out of Seattle many years ago.
We did manage to book 3 adjacent balconies, but Tom’s parents and John and Iram ended up with staterooms on deck 6 and deck 16 respectively. We booked John and Iram several months after our initial booking, and Tom’s parents booked a different category of stateroom.
Our first glimpse of the ship did provide the impression of a larger size than the Royal/Regal class, but not quite as much of a behemoth like the latest Royal Caribbean mega ships that have over 7,600 passengers. There are several spheres incorporated into the design. This design language must be a nod to the LNG (liquified natural gas) propulsion of this newest class of ships. Architecturally, they do stand out as unique. The other noticeable change is the life boats and tender boats are trimmed in yellow rather than the international signal orange used on all other Princess cruise ships. The tenders do appear larger, with two sets of sliding entry doors rather than a single opening.
Our initial impressions of the ship’s public spaces were impacted by apparent crowding and confusion as new passengers poured onto the ship. Everything is spanking new, although I did notice one small shattered tempered glass pane on an aft quarter wind wall.
The ship’s piazza, or central atrium, makes use of the spherical glass bulge to enclose the glass sky walks around the outside of the atrium to create new unusual interior spaces that are visually striking but comfortable. Gone are the spiral staircases and bubble elevators found on the Royal/Regal ships. In their place are a set of high tech banks of elevators paired with the usual stairs located forward, midships and aft.
The elevator banks each consist of 8 interior elevator shafts that run along the central spine of the ship with an elevator lobby between the elevator banks. There are 4 port and 4 starboard shafts on either side of the lobby. Rather than pressing a call button, and then selecting which floor you want after you get into the elevator car, there are panels that display all the floors, and you press which floor you want. The panel then assigns you to one of the elevator shafts A-H. When you get into the elevator car, there are no floor buttons. There is just door open and door close buttons along with a display of which floors the elevator will stop at. While this seems odd at first, it proves to be a highly efficient way of optimizing efficiency of the elevators, allowing for express runs. The system does get overwhelmed at times when it is very busy. When this happens, the panel displays “Elevators are extremely congested. Please try reselecting in a few minutes.”
The larger ship does feature some new venues. These include dedicated specialty dining venues like a Teppanyaki and Hot Pot Asian restaurant, Specialty Seafood restaurant, and a Chop and Steak house in addition to the usual Crown Grill. There is also a new dinner and show concept called Spellbound, although that hasn’t showed up yet in the Princess Patter. There are also now three different kids only areas on the ship. There is one for preschool aged children, one for tweeners, and one for older youths, each with activities tailored to each age group’s interests.
It will take some time to get a feel for the layout, but the ship had done a better job of posting plaques around each elevator lobby and in public spaces showing which way is forward and aft, as well as port and starboard side indicators at most hallway intersections.
We arrived at Fort Lauderdale airport at 10:45am, and crossed the gangway onto the ship at 1:45pm. We were able to go directly to our stateroom, which was ready for us. We met our stateroom steward Eduardo from the Philippines, who was able to open up the balcony dividers between our 3 adjoining staterooms. Our luggage trickled in over the next hour or two.
We were all getting to be a bit hungry and testy, so we got our first meals on the Lido deck at the poolside grill and taco bar venues. We also started on premium desserts there. Then it was time for well needed naps. We had to set alarm clocks to get us up in time for the 5pm dinner reservations in the main dining room.
Although Ben was able to manipulate the system into generating a total of 10 reservations at the same time in the same dining venue, they had to be split up into two batches because the system was not able to do 10. When we showed up and explained we wanted all 10 to be seated together, they said that should be possible but not tonight. They sat us 6 + 4 on two adjoining tables, and assured we’d all be at a larger single table for the rest of the cruise.
After dinner, we (Ben, Janet, Ciara, John and Iram) participated in an ABBA trivia. We tied for first place with 3 other teams, all of which had perfect scores of 20/20, but we lost the tie breaker which was how many countries were represented in the final round of the 1974 Eurovision contest which launched ABBA’s career. It turns out that the way the contest was structured, there were no finalists because all contestants competed in a single round with the winner determined by total points total. Each participating country had a panel of 10 judges who voted on each of the other entrants’ acts, but couldn’t vote on their own country’s act. So the number of finalists is the total number of participants. That number was 17.
After the ABBA trivia, we attended a Magic show in the Princess Arena, which is one of the substitutes for the Princess Theater at the bow of the ship. He did mostly sleight of hand tricks and some mentalist stuff. We had seen most of these illusions and tricks performed by other magicians, but still can’t figure out how they are done, and do seem quite impossible.
We wound up the night with a tour of late night dining venues. The main buffet, now called The Eatery, is opened 9:30pm to 11:30pm but with a very limited selection, while the International Cafe remains open 24hrs. Unfortunately for Ben, neither venue offered soup.
Tomorrow is a sea day to explore and enjoy all the ship has to offer.
