Friday, March 29, 2024

It’s Cruise Day! Our family has been looking forward to this date for weeks. Today is the day we set sail through the Western Mediterranean on Princess Cruise Line’s newest ship, the Sun Princess. I honestly didn’t think our cruise was going to happen given how sick Andi was six weeks ago. We’ve been this close to canceling our plans many, many times. In addition, Princess cancelled the first few cruises that were suppose to set sail in mid-to-late February because the ship wasn’t ready yet. Andi and I weren’t completely sure it’d be ready for us on March 29. Nevertheless, the day is here and it seemed like all the pieces fell into place for us to be able to go.

The four of us spent the morning packing up at our rented airbnb apartment. I took care of packing our bags while Andi cleaned the kitchen and the kids took out the trash. Aden still wasn’t feeling 100% this morning, but he said he felt well enough to go on the cruise. He’s had a stomach ache on and on since last Friday. Andi tried to frighten Aden a little bit last night and this morning, saying if he was really sick the ship crew quarantine us to our state room for the entire cruise. Aden reassured us that he felt well enough to go.

Up until this very morning, I still didn’t believe we were actually getting on the Sun Princess, but at 9:15am the car Andi arranged for us arrived at our airbnb apartment to pick us up and take us to the cruise port. It looked like the cruise was actually happening for us!

Andi read that getting taxis to take passengers to the Rome Cruise Terminal at Civitavecchia is quite a challenge because it’s about an hour outside the city centre. Not only would that be an expensive taxi ride, but taxi drivers don’t like going because there isn’t anyone to pick up for a return ride. Today was Good Friday which added to the logistics. Rome is especially busy this weekend with the Easter holiday.

The car Andi hired to pick us up and drive us to the Rome Cruise Terminal was a black transfer van with seats facing one another. I don’t know why, but the kids think this is such a novelty. “Why don’t they have cars like this in the USA?” they both asked excitedly. I kept a ziploc bag next to Aden just in case he got sick on the drive, but he reassured me he felt fine this morning and wouldn’t be needing it. We arrived at the cruise port terminal at 10:30am — just in time for our 11:00am ship check-in.

It still floors me that our family enjoys this mode of travel so much. We are not all-inclusive people, luxury travelers, or a family that enjoys vacationing with other people. That said, all four of us were looking forward to being pampered a little bit after two months of traveling through Morocco, Spain, and Portugal. We purposefully planned to take this cruise at the end of our travels as a “treat” to ourselves. Andi said he was looking forward to eating whatever and whenever he wanted. Aden and Tory were most excited for the kids activities on the ship, and I was looking forward to not packing and unpacking our bags so often. For the next 10 days, we wouldn’t have to think about travel logistics, what we were going to eat, or how we’d spend our days — everything would be taken care of for us. The icing on the cake was that we’d get to see a few more places in Spain, France, and Italy.

All four of us were so impressed how smoothly the check-in process was for the Sun Princess. Our call time was between 11:00am - 1:00pm, so we walked up to the security checkpoint at 11:00am, scanned our bags, and waited for about 15 minutes outside the boarding doors. The cruise line called groups of people rather quickly for their turn to board the ship. Since we aren’t traveling with much, we walked directly onto the ship with our luggage, and were in our stateroom before Noon.

We’ve never cruised with Princess before, but something new on this ship is the use of medallions as room keys. The magnetic circular trackers not only get us into our state room, but are also how we pay for food and check into & off the ship everyday. There’s even a Princess app that allows us to track where our shipmates’ location on the ship using the medallion technology. Andi picked out special medallions for the kids when he signed us up for our cruise, and paid $10 each for special medallion watchbands for them to wear. Tory and Aden were so surprised and excited!

Last year was our family’s first time on a cruise, and we used Celebrity Cruises to travel around the southern tip of South America from Buenos Aires, Argentina to Valparaíso, Chile. We aren’t particular loyal to Celebrity because we’ve never had any other experience, but we really enjoyed our time on that ship. It will be interesting this week to see how the two companies compare.

Last year, we booked the most economical rooming option on Celebrity which had our family in two interior conjoined staterooms. We honestly didn’t mind not having windows in our room, especially given how turbulent the seas were on that South American cruise. It was also nice having two bathrooms and a little more space for the four of us to spread out.

The best cruise deal Andi found when booking with Princess was for a balcony stateroom with a bunk bed. This means that all four of us are staying in the same stateroom together this week. The housekeeper will transform the sofa into a bed each evening, and another twin bed pulls out of the ceiling. I’m thankful I don’t have to do the work of making up beds every day!

The staterooms on the Sun Princess are super nice & new. This ship has only had three other sailings besides ours. Our room is not large, but it has everything we need including an attached bathroom with a shower, a balcony, and plenty of storage.

When Andi signed up for our cruise in December, the promotion included the Plus package for two people in our party. This gives Andi and I all-inclusive drinks and free wi-fi. Tory and Aden have been going back and forth for months deciding whether it was worth the money to buy the non-alcoholic drink package for themselves, going as far as putting together a Powerpoint presentation for Andi as to why they deserved the package. He offered to split the cost with the kids, but in the end, they decided it wasn’t worth paying $110/child for the package. If they wanted a soda, they’d pay individually for the drink themselves. (Lemonade, tea, and water are included in the base price package of the cruise, but anything else like soda or bottled water is considered a premium beverage).

Well, the excitement of the cruise had Andi feeling generous today. “Should we treat the kids to the drink package?” he asked me in front of the kids as we settled into our stateroom. “I think they’ve both been pretty good travelers the past two months, don’t you?”

The kids were overjoyed when Andi called Guest Services and not only upgraded the kids’ drink packages, but upgraded he and I to the Princess Premier package which allows us to have 4 devices on wi-fi. That meant that Tory and Aden also got wi-fi access for their iPhones during our 10-day cruise.

As soon as the four of us settled into our rooms, we set out to explore the ship and get something to eat for lunch. This ship is massive with 18 decks! We located ourselves to The Eatery on Deck 9 which is Sun Princess’ newly designed buffet. Right away, I was impressed by the well-thought-out layout with handwashing sinks at the entrance and contact-less food stations. There have been a lot of complaints about this on the Sun Princess Facebook group as people do not like that they can’t serve themselves at the buffet, but it’s definitely much more sanitary.

The Eatery wasn’t busy at all as many passengers were still boarding the ship. Tory and I went for the Mexican station right away and found chicken burritos, chips, and guacamole. I also got a salad. Andi and Aden went for the Asian station and returned to our table with beef & broccoli and rice. The food quality was really good! We were pleased with the selection and the variety.

Aden didn’t eat much at lunch and still didn’t seem 100%. He asked if we could go back to our stateroom for a little while after lunch to lay down. We all agreed to do so. Our room was so nice with comfy beds and a big TV. It felt like a treat just to lay down and relax there for a while!

As part of the Premier package, we also get free room service 24/7, so we decided to test it out and order something from the Princess app to be delivered. A few minutes after ordering, a plate of french fries, a Diet Coke, a glass of tequila on the rocks, and a glass of red wine showed up to our room. Whoa! Was that ever convenient?! Feeling the power and excitement, we ordered more fries, a hot dog for Aden, two more glasses of wine, and another glass of liquor for Andi. We were going to get plenty of use out of room service the next week.

Around 5:00pm, the captain came over the loudspeaker welcoming guests to the ship and announcing our departure from Rome. We began to set sail shortly thereafter.

Andi and I decided on the Horizons Dining Room for dinner. There are two levels to this main dining room which is included in our cruise package. Andi and I both ordered the roasted chicken for our meals, and it was excellent — likely some of the best chicken we’ve eaten in all of our two months of travels. Tory ordered macaroni and cheese for her entree, and Aden said he wasn’t hungry since he’d just eaten two hot dogs from room service.

One of the best things about cruising is the service. Our waiters were so attentive and friendly, and everyone speaks English which is a nice change of pace. Andi said his favorite part of cruising is that we can just get up after a meal — no need to pay the check — and the meal doesn’t take two hours from start to finish. There’s actually a place to mark in our profile under ‘preferences’ whether we like having slower or quicker meal service. All of our meals in Spain and Portugal were so drawn out, and having coffee after the meal is culturally expected. We always have to ask for the check when we’re finished eating; it’s never brought to the table. Being on the cruise will be nice the next 10 days to eat what we want, when we want, and without a lot of hoopla.

After dinner, the four of us walked around the ship checking out all the entertainment. There was a Port or Starboard trivia game happening in the main piazza on Deck 7. In the game, contestants moved to one side of the room, or the other, siding with answers posted on the screen. While Andi went to the bathroom, Tory, Aden, and I decided to play. Surprisingly, we knew a lot of the answers to the questions because of our travels! Tory and Aden were the last two remaining contestants. The cruise director asked them a tie-breaker question — what is the most expensive ice cream in the world, and Tory won a pair of Princess Cruises socks. She was pretty excited.

While we were out, we also stopped by the Tween Club called Neon Grove to sign Tory and Aden up for access to the room. Different than the Celebrity ship we were on last year, Sun Princess has three different rooms for kids based on their ages. Neon Grove is only for tweens ages 8-12. Andi and I were glad to see there’s over 200 kids on this ship and 100 of those are between the ages of 8-12. A lot of the kids seem to be from the United Kingdom as this cruise is during their Spring Break holiday.

After the game, we made our way to the Princess Arena for the evening show. It happened to be a musical artist named David Meyer who played a modern xylophone. The show was just OK — we didn’t have the best seats on the side of the circular arena, so we couldn’t see what he was playing very well.

Around 9:30pm, the four of us returned to our stateroom to find the bunk bed all set up for the kids. We watched a few episodes of How I Met Your Mother on the ship TV offerings before calling it a night.