20251224 Wednesday, December 24, 2025. Christmas Eve at Sea

20251224 Wednesday, December 24, 2025. Christmas Eve at Sea

Getting off to an early start has its advantages.  We got up at 7:30am mostly because Ben had left the blackout drape partially open, letting daylight in.  There was no line at the Gelateria, which is directly across from Princess Live and has Gelato and espresso drinks.  The ship’s head chef and a handful of other officers were getting their day started with espresso.  While waiting for Ben’s flat white, Ben spotted a tiny little rubber duckie on top of the hand sanitizer dispenser and pointed it out to Janet, who snatched it up.  There was just one other couple in line for coffee so Ben said good morning to them, and then caught the wife in the act of placing another tiny little rubber duckie on the hand sanitizer dispenser.  She is a teacher and enjoys seeing children react to finding the duckies.  

Getting to the Eatery before 8am meant it was possible to get served pretty much right away, instead of standing in line behind a dozen or more people.  The Eatery is very poorly configured for such large crowds, and this is exacerbated by severe understaffing.  There is usually only one or at most two people dishing food at each station, and there are only about 6 or 8 stations where all the food is behind glass.  It’s impossible to get just one quick item from the middle of the station, so you have to wait for anything, except for a few items in self service cases like bowls of fruit salad or other things that are on single portion plates like donuts.  They also don’t have carrying trays, so even if you wait in the line, you can’t really carry more than one plate at a time.  

This is by far the worst “buffet” dining experience of any cruise ship that we have been on by far.  By the time we finished breakfast at 8:30am, the lines were 6-10 people long at each station.  

The waiters and busing staff are also very short staffed, so there is very slow turn over of dirty tables, and silverware is chronically unavailable.  You almost have to carry around your own set of silverware if you can find any during the busy meal times.  

Janet has also noticed that the fruit has not been of very good quality.  The melons have consistently been bad- either unripe, or on its way to sprouting mold.  

Ben has noticed it is nearly impossible to get soups because they are always at the very end of the serving sections.  Unless you are wiling to wait in the lines and skip over the 12’ of steam table length of foods you don’t want to finally get to where the soup is.  It is ridiculous they don’t have any self service food items this far after the pandemic.  None of the other Princess or Viking cruise ships we have been on since the pandemic do this.  We give the Eatery a failing grade.  

Ben, Janet and Ciara did make it to the 9:30am general trivia, but we missed several questions including what country hosted the 1982 FIFA world championship.  We got outscored by several points on that one.  

After trivia, Ben got in a workout in the fitness center, which was still packed with people at 10:15am.  He lucked out in finding a treadmill that was hidden behind a pillar, but it took a second to figure out it was set to kilometers instead of miles to set a proper pace.  The ventilation in the fitness center was overwhelmed by the crowd so it was not a comfortable run.  Janet, meanwhile, has been on a quest to collect free jewelry handouts and there have been lots of opportunities to do so on this cruise.  

The Plus fare package includes two casual dining meals so we wanted to make sure we took advantage of them.  There are only two casual dining venues on this ship- O’Malley’s Irish Pub and Alfredo’s Pizza restaurant.  The Royal/Regal Class ships also have a sushi venue that was included in the casual dining venues, but on this ship, the sushi venue is just as casual, but it is considered a real specialty dining restaurant with a $45/pp cover fee.  We had tried to coordinate to have everyone meet for lunch at noon at O’Malley’s, but only Janet, Ben, Ciara and Price turned up in time.  Sam and Tom did show up just before the venue closed (ridiculous that it is only open from 11am - 1pm).  The food was not particularly Irish, aside from having an Irish stew on the menu.  The rest was burgers, wings and generic pub fare.  The wings and onion rings were straight out of what you’d find at fast food restaurants.  It’s a good thing we had the Plus package because it would certainly not have been worth the $5 appetizer and $15 entree casual dining charge for that food.  But at least, they did bring the food to you and you didn’t have to stand in any lines or carry plates.

The ship had a special afternoon matinee acrobat show in the Princess Arena.  Janet got there early so we got good seats in the center section, but there was so much demand for seating that we ended up giving up seats that we had been saving for others who failed to show up until just before the show.  The venue was pretty much completely filled up 20 minutes before show time.  Ben, Janet, Price and Ciara did manage to sit together in the best seating area.  John and Iram ended up at the top of the arena nearly behind a structural pillar which must have obstructed parts of the stage, and Tom’s family ended up somewhere in the nosebleed seats as well.  

The acrobats, called Duo Delight, are a Ukrainian couple with incredible strength and coordination who did aerials with silks and leather straps, balancing lifts and dances.  The woman also did a lot of hula hoop tricks including spinning more than 20 simultaneously like a giant vertical slinky using her entire body, arms and legs.  The man did a hilarious whip cracking act which required an audience volunteer who was blindfolded.  The audience could see that balloons that he held at the ends of his arms were actually popped by the woman with a needle synchronized with the whip cracks, but not the volunteer.  When she then put the balloon between his legs, his response was quite hysterical.  To his credit, he did not soil himself.  In total, it was an amazing show, and we were very glad to have gotten there early enough to get good seats.  

Janet and Ben did the afternoon general trivia but got out scored by a couple of points.  It’s too bad Price was in the spa because he knew the answers to the questions we had missed including what was the name of the toy store in Toy Story 2, or which is the rarest M&M color.  

Tonight was a “Dress to Impress” night, which is basically an optional formal night, and an excuse for the ladies to put on their cocktail dresses and heels, for those who can pull that off.  We did sit for some photos after dinner, but we don’t know if we’ll bother to purchase any.  The tech on the ship is impressive though.  There are displays scattered around the ship like in the dining room waiting areas where people may end up standing for a bit.  When you get within 3-5’, it can read your medallion and display photos that the ship’s photographers have taken without any direct interaction with the display.  It is certainly more efficient than the photo galleries in other ships where you have to try to visually scan through an entire wall of small photos to find the ones with you in them.  

After dinner, there was a holiday variety show featuring the ship’s production singers and dancers.  It got off to a bit of a rocky start when the lead guitarist’s guitar wasn’t working at all.  It took about 3 numbers before the technical issues were resolved and the guitar’s sound got to the mixer and speakers.  It wasn’t a big production but it was fun.  We did have to show up a half hour before start time to get decent seats though.  

After the show everyone headed off in different directions with Tom and his dad heading for the roulette wheel and Ben and Janet to the International Cafe and Eatery.  Ben and Janet did run into John, Iram and Ciara in the Eatery so we could relax and chat a bit before turning in for bed.

Tomorrow is Christmas day in Roatan, an island off the shore of Honduras.  We are scheduled to do an ATV jungle and beach excursion.  Unfortunately, the weather forecast calls for 95% chance of precipitation, so we’re highly likely to end up soaked with both rain and mud, but it will be an adventure nonetheless.