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Rating (out of 5):     Ship    Food    Service    Itinerary

Marjorie has had a "free" graduation cruise offer hanging around for several years after completing an online Princess T/A course. This cruise especially interested us so Marjorie finally cashed in her chips. I say "free" graduation cruise because it actually just covered the base price of an inside cabin for T/A and spouse. On top of the $0, we opted to pay an upgrade charge to a balcony cabin, plus field the taxes and fees. But still it meant a very cheap cruise. The whole point of the graduation cruise concept was to allow the T/A to experience the ship as an Elite passenger (15 cruises or 150 cruise days) with all the Elite benefits. However, as Marjorie was already Elite, this was a nice but useless gesture. As for me, being as I was on a "free" ticket, my own Elite status was revoked and I was catagorized as a first time cruiser (the dreaded blue card) but with 20 cruises under my belt. Figure that one out! So I lost out on free laundry, free internet and some free presentations and parties. The free bar fridge setup was per cabin, so nothing was lost there. As it turned out Marjorie's internet was sufficient for both of us. We used the self-serve laundromats and probably would have skipped the parties anyways. So no big loss.

The only committment for Marjorie was filling in the answers to several sheets of questions about our cruise. This involved attending events throughout the cruise or talking to the ship's personnel to find out specific details about our cruise (ie. "how many marriages were performed on our cruise?" and "How many bottles of champagne were used in the champagne waterfall event?"). She must have answered them all correctly as we were not tossed from the ship.

The ship was full (2205 pax, double occupancy of 2145). Although a recent refit in 2015 added 40 or so cabins foregoing public space, we didn't find the ship overly crowded. We had no problem getting seats in the theater, unlike the Grand Class ships. The only strange casualties of the refit was squeezing the fitness center into a dark closet on deck 6, surrounded by cabins, and blocking off the aft promenade deck with new cabins preventing a continuous walk around the ship. Overall we enjoyed the ship though.

A number of items contradicted our usual behaviour on a cruise:

• Against our usual better judgement, we flew down to the cruise on embarkation day. Normally we fly a day ahead, and overnight in a local hotel - just in case. Sure enough we almost missed out connecting flight in Seattle due to delays in Calgary.
• I decided to have a complete rest from my rowing regimen and didn't do the gym once in 15 days. I didn't miss it and was able to pick right up again when we returned home. On the other hand I didn't miss a single meal.
• We had 7 sea days and 6 port days. We only booked two excursions and both of them were afternoon outings. Hence we never had a single day where we had to be up by a certain time.
• As noted above I lost my Elite privileges which really didn't hurt. In fact I had a delightful time showing my "blue card" with twenty cruises logged! (Princess puts the number of past cruises in the lower right corner of the cruise card).

The next day was a 7:00 start again with breakfast in the MDR. We spent the day alternating trivia sessions with periods of reading or wandering. For dinner I had rock fish (unusual choice for me) which was very good. The entertainment was a couple of guys - one a singer and one a cello player. They were wonderful! They both also played piano very well. And, as a bonus, I knew almost all of the music. A top notch performance!!

The next day we were up at 8:00 as we docked in Huatulco. We had been here before and noticed a new shopping area, but otherwise not much around. We had breakfast in the buffet, played a session of trivia, and headed off the ship to explore the small town. It was very hot and humid. We wandered around the shops for a while, stopping at an outdoor shop (snorkeling, etc) where Marjorie used the wi-fi. (The sales lady was from Vancouver!). We wandered back onto the ship for lunch. Back onboard we walked around the ship and then settled for a read on the promenade deck. For dinner I had lamb shank. Too big, but it was very good. The singer/cellist duo were on again in the theater with a new show so we just had to go. Once again they were excellent, we really enjoyed them. We wandered the decks then went to bed.

The next day, we were up at 7:30 as we anchored off of San Juan Del Sur, Nicaragua. This would be a new country to us as we had never stopped in Nicaragua before. We had signed up for an afternoon excursion, so had the morning to ourselves. We breakfasted in the MDR, then read and trivia'ed the morning away. After our lunch in the buffet, we tendered to shore to meet our 12:45 excursion. The bus left at 1:00 to the small village of Rivas where we visited the lovely San Pedro Cathedral. Then we drove to the Amoya River which we followed to a botanical garden on the shores of Lake Nicaragua. At the gardens we had some local fruits and drinks, and were treated to some native dancing. Guess who got pulled up on stage to make a fool of himself? Oh well, I'll never see any of those people again! We drove back to the tender dock (by 4:00). Halfway back to the ship the tender boat stopped. We had to wait for a repair crew from the ship to tinker with the engine and get it running again. We were back onboard by 5:00, so didn't miss dinner. I had roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. We skipped the entertainment and did our own thing instead. I am glad we made it to Nicaragua, but I wouldn't go there again. The people are very poor and are just recovering from a civil war (Contras and Sandinistas). There didn't seem to be any tourism infrastructure yet. Hopefully that will come!

Note: I should mention that eating breakfast and/or lunch in the MDR could be a long, but pleasurable, process. The meal itself is easily an hour and we often met interesting people and continued talking at the table for at least another half hour. A few times the servers were making up the tables for the next meal when we left.

Note: Small train engines called "mules" (or "donkeys") hook up to the ship, 4 on either side. Contrary to popular belief, they are not used to pull the ship through the locks. The ship's engines provide the thrust to proceed into or out of a lock. The mules instead provide a lateral force that keeps the ship from hitting the side walls of the lock.

The next day we were up at 7:00 as we anchored off of Georgetown, Grand Cayman. This was our second tendering port of the cruise. We had breakfast in the MDR and then tendered ashore for a walk about the town. We had decided not to bring our snorkel gear with us and sure enough Eden Rock was too choppy for safe snorkeling (for the third time in a row!). This was our first Caribbean cruise where we didn't do any snorkeling! We did an up-and-down of the main street and then pulled into a liquor store to buy some special rum for some cruising buddies back home. We reboarded the ship and had lunch in the buffet. We spent the afternoon as usual - reading, wandering and trivia'ing. Sail away was at 3:30. For dinner I had shrimp and scallops. We played evening trivia and then packed it in.