Sapphire Princess Review

4.5 / 5.0
1,020 reviews

Feb 2-16 2013 Hawaii - Mixed Review

Review for Hawaii Cruise on Sapphire Princess
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Cornpone Girl
6-10 Cruises • Age 70s

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Sail Date: Feb 2013

We, my husband and I, who are empty nesters now, typically cruise in Feb for our anniversary. This was the first two week cruise we have taken, with all others being one week cruises. This was my second Princess cruise and my husband's first. Our other cruises have been on Royal Caribbean, with some great and others above average. Since I like to see details in reviews, this one is a bit long, but hopefully provides helpful information, with the caveat that it is from our perspective and based on our interests.

Pre-cruise

We booked this cruise in April 2012. We had always wanted to try a stateroom on the fantail, so decided to splurge and book a Vista Suite. We had some pre-cruise challenges, starting with unreliable information about the stateroom we booked. We were told that the suite we booked had an 'obstructed view', but, neither our travel organization nor the Princess agents provided accurate information on what that meant. Both assured us that it was just a beam that blocked a little of the view from one of the two sliding glass doors. Had they told us that the beam was actually 2-3 feet wide and significantly restricted the use of our balcony, we may have decided not to pay the premium for a suite. The next challenge happened in December before the cruise. We booked our flight from the east coast to LA through Princess (E-Z Air). Fortunately, I arranged for notifications if any changes occurred, because I received notice that our nonstop flight that would have arrived in LA at 10:30 AM on the day the ship sailed (plenty of time to make the ship, even with delays), had been changed to arrive at 1:30 PM, which gave us little or no time for error. It took two days of talking to the airline and Princess, receiving inaccurate information from Princess initially. It turned out that we had to change the flight to the night before the cruise, and spend extra money for a hotel room. Princess did refund our transfer from airport to ship, provided transportation from airport to hotel and then hotel to pier the next day, and gave us a complimentary balcony champagne breakfast (which was difficult to have, due to the beam on the balcony...).

Cabin Review

Cabin VS

Full suite (Vista) on the Caribe deck (10) was not a lot bigger than the junior suites on the Allure of the Seas and other RCI ships.

'Obstructed view'from a 'support beam' blocks a little of the view from one of the two sliding glass doors, however the beam is actually 2-3 feet wide and significantly restricts the use of the balcony.

Bathroom is beautifully appointed, with with a lovely glass shower and separate Jacuzzi bathtub with room for 1 person, and Lotus spa toiletries and other products

Other amenities: refrigerator, complimentary one time mini bar set-up (airline size bottles of liquor and sodas, beer and bottled waters-spring and carbonated in the refrigerator), fresh fruit every day, beautiful flowers that lasted the entire cruise, complimentary hors d'oeuvres every night brought to our stateroom (a card is provided daily to complete your selection of hors d'oeuvres), full room service menu (whatever is being served in the dining rooms each day), dinner reservations arranged each day (they actually call every morning to arrange the reservations).

Suite is on the fantail, which means more noise from the wake of the ship when the sliding doors are open, but is like 'white noise'.

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