Emerald Princess across the Atlantic

Phillip and I cruised across the Atlantic with 2270 other passengers on the Emerald Princess as planned from April 16 through May 9. The cruise is now over, but our adventure isn't. I had hoped to create blog posts during the cruise, so we bought the on-board wi-fi package. Unfortunately, the wi-fi did not work. Princess did refund the package costs to all the passengers as on-board credit. We used the credit for two excursions that I will describe in a future post. 

This is our ship, a ship that we will try to avoid in the future. We were on another Princess ship for a transAtlantic cruise a few years ago and it was great. This experience.... not so much. The good part first: the crew. Like most cruise ships, crew members are from countries such as the Philippines, India, and Peru. The crew members are away from their families for six to nine months, but they make more money than they could at home. A lot of the crew support their entire extended family. Customer service is paramount and those with whom we dealt regularly were wonderful. Our room steward, Kumar, always filled our ice bucket and was in and out of the room efficiently. The wait staff in the dining room remembered our names by the second day and our preferences soon after. For us, it was water to drink, wine for me, and no bread unless escargot was on the menu. John, the casino bar server, was absolutely great. He kept Phillip supplied with "Dirty Bananas," a drink with rum, Kahlua, tequilla, cream, chocolate syrup and banana and always greeted Phillip with a hearty "It's the Dirty Banana Man!"

We had an interior cabin, no balcony or window. It was big enough for us and had plenty of hanging space for our clothes. Notice an unwelcome addition to the room in the picture. See the pillow on the floor? With light next to it? Apparently, motion sensor lights were put on the bottom edge of the night stands and in the hall to the bathroom. We covered the nightstand lights with pillows but we could not cover the motion sensor on the ceiling at the hall light. Every night, if either of us went to the bathroom, the cabin lit up like a sunny day. All the other passengers grumbled about these lights. I will bring duct tape next time to cover the sensor. 

These "Journey View" portals were all around the ship, part of the Medallion system. They kept us informed of what day is was and where we were. The Medallion system was the on-ship intranet that used a medallion that passengers wore to unlock their door and to be tracked for food and drink orders (and Covid tracking, I'm sure). An app on our phones allowed us to order drinks, see deck plans, and access the list of daily events. It worked most of the time, although many passengers, including us, had to get their medallion battery replaced during the cruise. Remember, it unlocked our cabin door so it was pretty important. Having to rely on the app meant that I could not leave my phone in the room, something that I had really wanted to do. The app itself had issues. It took six steps to find the dinner menu and was not logically organized.

I wish I could include food as a good part of the cruise. As an example, the pictured dessert looks great; however, it was not chocolatey. The chocolate was just a thin coating with the inside being a fairly weak tasting mousse-like puff of goo. The Emerald Princess had the worst food we have ever had on a cruise. I had a totally inedible steak. It felt in my mouth like it had been over-treated with papain to tenderize it, making it almost mushy. I ordered the fish for dinner several times. Only one time was it not overcooked and dry. I am struggling to remember any food that tasted better than just average. Even though the ship was over 70% of capacity, only half of the buffet was ever open. During breakfast and lunch, this was routinely an issue, as not enough tables were available. 

The open decks were usually not crowded. They had an astroturf-like covering so when it rained, they were not slippery. Plenty of deck chairs. 

Our room was on the Lido deck, Deck 15, the same deck as the buffet and pools. My plan was to get up first in the morning and bring coffee to the room for Phillip from the buffet. That didn't work out because the buffet coffee was too bitter and nasty (made from a concentrate) for us to drink. We used the Medallion app and ordered coffee from the lower deck coffee shop. I only had to go one deck down to the washing machines and dryers. No problem with them and I never had to wait or go to another floor to find an empty one. (I remembered to take my own detergent from home!)

This was the water shuttle at Dun Laoghair (pronounced Dun Leery), the port for Dublin. Passengers were taken to shore in water shuttles at three of our stops because the ship could not dock at the pier. Dun Laoghair was the only time a real water shuttle was used. For the other two ports, the ship used its own lifeboats as water transfer boats. That might have been a good idea, an opportunity to raise and lower the lifeboats to ensure they weren't stuck on the boat. However, during both instances of using lifeboats as water transports, a motor quit on a lifeboat while it was ferrying passengers, requiring it to be towed back to the boat. Not a lot of confidence among the passengers about the quality of the lifesaving equipment.

This final ship picture is of the door blocking access from the stairwell to deck 12. Why is it blocked? Because it was the Covid quarantine floor. If a passenger or crew member tested positive, they were escorted by masked crew members in white hazmat suits who sprayed disinfectant in their wake. Phillip and I saw such a transfer. Over 200 Covid-positive passengers and crew were removed from the ship in Southampton on May 1, moved to specific hotels near Heathrow. Our issues with Princess's handling of Covid did not include this floor. This was actually a good idea, as was disinfecting and having a place off the ship for positive passengers. Rather, it was the lack of information from the ship staff about what was going on and the fiasco that occurred on May 1. 

We were on a 23-day cruise, which meant that we stayed on the ship when it first docked at Southampton. Hundreds of people booked only a 15-day cruise, so they were to disembark at Southampton. Most of them, Americans, were headed for Heathrow to catch a flight. Princess promised Covid testing for passengers flying after disembarkation. This testing occurred for them on disembarkation morning. British customs had to examine the passports of all passengers and did so on the ship. It was a madhouse with one line, the customs line, that mixed passengers heading for a plane with those of us staying on board, wrapping twice around the atrium and down the length of the ship on deck 7. No staff member made any effort to organize the line and people exiting the elevators just stood, confused as to where the end of the line was. We heard tales of multitudes of people who missed their flights because of the chaos of the morning.  

And remember deck 12? Apparently those rooms that had been filled with Covid-positive guests were to also be filled by new passengers getting on in Southampton for the 8-day portion of the cruise. The guest services line was terribly long and full of very upset people that afternoon. I'd be irate too if my cabin had been a Covid room and was not cleaned before I came to it or I had not been reassigned to a clean room.

My next post will be pictures from the ports we stopped at in Portugal, Spain, France, England, and Ireland.