Star Princess Cruise Reprot 2003




We chose the Star Princess, cruising the Mexican Riviera from January 4-11, 2003, for our family's 4^th annual holiday cruise. Okay, so we are cheating a bit by calling it a “holiday” cruise. The past three years, we’ve been aboard for Christmas and/or New Year’s. This year, we took advantage of an unusually long school break to enjoy the holidays at home and cruise the first week of January before back-to-school on the 13th. My husband and I kinda missed the escapism associated with celebrating the holidays at sea, but the kids were happy to be at home for a change and still get their cruise vacation. It was a financial boon because we avoided premium holiday cruise rates. We had 8 in our party: our family of 4 (husband and me, both 45, kids 9 and 12), my husband’s mother (73) and our friends (2 adults, one kid age 10). This was a fun experience because it was the first cruise for my mother-in-law and our friends. The first-timers were overwhelmed by it all, and most everything exceeded their expectations. For our immediate family, it was our 7^th cruise, the 2^nd with Princess. Although we had a great vacation, the cruise itself only met our expectations, principally because the on-board service paled in comparison to the above-average, personalized and customer-oriented service that had wowed us just six months before on our first Princess cruise (the Dawn in Alaska, July 2002). The reason became clear: The staff and crew were exhausted, blitzed, spent from the over-the-top performances they had delivered to demanding holiday crowds the previous two weeks. Once we understood what was going on, we made an effort to approach the personnel with greater patience and empathy, and they generally returned the kindness with a renewed effort to provide their usual level of good service—some even brightened and gave us their best. However, we didn’t like the idea that we had to be proactive to receive par service on our vacation. Lesson learned...avoid cruising on the heels of the holidays. All in all, we give Princess an "A" for this cruise.

Warning: This is a long report. It will serve as our family’s written record of the trip, to accompany the trip photos. The report is arranged chronologically for our convenience; I’ve tried to inject some topic headings for your convenience. But there’s a lot of stream of consciousness text…like, speaking of pix, I should tell you here that we tried out two new, very small digital cameras this trip, and both performed beautifully. I tested the Minolta Dimage X—small enough to wear on your belt or stuff into a small purse or backpack pocket, large enough to contain the innards necessary to shoot with true optical zoom. My husband carried the attention-grabbing, credit-card sized Casio Exilim in his shirt pocket—he could pull it out, aim and shoot before I had mine out of its case! If you want a camera that you will be sure to use because it’s so light and easy to carry on your person or in your purse, check out the Exilim. If you are pickier about photo quality and like working with a zoom, you’ll be amazed what the compact Minolta can deliver.

Quick Overview of Ship and Itinerary

Travel, Embarkation & Cabins

The rest of Day 1

BONUS! Scanned copies of:

the "Pocket Guide" (a side-view map of the Star Princess)

The Welcome Aboard Princess Patter

Princess Dining Hours

Princess Bar Hours

Day 2 At Sea

unfinished!

Day 3 At Sea

more unfinished!