I just returned from two Back-to-Back cruises on Discovery Princess over the 2023 Holiday Season. The itinerary was the Mexican Riviera visiting Cabo San Lucas, Mazatlán and Puerto Vallarta.
My husband and I did the first trip on our own, then were joined my daughter and family, including their toddler daughter. She is two and is not old enough to participate in the children’s programs.
I am a loyal Princess Cruiser, 220 days with Princess and have Elite Status. We like the value of Princess, enjoy that there are still formal nights and are pretty good at looking for the best in any travel experience.
Full Disclosure, I am grading on a curve and being more forgiving. The ship was full capacity, during the holiday season and included large groups. The holidays are a challenging time for crew, away from home and missing their loved ones and family. For that reason, we are sliding the scale more positively.
We’ll divide this into two parts, the facility, I.e. the Discovery Princess ship and the Service Component.
The Discovery Princess Ship
This is the newest Princess ship until the debut of the Sun Princess this February. The ship was clean, there were many updates from decor on the other ships, overall the furnishings are more modern and sleek.
Our room was a balcony, near the Aft elevator across from the laundry, Baja 625. The room was exactly as expected. The bed was comfortable, the linens in good shape, Robes, towels provided as expected.
My daughter had a deluxe balcony obstructed on deck 8, Marina 109. Her cabin was larger, included a couch that could become a bed for her daughter. Her balcony was extremely large, about 4 times the size of a regular balcony. These are the lowest balconies on the ship, right up front. They are considered obstructed because the balcony is metal vs. glass. These are a good choice for people looking for extra room. My husband and I would have switched in a heartbeat for the additional space. However, beware, if you are prone to sea-sickness this area would experience the most movement of all the ship.
We really enjoyed the Wake Pool on deck 16 Aft,, approximately 3 feet deep with views of the wake. This pool is often reserved for adults, but for this trip it was not. It was a great place to take a small child or cool off. This is a great addition. I wish they would have considered a hot tub here as well. They have also introduced couches on either side of the entrance to this area. Great outside seating areas for families to enjoy the outside, read a book with ocean views or just relax.
Deck 17 is the adult pool or Retreat. The layout of this area is much different than other Royal Class ships. Staterooms border the pool and hot tubs have been moved to deck 18. I rarely saw that pool in use. It receives a lot of shade, it was closed frequently and really doesn’t have much space unless you go upstairs to the hot tubs. The hot tubs were a nice treat every morning, but it was really windy and not so fun when the ship is moving.
Sanctuary - we visited but did not purchase it. In fact, it was sold out almost immediately upon embarkation. We noticed that although sold out, folks didn’t use it. At sea it is very windy. Frankly I think the Sanctuary space should be used for a public forward facing venue. This is one thing that Princess’ ships lack. It seems a forward-facing lounge would be a better idea, particularly for Alaska/Norway trips and sea day viewing.
The positioning of the Lido Bars on Deck 16 seems to be an improvement. The fountains were removed, and more seating added. There were also 2 additional hot tubs just aft of midship on deck 17.
In the Piazza there was a lovely bar called Take 5 next to the casino. This bar is underused until late afternoon, very elegant and a jazz band at night. We loved this bar, it is light, bright and we used it to play games and hide and seek with our granddaughter. Note that this bar is being phased out of ships and replaced by more casino space.
The Piazza overall has been modified from other ships, and what a mess. Christmas and New Years felt like we were in a mall food court. The Vines Wine Bar has been removed and replaced by the Salty Dog, Crooners placed on deck 6 and The Catch by Rudi replaced the entire port side of deck 7. Essentially the public spaces evaporated. This causes tons of bottlenecks moving through deck 7 and eliminating 2 bars made the bar-service nearly inaccessible on a full ship. We’ll talk more about this when we get to service.
Smoking was allowed throughout the Casino on deck 6 unlike other ships where it was limited to a certain space. There was smoking on formal night when typically, it is prohibited. The cigarette smell (and air freshener smell) permeates the Piazza and all the restaurants and venues. One of the only remaining bars in the Piazza is Crooners and is directly adjacent to the casino and just stinks of smoke.
My husband and I enjoy gambling. The smoking really deterred us. We will play all night on formal night, but I just didn’t want my things to smell. Additionally, there was ZERO service for drinks in the Casino. You had to beg the pit boss to get someone to come by. This ship does not have a bar in the Casino either, so you had to either go to Take 5, or Crooners, both which will take 30 plus minutes in the evening.
The lines that result from not having public space, carry throughout this area, for Sushi, for Pizza, for dinner, for afternoon tea, for photos…lines, lines, and more lines. Let’s not forget the elevator lines.
The promenade deck, which you can find on older Princess ships, does not exist on the Royal Class. The only place to get fresh air on deck 7 is outside the La Mer restaurant and hidden behind GiGi’s Pizza. You can go aft near the Vista lounge, note that the Starboard Deck 7 Aft is smoking.
The Discovery Princess Service
Our room steward was great. He anticipated our needs, saw we had wine, made sure we had glasses. Told him our grandchild was coming on the next trip and added a child’s life vest. Naresh was proactive and helpful.
We are Elite, we had laundry service, that was great! The washers/dryers near the aft elevators were free and stocked with detergent, which is helpful on a back-to- back.
We saw a theater show, it was great. The second one was cancelled for technical reasons, causing yet more havoc in the ships Piazza, when 1000 people suddenly had nothing to do. I will say the entertainment overall was very good, however, it was difficult to find seating in the Piazza when most of the area has been turned into dining space.
The ship’s entertainment was an improvement from the last few trips I’ve taken on Princess. However, because the Piazza is now a food court, there was inadequate seating.
We tipped the maitre’d early in the trip and were seated promptly. However, dining was generally a challenge for most passengers who weren’t in suites or Reserve Collection.
Anytime dining really does NOT exist. If you had reservations, great. If you don’t you will wait for those with reservations to not show up. There were NO reservations to be had, we organized a table for 5 before the second cruise started and the only available option was 5 PM. This caused some very loud, angry conversations at the entrance to the dining rooms with near fist fights. I would recommend you find a time, reserve ahead, stick to it, book well in advance on the app, and follow up immediately with the maitre’d. I would strongly recommend an early tip to the right people, I recognize this is often a point of contention with cruisers. My opinion, if Princess cannot accommodate flexible dining, then they should just assign dining. It was a fiasco.
If you want to do a specialty restaurant, best to do that on the app ahead of time or immediately upon embarkation. No availability at all. If you do on App, you may be charged in advance, so make sure to get to that reservation!
The bar service was abysmal. I would rate this 1 out of 5, giving the 1 only because it was a full cruise and over the holidays. Tipping helped very little, being on the prior cruise helped very little. As Elite, we had our own bar and brought 2 bottles of wine, this was our savior on cruise one. On the second cruise we did the drink package, and found it was so hard to get any service. It really felt like they pushed Plus and Premier packages, only to leave you hanging. If you sat down to watch entertainment in the Piazza, you might get your drink at the end of a 45-minute set.
If you are Elite, they offered a bar from 4:30 to 6:00 pm in the Vista lounge, deck 7 aft. This is not free, but you did get service. We often got 2 drinks each to take to another venue.
Campy Cruise Stuff is great, I’m happy Princess still does some of this to engage younger cruisers and have fun. But having all these chaotic things going on when there’s really no space because they’ve turned all the public space into a food venue makes it loud and hard to relax. Why would I want to have dinner for an additional $39 at La Mer to listen to screaming children. There are lots of better places to arrange this. Unused theaters, and other venues are available.
Overall
I know what I want from a cruise. Despite these challenges I enjoyed myself. However, If given the choice of this ship vs. another line, or different ship in the Princess fleet, I would definitely choose another ship/line.
I give this 3 out of 5, again knowing it was fully packed, during the holidays and with many large groups. My husband and I rolled with it, we still had a great time, but as Elite, we had more options. We found spots on the ship where we could maximize our cruise value, we played games, stocked up on drinks and worked around the challenges we faced.
We are headed in May on the Majestic Princess, which has a slightly different layout. On this trip we will have a Reserve Class Mini Suite, which will avoid the dining nightmare, and we will bring our own wine to augment our mini bar.
I love Princess, I hope service improves.
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