Hi folks,
Back from my very first cruise after months of reading threads/reviews and planning. Our family of five spent 11 days on Emerald Princess doing a South Pacific circuit. Whilst I had convinced myself that I would instantly become a cruise addict, I did not. We had many enjoyable moments on the ship but also many moments where I sought the cool sanctuary of my small interior cabin to escape the heat, the crowds, the 'busyness' of cruising
We spent one night pre-cruise at the YHA The Rocks after flying in from Wellington the day before. We loved the YHA, such a great place to stay, basic but clean accommodation for our family, a very large lounge lobby area with free wifi, clean communal kitchen and a rootop with a view looking directly out to the harbour. We arrived with the Radiance in port. She looked lovely. We missed her departure but had a cheap and delicious meal at the YHA. The next morning I woke up early hoping to catch our ship coming in but was too late and when I arrived at the roof top, there she was, such a glorious sight. We were a bit stunned over her size, We skipped breakfast, repacked our bags, I did a load of washing (this was to become a daily chore for me) at the hostel and then checked out. Dragging our bags down to OPT (an easy walk) we spent the next two hours wondering around circular quay. Some went off in different directions but we found some amusement at the Contemporary Art Museum.....some really bizzare art pieces that we still find ourselves laughing about and then an entertaining street juggler/unicycle performer that amused us for 45 minutes under a hot Sydney sun.
We watched passengers coming off the Emerald their cruise over whilst ours was about to begin. It was exciting.
Embarkation on Emerald was very quick. We bag dropped very early and the quick and efficient bag drop crews had whipped the unfolded luggage tags from my hand and seconds later had secured them onto the bags before I had figured out which part of the page to fold first. The only hold up for us were our Kiwi passports which had to be entered manually and so took around 15-20 minutes for our group of five. We took our first group picture with the Emerald as the backdrop as we made our way aboard. Wow we had finally arrived, after journeying with pescadoamarillo for days, weeks, months on the Emerald, we were actually there, being welcomed aboard.
After navigating our way to our room we inspected the cosy interior cabin at the aft end of Aloha deck and then inspected the twin cabin one over which housed our teen boys. It was slightly larger than I had expected and the bathroom was compact but fine for us and loads of space for our stuff. Ok I will admit that we overpacked, even after reading advice repeatedly telling us NOT to take so much stuff, the advice to pack your bag and then only take 1/3 of that is spot on. I basically lived in two shorts and two t-shirts for most of the cruise.
I loved our cabin location, initially I had booked aft on Caribe but then changed to aft on Aloha, got the cabin next to the lift but wasn't bothered by the small amount of noise from it, in fact I never noticed any noise and thought the small shaking and rumbling I felt just part of the normal ship noise, somebody a whole lot smarter than me i.e. hubby figured out it was the lifts but the noise really was minimal and didn't effect sleep quality. Two levels up and we were in the horizon court buffet, so handy. We were confused by the layout forward where you had to go from 7 to get to 6 and 5. I loved walking along the promenade outside after dinner at night, the ocean, the breeze...magnificent.
There were a lot of children and young adults on board including my own age 14, 16, 18 but I did not notice any being unruly or rude at all.
Tender service for me was fine except for Champagne Bay where the pier could only support one tender at a time. We did not realise this and if we had known before hand we would have made sure to be up early on the first tender instead of the mid-morning one where we waited around 2 hours for transport to Champagne Bay.
I suffered from 'ship shock' the first two days and felt terribly crowded, however it wasn't until we were off Emerald on one of the port stops where we could see the huge numbers getting on and off that I could appreciate that the 'crowds' I felt on the first two days were but a fraction of the total passenger count. The ship is big so people seemed to spread themselves out quite comfortably although some areas remained congested i.e. the IC and the buffet at peak times.
Both my husband and I felt a bit 'off' most of the time, not sick exactly but not 100%....certainly nothing that stopped us availing ourselves of the many opportunities to eat, eat and eat some more. We enjoyed dining in the MDR with our kids every evening and lunch was usually at the Trident Grill or the buffet. The menu changed daily although the everyday favourites were available too, we loved the salmon and the pasta dish. Our favourite menu was the Italian one where most of the staff dressed in some sort of Italian outfit for the whole day comprising a long-sleeved knitted jersey which I thought would be most uncomfortable for them to wear in the heat...and boy was it hot. We loved our dinners at the MDR, we never had to wait more than 5 minutes to be seated and even though our waiters changed every night we had great service all the time.
We got a soda package for four of us and our 18 year old availed himself of the all inclusive. We easily got value out of the soda package but not sure if our son managed to drink enough to break even, not a bad thing. Bar service was generally pretty quick and efficient but either I was unimaginative or the mocktail menu limited because I really only found one drink I really liked which was the Key West Cooler, had heaps of those.
We were completely zonked by around 9pm each night so didn't make it to most of the shows although we did catch "Magic To Do" which I fell asleep in and which my family didn't warm to. I missed a whole different aspect of the ship at night because I couldn't keep myself awake. However I did experience early morning Emerald Princess and that was lovely, up at 5.15am to watch the wake or sunrise and have a quiet breakfast by myself at Café Caribe reading my book. I then had second breakfast when the rest of my family woke up and sometimes third breakfast too.
Pizza was yum, big thumbs up. Towards the end of the cruise I discovered their delicious granola which was perfect with hot milk and their soft serve ice cream was surprisingly good, I enjoyed that more than the ice cream at the IC. Food was plentiful, we ate far far too much. The buffet was ok, not great, but not bad either. We never made it to afternoon tea, we were so full and we had breakfast a couple of times in the MDR which was also good.
We found much of the activities e.g. trivia, quiz, and others not to our taste. We found overall the Princess entertainment not quite suited to us, we didn't like the live band or the music in general being played at the bars, however I did enjoy the violinist playing in the Piazza. My husband was annoyed at the frequent 'sales pitch' dressed up as seminars held every day.
MUTs was great even though we only managed to watch one night movie.
We found the pools quite crowded during the day and the best time to swim was early in the morning, we enjoyed the port days more than the sea days and by day 9 of our 11 day cruise we were all ready to come home......we missed our cat! We loved our port stops, Lifou was great, a beautiful island. We snorkelled at Jinek bay for around an hour and a bit and then slogged our way to the cave pool with my kids mumbling 'it better be worth it' to me in the sticky heat....well it was worth it. I don't get some people complaining about the small fee you pay to go there, we paid $30 pp for the snorkelling and the cave....if you were to take a tour to do the same thing on another island it would most likely cost at least triple that amount. The cave was amazing, so cool and refreshing, we loved it. We had an independent tour to Escapade Island in Noumea but the highlight of that tour for us was the great buffet lunch, snorkelling was pretty average and then stupidly my son got some sea urchin spines stuck in his foot so we caught an early ferry back to the wharf and then walked a short 10-15 minutes back to the main terminal and to the ship where we waited another couple of hours for the doctor. Son was treated by a paramedic who was able to extract most of the spines from my son's foot and get this.... not charged, not sure how we got away with it.
We missed Mystery Island because it was too rough, I was so disappointed I spent three hours in my room sulking before I ventured out. Our favourite port was Vila, and took a great tour doing the cultural show, water falls and blue hole swimming, topped off with some incredibly cheap duty free shopping, fantastic. Champagne Bay was the most beautiful beach I have ever seen, even with hundreds of people packed into it. I wish we could have arrived early as then we could have taken a few tours.
Our room steward Wong was great, friendly and very hard working especially cleaning my teen boys room, my son complained that she shoved all his clothes left lying around under the bed....I just laughed, that's what you get. I washed a load of washing every day, not a chore for me. The laundry was just down the hall and I never found I had to wait to use either the washer or dryer. I left Wong a large tip in appreciation of what she had to put up with. I felt all the crew to be hard working and pleasant, they were always busy early in the morning, cleaning, swabbing, setting out the deck chairs etc. My son though had one unpleasant experience at the IC in the early hours of the morning.
I felt that perhaps the "Princess" experience targeted an older demographic but there was still plenty to enjoy on the ship. Talking with past cruisers all said they felt the Emerald too big and crowded and they preferred the smaller ships such as the Sun Princess and Sea Princess.
We did enjoy our time aboard but we were ready to come home well before the cruise was finished. I will always have a special place for Emerald and I feel quite nostalgic about it when I look back on our trip. We had a great time but I'm not sure I'm sold on cruising. I think perhaps RCCL or Celebrity or even Carnival may be a better fit for us.
We returned home to our usual life and hubby returned to work. He came home one day and said I think the Emerald was in port today (Wellington) because I'm sure I saw the Zumba guy, and I said, I think the Emerald is doing a NZ cruise circuit and sure enough it was. I was like OMG the Zumba guy like he was a dear friend we hadn't seen in a long time.
I say this first experience has not made me a cruise addict, why is it then that I still visit the board every day, sometimes several times a day and why is it then I am looking forward to the cruise I booked for my granddaughters and I aboard Carnival in May? I loved the South Pacific circuit we did and I would do it again if given the chance. We loved Vanuatu.
Oh and let's not forget those gorgeous gorgeous pillows, my goodness my head was in heaven and the mattress was so comfortable too. The upper bunk was certainly less comfortable and I slept a couple of nights in it and found it really hard to negotiate the ladder down.
Oh and we saw an ambulance evacuation at Noumea and Port Vila.