Sea Princess - in short quite a pleasant cruise with the best cuisine of any cruise we have been on, perfect length of 10 days away, and a great way to see Alaska for the first time!

And now, a long Alaska Size Review of our Alaska July 2010 cruise!

Embarking from San Francisco was a main reason we chose this cruise over many other Alaska options as we could drive to the ship. Being able to take a ten night cruise while using only six vacation days was a bonus as the Fourth of July Holiday was in our mix. Before leaving San Francisco Pier 33 we had lunch at Hillstones across the street: this is actually a Houston's with a different name and an excellent start of a long journey. If you need to park a car nearby, the parking structure costs $12 a day. Embarking is supposed to be between 12 and 3PM. But our friends checked in at 1030AM, had their passes, sent off their luggage aboard and they joined us for lunch. We got to the line up at 2PM and it was about 20 minutes to get us our card keys. That was longer than most other ports but tolerable. Cruises out of San Francisco are rare and the check in crew is probably not all that sharp. Our first impression of the Sea Princess is that it a nice ship, not grand nor brand new, but clean and in good shape. It has simple classic look and feel; no gothic styling no playtime colors no art deco. We had cabin Aloha 212 which is an oceanview port cabin with no balcony though with added interior space that a balcony would have occupied. The cabin is second from front just below the bridge. I really like this cabin with more desk space and sitting area. (My hunch was right that you don't use a balcony much on a cold Alaska voyage anyways.) The cabin has a 28 inch flat screen LCD with HDMI and computer inputs available. Unfortunately I did not bring any of these cables to connect our PC or video camera! The entertainment options on TV were just ok. I do not like CNN nor Spanish CNN nor BBC so I got my news from the Internet. When will cruise lines figure out why CNN has such low viewer ratings? I think they get these channels for free or lowest cost and go with it for that reason. And while the World Cup was on, this was not always on the cabin TVs but at the bars and casino. The cruise director live talk show channel is completely juvenile but at least it keeps these personalities off the public decks! The movies were decent. We prefer to stay in touch via the Internet so we bought the big package of 500 minutes for $175 and got a 40 minute bonus. Over ten days that's just under one hour a day. Since we have Internet based businesses this was not a huge cost for us and necessary. The connection was expectedly slow and uploads of our pictures to photo sharing sites while at sea was bad to impossible. Just forget about uploading videos using ship connections. The in-room wireless worked well and we did not need any instructions to sign in and log in. Logging off is 1.1.1.1 like on other ships, just remember. Using an iPad with WiFi is not a good option if that is all you have; it will disconnect annoyingly often - probably Apple's fault with version 1.0. Along the way at sea we seemingly had cell phone access but it is MCP Maritime and probably very pricey; like $7 a minute. We know of the horror stories of people getting hundreds to thousands of dollars in billings thinking they had conventional cell service. I turned off my Blackberry unless we were in port and it showed AT&T. Dining at the anytime plan we arrived the first night at 8PM and had to wait 30 minutes to get a table. That wait was only for the first night. All other times we got in right away. The maitre'd was very good at remembering our party and having a table for eight ready. We cruised with another couple and met two others whom we had dinner with every evening. The dining room offerings were excellent and among the best of all cruises in recent memory. I cannot stress how good the food was on this voyage! Plenty of quality offerings and for me, a lamb lover, a real joy. While we had great company with new friends we met, the dishes at the dining room were simply fabulous. Really. Let's see ... lamb, crawfish ettouffe, halibut, salmon, scallop pot pies, lobster, king crab, paealla, and duck breast. German themed meals, lots of Asian offerings, and many other pleasant surprises made our meals pleasurable. The head chef deserves to be complimented as this was simply the best we have ever seen! Dining at the Sterling Steakhouse is nice treat at $15 a person. I thought the steaks were a bit tough and certainly not prime. The Sea Bass was pleasantly excellent though. Booze prices are no better or worse than other cruise lines. A good quality wine such as Woodbridge Chardonnay is $20 a bottle (we get that for $5 a bottle at home.) We brought on good quality box wines with no problems and saved a lot. Read more