Glenn's Review of the Emerald Princess

 

Final thoughts from the Emerald Princess . . . .

We were docked in Port Everglades about an hour later than scheduled. If you had all your luggage you could have disembarked about 8:30AM.  We were in no rush since we are staying overnight in Fort Lauderdale and boarding the Odyssey of the Seas tomorrow.  Our luggage color and number was called at 9:15.  We were through immigration and customs by 9:30AM. Port Everglades has a Global Entry line. So if you have that service like we do, follow the signs.  The normal lines had about 50 people but only four of us in Global Entry.  

Overall, an enjoyable cruise.  The onboard experience was very good, especially considering this was the ships first revenue sailing.  Very disappointing that the Panama Canal mixup caused us to miss Bonaire.  I don't know why they could not have just skipped Aruba and kept with the original itinerary of Curacao (Tuesday) and Bonaire (Wednesday).  The captain told us it was a shoreside decision, out of his control.  

Great bar staff and bar waiters.  Because it was such a low capacity, we really got to know many of them. Such great personalities and we hope to see them on other cruises.  

The ship has the next six days off.  We heard from several of the crew that the ship was headed to Freeport, presumably to see if they can address the shaking and rattling in the aft part of the ship.  And then to Princess Cays where some or all of the crew will have a chance for a day off.  The next revenue sailing is November 6th.

We loved the live music, especially the party band Symphonee.   They played almost every night in Explorers Lounge and a few sea days they played at the Neptune Pool. The 2 Cool Duo was also fun. They had a couple of special "tribute" nights including Linda Ronstadt. If you like pianists, there were three onboard. 

The food overall was very good. The best variety was at breakfast where they almost always had some Indian and Phillipino dishes.  I had never had Pork Tacino before - and it is a new favorite. The dinner buffet also has some good Indian dishes as well as a variety of other dishes.  Lots of small tapas available at all meals,,.  Meats, cheeses, nuts, small salads and fruits in small bowls you took.   Every thing else was served to you.  A pretty good salad bar as well.  At the beginning of the cruise we ate most of our meals at the buffet because we wanted to have a nice big salad.  Those are hard to get in the MDR.  As the cruise went on, the lettuce choices became more limited so we had more dinners in the MDR.  

The Medallion App needs lots of work.  Hopefully they are working on adding much needed features such as the dining room menus and when venues are open.  The app is also clunky to use.  We gave up trying to find activities because the scrolling would not work properly or it would freeze.  Reinstalling didn't help so we reverted to the "paper app" after three days of trying to go paperless.