The Atlantic - 10/18/13

The water is noticeably rougher now that we are out on the Atlantic. Our mattress made a strange pinging noise all night. I finally fell asleep and slept late. In the morning I looked forward to a relaxing day at sea. I'd give our day only about a 60%.

Breakfast at the International Cafe was pleasant. Lunch in the Horizon Court was overwhelming. It is like a giant maze. You wander around for 10 minutes trying to see everything they have. We were in the mood for sandwiches, but we didn't see any, so we got some so-so hot food. After we ate we wandered over to the dessert area and saw people eating sandwiches and Mexican food. It turns out it was on the far side of the pastry section and we had missed it in our earlier wanderings. Lesson learned.

Our interactive TV still didn't work and we reported it again. We heard from other passengers that there had been a power surge or outage a few nights earlier, about 12:30 or 1 am, and it had blown out the server and a lot of the TVs were not working. But a lot of them were working.

I played duplicate bridge in the afternoon and Ken stood in line for 2 hours trying (unsuccessfully) to get in to see the Future Cruise Consultant. This guy didn't seem to understand that there were others waiting and spent a lot of time chatting about nothing in particular with those who had reached his desk and finished their business with him. This is typical of most of the staff on this ship. They seem very poorly trained in customer service and in how to do their jobs.

So you might ask why we were even thinking about a future cruise. I am asking myself that. In the course of 40 cruises, all with Princess, we have never considered taking another cruise line, but this cruise has really caused me to reconsider. I am going to look at this cruise as an aberration. I am going to avoid fairly new ships. I am going to avoid port-intensive itineraries. I am canceling my booking for next fall on the Regal Princess, a sister ship to the Royal and still under construction. It's not all bad, and I know for a fact that Princess can do a lot better.

We went to Shabbat services and had a chance to calm down from a hectic day of doing nothing. They had moved us to the Princess Live! venue, which worked much better than the Wedding Chapel, and someone from the ship actually showed up to make sure everything was ok. I would say that we had about 70 in attendance.

In the evening we went to see a comedian named Darrell Joyce. I thought he was very funny. More like what I have come to expect from Princess. After dinner we went to the Internet Cafe so I could talk to the internet manager, who is a pleasant, competent, and helpful person. I am still having trouble sending e-mail due to an incompatibility between GCI and the satellite system onboard, but I now have more of an idea about how to get around that problem.

While we were there was a show going on in the atrium which was quite lively, so we stayed to watch it. In the newsletter it was called "International Music Event," which didn't really do it justice. They had the band and the string quartet playing together and sounding really good. Several of the vocalists sang, and some of the ship's dancers were also there. They played a variety of music. The theme from "Zorba, the Greek" with costumed dancers was especially good. People were sitting and standing on all three levels of the atrium and everyone was enjoying it. It had more of a cabaret feeling than the shows in the theatre.