My itinerary was unimportant for this voyage, but I will tell you briefly what I did.
I did a 3-night cruise for travel agents and press that had a day at sea and a day in Nassau. I never disembarked, as the purpose was to evaluate and check out the ship. I had an opportunity to view many different cabins during this voyage, and the photos are in this album:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1060355816094939&type=3
I followed that up with the 5-night “North American Inaugural” voyage for the general public, so I was able to be onboard for 8 straight nights. This 10/14/2024 5-night went to Amber Cove, DR and Grand Turk of the Turks and Caicos with a couple sea days.
On this one I made it my goal to try as many as the new restaurants as possible.
GENERAL ADVICE:
If ever you were going to upgrade yourselves to Princess Premiere, THIS is the ship to do it on.
The “Premiere Seating” in the showroom was priceless. The Princess Arena, or main showroom, holds only 900+ guests on a ship that contains 4,000+. The Premiere section is expansive, and not full. You can get a seat for the main shows without issue if you have Premiere. “Priceless”
Here is a link to what the Premiere level perks includes.
https://www.princess.com/cruise-deals-promotions/plus-premier-cruise-packages/
DISCUSSION about cabins:
The cabins are the singular best feature of this ship – nearly all the types. There are no regular balconies on this ship, only Deluxe Balconies. But they’re larger and better laid out than the Deluxe Balconies on the other ships. And they all have large rectangular showers with doors… no curtains unless you purposely pick an accessible cabin with special bathrooms.
There is a big difference on the BALCONY SIZES though, so pick carefully, or call someone from my agency to help you book.
If you’ve got access to a deck plan, note that my 3-day cruise was in cabin 10246, which was a Deluxe Balcony Category DB mid-forward on the ship. Note the SIZE of the balcony. Being straight up from the “Cabana Deck” cabins meant my actual balcony was a large rectangle the size of their cabanas.
I loved this cabin!
My second voyage was a mini-suite, because that’s my preferred cabin type on all Princess vessels.
The mini-suite was an extra long version of the balcony. The bedroom and couch section of the cabin seemed really similar, but the closet WAS bigger in the mini. The bathroom was longer as well though, and that’s where I think the mini-suite still is my favorite. The bathroom had the same general layout, but I could definitely feel a bit more space in the shower.
I had cabin 15446 though, and note how TINY this balcony was in the mid-aft part of the ship! All of the regular mini-suites have this shallow balcony. It’s probably still larger than the Royal-Class ship balconies, but it’s crazy that we got long cabins and tiny balconies on this cabin type on the Sun Princess.
One of my friends traveling with me got a Cabana Mini-Suite, a new type of cabin for this ship. He called the Cabana section of his room the ‘hot box’, as we were in the Caribbean and there is no heat / AC in the Cabana section of the cabin as it was prepped, and the doors were closed. It would probably air out well if you opened the balcony to Cabana door as the ship moved, but I don’t know if he ever did.
There are a lot of Cabana Mini-Suites on this ship, so they really went all in with this new concept. If you book one of the ones on Deck 9, the C1 category, where your Cabana Mini-Suite actually has the ability to walk out into the private “Cabana Deck” it would be weird I think. You wouldn’t have any privacy. And you also wouldn’t have a view of the water. You’re looking straight out onto the deep front to back deck, and you don’t have an angle down to the water.
They have Cabana Mini-Suites on many decks, so if you want the FEATURE of a cabin, then a Cabana, then your balcony – with your balcony actually having a water view, I’d say book a CA cabin in the middle of the glass Sphere in the middle of the ship. Those are pretty cool. My friend had 10502 and his view down from his balcony wasn’t impressive. He was looking at the roof of the Promenade Grill eating area – a big white expanse of room directly down, and then water beyond that.
Everyone who books a Cabana Mini-Suite, regardless of the location, has access to the “Cabana Decks” which are private sun areas both port and starboard in the middle of the ship. There are beautiful deck chairs there and a private jacuzzi spa AND a few areas of shade if you get on the correct side of the ship for time of day. I think the Cabana cabins would be worthwhile to have NOT for the Cabana itself, but for access to the pretty private and less often used Cabana Decks.
DINING:
This ship has two ‘experiences’ that include dining, and then a bunch of new Specialty Dining options.
SPELLBOUND was the best dining/entertainment thing on the ship. It’s a combo of dinner and magic, but you get to hang out all evening in an enchanted bar that has very unique and special drinks. It’s kinda like being able to hang out in Disney’s Haunted Mansion, with lots of things to see and experience.
The cost is $149 per person, and it’s labeled as an “experience” and not just a Specialty Dining thing. Premiere doesn’t count towards it. THE KEY is that you can book Spellbound as soon as you PAY IN FULL. So, pay your Sun Princess cruises as early as possible so you can reserve it. It has two seatings each night they offer it, and each one was about 48 people.
Our reservation was for 6:30p, but right before dinner we got a paper invitation slipped under our door that said dinner started at 6:15pm, so we had to hustle to get ready in time. The dining part of the experience is in it’s own private themed room in the back right corner of the Deck 8 main dining room. The magic is in a special room off the atrium, and a magician escorts you there after dinner in groups of 12.
LOVE BY BRITTO was the other experience, but I didn’t have enough days in my cruise to experience that one. It costs $79 per person I believe, and all the food is heart shaped or something like that. I heard feedback that they didn’t give enough quantity of food. I can’t say, but, hey, you can get food 24/7 at the International Café, so you’re not going to starve!
All of the regular Specialty Dining costs $45 per person, prepay, right now.
THE CATCH BY RUDI is absolutely worth going to if you like seafood. It was the best of the specialty dining options by far.
UMAI TEPPANYAKI –
This is actually two separate meal type options in one restaurant.
There are the Teppanyaki Grills, which is like going to Benihana stateside. AGAIN, they modified our reservation time slightly, but we noticed in the app. They seated ALL of the Teppanyaki grills at the same time, two seatings. The food wasn’t very good, and service was slow.
The Hot Pot experience was along the outer edge of the restaurant, and that was INCREDIBLE according to my friends who tried it.
THE BUTCHER’S BLOCK BY DARIO is weird, even if you love meat like me. It was literally all meat except for some celery and carrot sticks you get at the start, and a baked potato in the middle of the meal.
First, everyone eats in massive ‘seatings’, so on my voyage they moved all diners to a 7pm dinner, even though we’d reserved an earlier one in our apps. THAT was irritating, that they seemed to be able to changed your reservation time at will.
Second, they have everyone stand around the front and the chef in charge holds of big hunks of meat and explains what you’re going to get. Then the maitre’d seats all the diners by the size of your group. Then after that you get a waiter assigned, and they come around with big platters of each course, with the waiter serving it to you. Service was VERY slow. There was not enough staff for that much hand-holding. The first two courses were cold (tartare and capriccio), then three hot ones. And dessert was something they wanted you to eat with your hands, but we saw it happening on other tables and saved our forks.
CROWN GRILL steakhouse is something to avoid right now.
When Sun Princess was launched, the Crown Grill was in a physical location that was smallish, but the kitchen was designed with a huge grill, knowing it was all about the steaks.
During MY 3-day voyage 10/11/24 – 10/14/24, they ran around the ship and changed the signs on a bunch of venues, moving the Crown Grill into a larger venue that was originally meant to be the Suites Restaurant, before the announcement of the Sanctuary Collection (details below).
They said they did this ‘rearranging’ of restaurant names on physical venues so they could meet the demand on some restaurants, which was high, like Crown Grill… and put less popular restaurants in smaller spaces. That’s a fine idea EXCEPT the square feet of the grill in the new venue is HALF of what Crown Grill originally had it it’s original space AND they have more diners in the new space!
I heard multiple comments about super slow service and cold food. Until they figure something out about the Crown Grill, that shouldn’t be somewhere to go. Steaks were great in the main dining room.
I didn’t go to Makato Ocean, as I don’t like sushi. And I didn’t go to Sabatini’s Italian. I heard nothing bad about either of them though, so they might be good choices if you bought Premiere and want to try them. I was only on a 5-night cruise, so I had Sanctuary, Spellbound, Butcher’s Block, Teppanyaki and The Catch.
FOOD FINANCES – Note that if you have Premiere, you’re supposed to get some free Specialty Dining. If you have the ‘old’ Premiere you have two nights. If you nave the ‘new’ version, you have unlimited. Regardless of the type, you’ll have to put your credit card in the app to make the reservation pre-cruise and have faith that Princess won’t charge you. Do your reservations in the app, but then CHECK YOUR CREDIT CARD statement so you can be sure what you did and did not pay for before you board. If you paid for something you shouldn't have, ask them onboard to give you a credit back for it.
I had the ‘old’ premiere, so they didn’t charge my card for the first two I reserved…. Even though it looked like I was authorizing them to charge my card as I did the reservations.
ALSO, if you DON’T have Premiere, but you’ve just decided to buy a Specialty Dining night once you get on the ship, expect some sort of service charge to possibly be charged. This did NOT happen to me, because I had Premiere. I heard some guests mentioning a small additional service charge.
Note too that some localities (states or cities) you’re sailing from may charge you ‘tax’ on free drinks from your drink package while you’re still in their waters. This happened to me in Florida AND also Seattle this year. So, if you see some small charges from the bars and restaurants on your folio, know they’re legitimate charges and no need for you to argue with Princess about them.
CASUAL DINING – two of these included in Princess Plus packages, and this ship had exactly two, so I tried both.
THE PUB on Deck 7 had traditional Irish Pub Food, and was only open for lunch on sea days. The hours weren’t long enough for the crush of guests who wanted to try it. If you want to give it a go, arrive when they open. We saw it closed at 1:30 so we showed up at 1pm for lunch, waited for a table, ordered, and waited AN HOUR for food to come, so it was already 2pm by the time we ate. I don’t know what the deal with that was. My fish of the fish and chips was REALLY great. Others ordered different things on the menu and they weren’t very hot. I’m guessing theirs were prepped waiting for my fish to be cooked fresh and hot. Lucky for me!
One excuse I heard about the slow service was that that staff was confused and learning the ropes of the ‘new locations’ of the restaurants. I also know that a TON of new crew embarked the same day I did, 10/11/24 as the ship got to Florida. I think they’ll get their groove on once they’ve been together longer. Our cruise was rough.
The Second Casual Dining option was ALFREDO'S PIZZA. I was really disappointed here that you had to order things off the menu. There was no ‘create your own’ pizza toppings option. And they had NO pineapple to make Hawaiian they said. The service was good and the food tasted fine, but other pizza on the ship was better. Try this one if you want NON pizza – a calzone maybe?
When you do the casual dining and you’re using the credit you get in your Princess Plus or Premiere packages, you get an app, an entrée and a dessert.
THE EATERY is the name of the free cafeteria style restaurant on this ship, on Deck 9 aft. It’s NOT a buffet, per se, because you can’t grab food yourself. It’s all point and ask a server. This causes worse lines, but the food is OK. They do stations of different types of food, and it changes all the time. When The Eatery is closed, all the digital signs say The Eatery, so it’s hard to plan your attack for when you go. There are different food types on each side, so scope it all out before committing.
One great thing they did was at the end of The Eatery closest to the atrium on the Starboard side, they always had a section of food in ‘to go’ containers you could just grab and take to your room or the pool or the atrium, etc.
The best casual food on the ship is nearby The Eatery though. From The Eatery, look for signs to take you OUTSIDE onto the Promenade Deck. Out the port side is a really fabulous burger joint. Best burgers on the ship at the Promenade Grill. And on the Starboard, best Pizza at Slice on Promenade. They have three pizzas by the slice that are available every day, and then a 4th option that rotates daily. I love Hawaiian, so that was only offered on select days at Slice.
AMERICANA RESTAURANT – This venue is supposed to give you an old type Americana feel, but service and food were poor when I tried it. It’s a free restaurant, but avoid it. It used to be elsewhere on the ship, but they moved it here and took away some of The Eatery’s space. Wish they’d just kept The Eatery larger and less crowded, and got rid of Americana.
GELATO / Pay extra ice cream – On my initial cruise I went to a presentation where we were introduced to all of the celebrity chefs. They have a partnership with Tyra Banks, the former super model, who has a brand called Smize & Dream gelato. That stuff is INCREDIBLE.
You can pay for different flavors and scoops of it down on Deck 7 across from Princess Live! OR you can get it in vanilla up at the ice cream venue by the pool. The pool deck one is where you can get “premium desserts” that come in the Princess Plus and Premiere packages. The massive sundaes you get up there are crazy big BUT you COULD just go up there and ask them to make you a smaller something for your ‘two per day’ premium dessert just so you can have some of this gelato. YUM!
If you buy it in the little pre-made cups with a lid at the Deck 7 place, you’d get a ‘surprise’ of some sort in the center (piece of chocolate or cake for example). They normally serve you from a big chilled vat they scoop though, so you never get the little surprise doing it that way. During my ‘preview’ cruise, they served us the little cups.
SANCTUARY COLLECTION:
https://www.princess.com/en-us/ships-and-experience/onboard-experience/sanctuary-collection
Most cruise lines have perks for guests in ‘full suites’. Princess did something a bit different, and that is they created the Sanctuary Collection where all guests in the big suites AND select Sanctuary Mini-Suites and Sanctuary Deluxe Balconies would be included in the Sanctuary Collection.
ALL guests in the Sanctuary Collection cabins can eat in the Sanctuary Dining room – which is the main dining room on the aft of Deck 8. This is why they included the Minis and the Deluxe Balconies, so that if a multi-cabin family were sailing together everyone could be booked in the Sanctuary Collection cabins and everyone could eat together.
The Sanctuary Collection restaurant has a few perks that are a bit better than the regular dining rooms below it, but not THAT much different. It is open for breakfast and dinner every day, lunch on sea days. It’s not open LATE ENOUGH for breakfast, only 9:30am, so that causes a crush in demand right around breakfast closing time. All of you whose bodies are already on the proper time zone when you sail, 9:30am may not be that big of a deal. Those of us that are still adjusting to another time zone, or like to stay up late, it’s a challenge.
ALL different Sanctuary Collections guests 16+ also get access to the private Sanctuary Club, which is a private section of pool deck, with really nice loungers, a pool and NO SHADE. Whomever thought this up wasn’t thinking clearly. Also, I hear there was only one massive accessible restroom / changing room for boys or girls, with big lines. If you thought you were going to book this and spend a lot of time in the Club, then maybe a high deck cabin where you could whisk yourself down to the stateroom restroom would be good? One of my clients had a Deck 17 cabin and she did this.
There is also a beautiful Suite Lounge. I HEARD that you had to be in one of the big suites to gain access into the Lounge, so I never tried it. I really should have, because that’s hearsay by me. That means Sanctuary Mini-Suites and Sanctuary Deluxe Balcony guests would NOT be able to use this facility. It had a lot of nice stuff in there, right on the aft, two stories with great views.
I believe you’ll have two very different groups of people coming off this ship who had been in the Sanctuary – If you had a big suite, and you were able to use the Lounge, you probably think the Sanctuary Class experience is great.
If you’re like me and had a Sanctuary Mini-Suite, you may think it’s not worth all the fuss.
And on full disclosure, I had a REGULAR mini-suite, but paid for Premiere because I knew I wanted to try lots of the specialty dining new options, and I got a complimentary upgrade into the Sanctuary Class Mini-Suite. They’re the exact same cabin layout, it’s just that Sanctuary version was on a higher deck and had a couple extra amenities. There is a fancy Sanctuary Collection tote bag, fancier slippers for both guests, free flip flops for both guests, and ONE luggage tag that says Sanctuary Collection.
ENTERTAINMENT:
This new ship has a lot of unique venues / different types of entertainment.
“The Arena” is the main showroom, and, as expected, there are multiple production shows with the singers and dancers, as well as guest entertainers that are really good. My favorite production show was “Viva La Musica”, but the others were good too.
They also do multiple different Cirque-like shows up in “The Dome”. This is the glass bubble you see at the top of the ship in the photos. I saw the version called Blue in my first cruise, which was really good. I’m not sure how the heck you get a seat there during a normal cruise, because THAT venue has only 240 or so seats. I never went up there during my second cruise to see if some seats were marked off for Premiere folks or not.
Another option this ship has that others don’t is that they actually created SEATING around the atrium on all three levels, and the center of the infrastructure of the top can hold long aerialist’s fabric. So, I saw some performers practicing there one day (with everyone watching), but they do have a named Cirque like ‘show’ that goes on there as well on some nights. I never watched it, because I had all those dinners that had their times adjusted, and I went to The Arena most nights that I actually did see a show.
Of course they have other ‘entertainment’ games like Deal or No Deal, Yes and No game, etc. that are held in either the Atirum or Princess Live!
I was sad they took the Texas Hold’em Poker table out of the casino. I heard from a staff member that Princess plans to slowly take it off all ships. Since that is one of my favorite things to do while cruising, I was quite bummed and didn’t spend time in the casino like I normally do.
NO MORE SANCTUARY FOR THE GENERAL PUBLIC –
Because they have Sanctuary CLASS, this ship type doesn’t have the “Sanctuary” quiet, kid-free area that their other ships have. There is no such place you can ‘buy’ a pass. If that’s your thing, be forewarned there is no option for you. There is a nice bar and a small pool up high and forward, but it’s not shaded and no guarantee it will be kid-free.
QUIRKY layout things you should know:
Like other Princess ships, there are three dining rooms on the aft of the ship, and one of them is on Deck 6 – Soleil. You can’t get to Soleil EXCEPT by taking the aft stairs or elevators to go down to it. Like the Grand Class ships, I call this dining room on Deck six ‘the dining room down in the hole’. The reason for this, of course, is that the massive kitchen / galley is on Deck 6 and it blocks you from transiting fore and aft on Deck 6. This also makes Soleil a lot less crowded for anytime you’re just walking up though!
I know Princess’ plan is to have a dining room for reservations and a dining room for ‘walking up’ and another for those that want traditional seating. I’m not sure how they’re going to accomplish that on Sun Princess now that they’ve turned the third one into the “Sanctuary Collection” dining room. Time will tell.
Another weird thing about this quirk – If you happen to have an inside or a Cove Balcony CABIN on Deck 6 in the high 6400’s or in the 6500’s, you will ALWAYS have to go out of your cabin towards the amidships stairs and elevators to get anywhere. You can’t access the aft stairs and elevators from the passenger deck – because you can’t walk through that same galley. I think it would be frustrating. Having a cabin on Deck 6 mid to forward would be no big deal.
Unrelated, but also on Deck 6 at the forward elevator lobby, is Guest Services. Whomever decided on this design layout needs to have their head examined.
Instead of having guest services in a larger area, with room for people to line up, and also room for them to have an Elite/Suite separate line, they have a funky little round room for Guest Services. Because the room is round, with a massive pillar flower arrangement in the center, there is no room for people to queue up in there. Instead, people line up at the entry to the hot little room and extend from there. That means, whenever Guest Services is in high demand, there is a lineup straight down the center of the forward elevator lobby. Then, if you’re trying to use the elevators, it’s confusing as to why there are so many people there.
It's SO disorganized. There is one desk with an ELITE sign above it, but there is no indication as to what you’re supposed to do when you are Elite. One time I walked in and stood in line for that specific desk, within the round room. Another time I was told to get in the big line, and that someone would come out to the LINE to look for Elites. That never happened. Nobody comes out specifically asking for Elites, so the plan to go stand in the room was better.
I can say that staff DOES come out to the line with iPads attempting to assist those that simply have a non-functioning Medallion or something easy.
I know the Sun Princess will become better as the crew gets experience with one another. And the twin sister ship, the Star Princess will have improvements from what Princess Cruises has learned from the Sun Princess.
If you would like assistance in booking the Sun Princess, please ‘contact us’ at the top of this page.
Thank you! ~Suzy Cruisy