Well it's been just a smidge over a week since we returned from our cruise voyage to Alaska, the trip that was cancelled and cancelled again and finally came to pass. So this post is simply the review I wrote for Cruise Critic (and submitted several days ago, yet they still haven't published it).
And oh yeah, view the pictorial slide show on my YouTube page
June 19-29, 2022
This was a 10-day cruise roundtrip from San Francisco to Alaska, aboard the Ruby Princess. This was my 7th cruise on Princess, 17th cruise overall, but first since Covid and first on the Ruby.
We had bus transportation from our travel agent from Sacramento to the ship – it’s nice not having to worry about driving or parking (or paying for parking), nor having to worry about your luggage as once you put it next to the bus, you don’t see it again till it’s in your cabin. There was a lot of traffic on the embarcadero! The last mile took 46 minutes. Yes, I timed it. There was quite a line outside the terminal, which we had heard about from previous sailings. The Princess rep who met us at our bus just said to go towards the big Entrance sign; they seemed to be unaware there was a big line wrapped around the grassy noll (and someone even asked about that; they said they didn’t know what the line was like). This caused some confusion as people headed straight for the entrance (as they were told) and eventually had to be turned away to the big long line. We ended up spending about 90 minutes in line before we reached the terminal entrance. It’s not hot there…but being completely exposed to the sun with no seats, no water, no bathrooms, for that long had to have been a hardship for many of their elderly patrons. We finally saw that there was one portable toilet up near the front of the line, but just as my son went to go try and use it, a person came outside and padlocked it shut. Gee, thanks. About this time, someone came outside with a couple cases of water to hand out to people. We were already near the front by that time, but the line behind us had doubled and was wrapped around itself in a spiral.
Interestingly, the security and check in process went rather smoothly once inside. I looked at my notes on this same trip from 2019: the time it took back then to get through security, check in, and step aboard the ship was 14 minutes. This time, it was only 18 minutes. And that despite the fact that they were manually checking hard copies of vaccine and test records as well as your passport (not sure why this was all uploaded to the Medallion app in advance?). The line outside was the one thing different. The ship ended up leaving port 75 minutes late as well.
As we stepped on board at 1:39pm, we went first to our cabin to drop off our carry-ons (Balcony room, C714). Pleasantly surprised to find our luggage already in our closet. Our room Steward, Marco introduced himself right away. Nice guy. Unfortunately he left midway through the cruise (we heard he had a family emergency back home).
With the new technology you now watch muster/safety information on the TV. Apparently you have to be in proximity with your Medallion for it to work. Then you just have to go scan in at the Muster area. Much nicer than assembling in one place and waiting for all the stragglers. The TV system takes a little getting used to, to find everything, but it’s a pretty nice setup with large colorful menus. I’m pretty sure in the past, though, that there was kids TV programming (like Cartoon Network or simliar). There were family movies, but no TV stations with kids stuff.
I knew some ships had newer lamps with built-in USB chargers; ours did not. My parents’ room next door had a motion sensor light in the closet; ours did not work like that, but lights under the nightstands did. The ship does show a little wear for her age (2008), most notably in the metal bar along the bottom of the balcony glass, which was quite corroded with rust and missing large chunks. The automatic doors on the Lido deck were hit and miss the entire trip, and you often had to pry your way out of the buffet. The outside clocks on the Lido deck don’t really work – every single one displayed a different time and none were correct. The closest was 5 minutes off, the worst I saw was a couple hours off. I did do a load of laundry at one point, at $3 each for wash and dry. The dryers are incredibly underpowered; took three cycles ($9) to get it close to dry. Another family there mentioned the same problem, so it wasn’t just that one dryer. This was however the first cruise I’ve been on in a long time where I didn’t at some point smell sewage somewhere from plumbing problems. So, bonus on that.
Anyways, we had pizza for lunch and checked out the kids club for my son, and then had more drinks (why not? We had Princess Plus). Interestingly, on this day and for much of the cruise, waitstaff asked for cabin numbers when ordering, and wrote them down on napkins, instead of scanning Medallions. Not sure why. Sometimes bartenders at the bar would do this, even though they had mounted tablets which displayed little pictures of guests who were at the bar. Very inconsistent with the use of this new technology.
The kids club, btw, is much nicer than the one we had on the Grand in 2019 (which had just been renovated in 2016 and was still pretty nice). This one felt way more spacious, and had foosball, air hockey, ski-ball, video games, board games, and lounging areas. My son had a very positive experience with it on this trip and met lots of kids whose names he rarely knew and can’t remember. One was Ethan. One was Nolan.
Interestingly, they did one of their two production shows (Stardust) on embarkation night. Not sure why; I’m used to seeing a welcome aboard variety show with features a little bit of different things on the first night. Outside of these two shows, the other nights in the Princess theater featured a comedian/singer/impersonator, another comedian who was quite underwhelming, a ventriloquist/vocalist who was okay but his act just seemed all over the place, and several solo singer performances (I enjoyed Erwin the most just for his personality and variety of music – he’s also one of the production singers onboard). I’ve said this before – if you want a really good comedy show, try Carnival.
The first two days up north were quite windy with choppy seas and fog, kind of what you expect out of San Francisco. The forward and aft sections of the promenade were roped off these days, again as I have seen before. What’s different though is that the aft section only opened on parts of days 8 and 9 of the cruise; the rest of the time is was closed and reserved as a staff smoking and quarantine worker area. Dang it Covid! That’s a great place to watch the wake, not to mention I enjoy doing the whole promenade walk around the ship. And yes, deck 12 port side was closed off for potential quarantine victims. Not sure if or how many were beyond the fire doors.
The captain announced that there was 2507 passengers on board, which is about 85% capacity I think. I had problems by the second day accessing anything on the Medallion app – it just wouldn’t open any menu items. Someone online said we should log off and log on again – but with our cabin number not our email address. That…actually helped quite a bit. It was still a bit slow throughout the trip, but it did work. The big touchscreen monitors throughout the ship are rather nice, and can show schedules, give floorplans of decks, even locate your cabin mates. Internet outside the app was nearly as slow as it was pre-Medallionnet. Quite disappointing. Web pages would take anywhere from 30-90 seconds to load. Social media apps worked a bit better. If they can ever figure out how to increase their bandwidth, it could really be nice. On the Medallion app, browsing the menus for drink options and prices, or room service options was quite nice. And necessary, since there aren’t printed menus at the bars anymore (you can get one if you ask for it in the MDR).
You know what else they didn’t have? Long straws. All the straws onboard were short, falling about an inch short of the tall cocktail glass used for so many drinks. On the 8th day of the cruise they finally restocked them – at about the same time as the ice cream shop (named Cones) ran out of…cones.
We had dining reservations which we had made on the app months before, for the same time each night at the same table. Basically we had “traditional” dining. Not sure why they did away with that. Waiters and headwaiters we talked to all hate the new system. As our time was right when the dining room (Da Vinci) opened (5pm), there was often a line of 15-20 people when we got there. There’s a separate line that is for those with no reservation, and it was always much shorter. It did go pretty quickly, and only on the second formal night did it back up a bit more and we had to wait about 8 minutes. The backup is because they scan a medallion from each party to pull up the reservation and then see where they’re supposed to be; under traditional dining we would just walk right in as we already knew where our table was after the first night. It seemed like some people would do this anyway, and just walk past the lines and go in. Oh well.
One evening I tried ordering drinks in the piazza from the app just before dinner, just to try it. Took 14 minutes for our two drinks to arrive, which isn’t terrible, but it’s still far quicker usually to order at the bar or from a server directly. One area where servers took a big hit is the Princess theatre. There was no one serving drinks in there for the evening main shows for most of the trip. Towards the end we saw one – just one – server a couple of times. So don’t plan on ordering drinks in the Princess Theatre. You can’t deliver there from the app either.
Overall though, servers and bartenders were pretty efficient and generally plentiful enough, as was the waitstaff in the buffet in MDR. It was honestly hard to notice any deficiencies from the service received in 2019, pre-Covid. The biggest difference I saw is the pace of dining in the MDR. I think each waiter is covering more space than they used to – but what would happen is as the MDR filled up from all the different dining times people had, service would (understandably) slow way down. So that, drinks and appetizers and main courses might be gotten through in 40 minutes, and then dessert took 30-40 minutes by itself.
On our first formal night – and I know attire is a big topic on the forums – but it seemed to me that a majority of the people I saw were fairly well dressed. People still like dressing up! That morning we had breakfast in the MDR and I had eggs benedict (not always on the menu but always available). It was actually quite good. In fact, food on the trip in general was excellent, just as I remembered it from 2019. One thing I noted was at the Salty Dog grill, the street tacos weren’t quite as good as I had on the Grand in 2019. And later in the trip they took to stacking them in a bowl, for some reason, like elaborate tostadas. Supply chains still cause problems: there was no root beer on board. My son was disappointed. The International Café had no lids, and ran out of sleeves on the second day. After that they just doubled up cups.
Speaking of the International Café: here’s the thing. If you are scheduled to be doing Scenic Cruising starting at 5am (excruciatingly early btw), open of the Café earlier than 5am. (Oh yeah, it used to be 24 hours there, pre-Covid; now it’s 5am-midnight). So the line was a dozen deep at 5am, and with only one person working the coffee side, it took awhile. After a bit, a few more staff came and tried to help out, including one supervisor. They’re trying, they’re trying.
ON THE PORTS
Ketchikan was the first port. We got off early, as the ship arrived early, and as they hadn’t even announced that we were cleared to dismebark yet there was no line to get off. It sprinkled just a little this day. Did a nice walk to Creek Street and up the Married Man’s Trail, did some shopping and took my son to the Lumberjack Show. We hadn’t booked it in advance, just bought tickets through their website with my phone as I was standing there. Great show! Lots of fun for all ages. It was $37 for adults and $18.50 for children, plus taxes and fees.
In Juneau I got off the ship late as I had a business zoom meeting in the morning. But we took the tram to the top of Mount Roberts, which we had done before. Again I hadn’t booked in advance, just walked up and bought tickets. It was $75 for the both of us (I think $45 adult and $30 children; they didn’t have prices posted). It is nice that you can use it all day, so we took a second trip later, just because we could and had time, and there was no wait. Gorgeous views up there, nice hiking trails, as well as the visitor center and gift shop. And one bald eagle on display who was injured and can’t be released back to the wild. Go see the little theatre show in the center! Our host sang some traditional Tlingit songs, very cool. There was a little bit of snow up there, impacting some of the trails a little (mostly it was just a little wet and muddy).
In Skagway we walked around the town a bit and shopped some (we’d been here before several times and had done various excursions). I did a little bit of a hike up the trail towards Yakatania Point, a nice scenic walk along the coastline. Several shops in town were closed for the season already; not quite recovered from Covid I guess. What was odd here is they kept changing the disembarkation deck from Deck 6 to 7. Not because of tide; I think it was done whenever there was lots of people returning at the same time. Guess they didn’t have enough staffing to keep both open at the same time throughout the day. What was weird though was this: when they stopped letting people off at Deck 6, Deck 7 was not ready to let people off. So there was a period of time where no one could get off the ship. And a line backed up on the ship. Kind of awkward. We only had to wait about 8 minutes before they started letting people off, but I know this happened at least twice.
We sailed Endicott Arm in anticipation of seeing Dawes Glacier, but there was too much ice in the way and we couldn't get close enough to see it.
Prince Rupert was a new one for us; the trip was originally slated to go to Victoria, but they changed all of the Ruby’s trips to this port instead. I will say first that the townspeople were quite welcoming and seemed glad we were there. There were volunteer ambassador guides just off the pier and a nice visitor center with interpretive exhibits, and both had a multitude of maps and guides they were handing out. We saw two bald eagles fairly close right by the waterfront there. The town is fairly small and not terribly tourist-orientated. There’s a few shops, and one that had souvenir type items, but compared to the plethora available in Alaskan ports, it was quite small. As an example: I collect shot glasses from places I visit. In Alaskan towns there’s approximately 294 different ones to choose from. In Prince Rupert: none. Not one. Small deal, but gives you an idea of the shopping scene. They have a small one-room firefighter museum and a larger native heritage museum ($8 admission) which is in the big wooden building without any signage at all as to what’s in there. On the ship they made a big deal about bringing proof of your ArriveCan completion and your vaccine card with you, but no one anywhere asked for anything. I think there was only two tours offered through the ship, a city highlights tour and a two-mile guided walk through the rainforest. We walked on the main road out of town to the Rushbrook nature trail that runs along the coast, and the trail itself was quite nice, though the salt marsh it ended at wasn’t entirely awe inspiring. In short: cute little town, nice people, but not much of a tourist destination.
IN SUMMARY
The trip was quite nice and mostly what I remember from the quality of previous Princess trips. Weather was generally nice, gray and foggy in the mornings but sunny and clear with mild temperatures in the afternoons, pretty much everywhere we went. I would say that the food was excellent, as well as the service. It does seem they are a little short staffed in some areas, causing some slowdowns and lines here or there, but they did a great job overall. And honestly, I’ve had much bigger hiccups and longer waits come up on cruises long before Covid. I know many are wary these days about sailing in the post-Covid era, as was I, but I’m glad we took this trip. We’ll be on board again! But for right now, as my son has tested positive for Covid two days after returning home, I guess we have to quarantine…
