Discovery Princess was our second sailing of a very cruise-heavy 2024, our first ever trip on Princess, and just over 10 months since our last cruise with children. With kids in tow, the round-trip to Alaska from Seattle was a much different experience than our sailing on Infinity in 2018, but a positive one, earning Princess a spot in our “definitely would cruise again” category.
Highlights included the RFID Medallion concept and the Princess Plus package, but the OceanNow delivery service was inconsistent in terms of timing and the Princess phone app wasn’t always reliable. The casino location and wafting smoke was also a negative, but apart from a few dinner snags we had very friendly, responsive service from the onboard team. And in a deal-clincher for Princess, the Camp Discovery program was a complete hit for our kids – who came home with a great attitude, a suitcase full of arts and crafts, and a desire to cruise again.
Booking and planning
In June 2023, just before our sailing on Celebration, Kayla had been talking to some extended family members about their vacation plans. We’d previously been to an event in Ohio with them in August 2022 and had been trying to arrange another time to get together. It turned out that they had booked an Alaskan cruise on Discovery Princess for May 2024, and the week happened to line up with the Civic holiday in Ontario.
Simultaneously, I’d been reading several threads on CruiseCritic where some former NCL sailors had tried Princess and found it to be a good alternative: bundle options that included drinks/WiFi/gratuities; twice-daily cabin service (versus the now once-per-day on NCL/Royal/Carnival); more flexibility with dining times; and loosening of the traditional dress code. As a technology enthusiast, I was also curious to try out the Medallion.
We were able to put down a refundable deposit for the same sailing in a “quad” inside cabin. The kids were only charged for port taxes and gratuities, and there was $260USD onboard credit thrown in on the booking. Later in 2023, I also bought the minimum requisite number of CCL shares to get shareholder benefits on their portfolio of cruise lines, and got another $100USD non-refundable onboard credit for this trip as a result.
I was somewhat apprehensive about staying in an inside cabin with our children for a week, but reviewing deck plans with specific cabin sizing showed our IB-class was 175 square feet, versus a standard balcony which is listed at 174 square feet plus a 36-square foot balcony. You can’t put luggage, clothing and electronics on a balcony, and the price increase would have been several thousand dollars, so I opted to stick with the inside cabin.
Full disclosure: right after our Carnival Celebration trip in July 2023, we nearly cancelled this sailing for a full refund. There were several days on Celebration where the children were uncharacteristically poorly behaved, and their sudden rejection of the Camp Ocean program was difficult. It was hard to see how another family cruise within a year was going to work out positively. Because final payment for this voyage wasn’t due until February 2024, we did give the idea some additional time to marinate. We opted to continue with Discovery Princess: they’d be older; we’d have additional family support on the sailing, and the kids’ program looked to be better suited to their interests.
Once we decided to keep the booking, I’d locked in Air Canada flights round-trip to Seattle. About two weeks afterward we were notified that our Saturday return flight to Toronto was being moved forward from 12:50pm to 11:30am, with a free change if the time adjustment didn’t suit us. Having never flown from SEA before, knowing that our kids would be with us (adding time and complexity to travel arrangements), and having read unpleasant tales of delayed disembarkation, we opted to stay in the States one more day and take the 11:30am return flight on Sunday instead. There were more flight options on Saturday that wouldn’t have involved a hotel stay, but they were all connecting flights that would have brought us into Toronto very late in the day, especially considering the Pacific to Eastern timezone change.
Three days before sailing (and two days before our flight), we got the following moveover offer in our email that was quite tempting:
This is the type of offer I would absolutely jump at under most circumstances, but we didn’t end up taking it – mainly because this trip was all about seeing our family, and we didn’t know when we’d next get the chance to do that. I expect Princess did have a few folks that took the offer, because 26 hours after receiving the moveover message, we “won” a minimum-bid upgrade to an Obstructed Balcony cabin. This presumably freed up our inside cabin for someone else with an unallocated guarantee, while also making Princess a few hundred bucks from us. This was kind of exciting; while I generally minimum-bid for upgrades when possible, none of them had been successful until this sailing.
Upgrades can be tricky, because once you’re awarded the replacement cabin there’s no real way to go back – and it can be in a less-desirable location such as under the pool deck/buffet with scraping chairs, at an extreme end of the ship, or next to noisy venues/equipment/staircases. In our case, we were moved down from C317 on deck 10 to cabin E535 on deck 8. It was a move from mid-forward to mid-aft, which wasn’t significant, but directly above a public hallway between the Crown Grill and Princess Live! venues rather than sandwiched by other cabins on top and beneath. Waiting for our sail date over the next few days, I hoped that it wouldn’t be too noisy from below.
There were also some minor issues with the app the week prior to sailing, where none of us could access our booking (including the QR codes used at the terminal for check-in) for at least a full day:
The issues did resolve themselves on their own two days before the sail date, but I highly suggest that once you get your completed check-in and can view your boarding passes, take screenshots of each one – and re-take them again if your cabin number changes due to an upgrade. This is also a good idea anyway to pre-empt potential issues with cell network/WiFi contention in the cruise terminal.
Travel and pre-cruise
Our flights between Seattle and Toronto were on Airbus A220-300 planes, which are modern aircraft with decent in-seat entertainment and USB-C charging. They also have an interesting 2×3 economy seat configuration, not the typical 3×3. We were assigned aisle seats for both parents, with the children taking the middle and window seats in the 3-abreast configuration. Everyone was very pleasant and behaved themselves, no doubt due to the extended tablet time, constant snacks, and in-flight pizza.
Travelling with our kids, we prefer to use public transit or other options that reduce the need for time spent in car seats. When a cruise-sanctioned coach bus is available at a reasonable price, we generally use that option even if it’s more money or less direct than an Uber or taxi. In Seattle, there is a light rail transit system that will take you between the airport and downtown areas. When we arrived at SeaTac, there was a complex route through the airport needed to get to the Sound Transit/Link light rail station, but eventually we found a free shuttle from the parking garage to the train and didn’t have to haul our luggage all the way.
Kids (18 and under) travel free on Sound Transit, and we also made use of the Transit GO Ticket app. There was a points bonus running at the time for new account signups, so our adult one-way passes to Pioneer Square station were free!
We’d booked Courtyard Seattle Downtown/Pioneer Square due to its walkability to the light rail station, waterfront and several other attractions like the Pike Place Market. Normally, we’d try to pick something closer to the port, but embarkation at Terminal 91 is essentially not walkable regardless of where you stay. The Downtown/Pioneer Square hotel location worked out well, except that the Pioneer Square light rail station exit was not entirely accessible for someone carrying a large checked-size suitcase, backpack and carry-on luggage. We were able to take an elevator up to a mezzanine area from the below-ground track level, but there were still two long flights of stairs to get to the street level.
The station is also not in the best condition – we had to avoid literal puddles of urine and drug paraphernalia on the ground as we made our way out – but I don’t think this situation is necessarily unique to this light rail station, Seattle or even other large cities.
We dropped off our bags at the hotel, freshened up and set out to get some food and check out the Pike Place Market. The kids enjoyed some apples from a vendor, and we shared some gyros from Mr. D’s Greek deli and cheese-based sandwiches from Beecher’s. After that, we circled back to the Courtyard along Alaskan Way, and caught a brief nap before heading back out to the infamous Gum Wall, followed by dinner at Ivar’s Acres of Clams. All in all, a successful day and with the help of the short nap, we’d all adjusted to Pacific time quite well.
Embarkation day
Unfortunately, there was no complimentary breakfast at the Courtyard, but we did take a brief stroll over to Skillet Diner at Post Alley which filled everyone up for the morning. Backtracking to the hotel, we assembled our bags and requested an Uber to the port ($36US/30 minutes including wait time to exit.) An Uber receipt in Seattle includes a confounding variety of fees that added $4 to our original total, but it was still cheaper than a shared shuttle or van for the four of us.
Because we’d purchased the Princess Plus option for this sailing, we were able to have our Medallions shipped to us at home before the cruise. There were no added charges to send them to a Canadian address, despite the app showing a $5US/person balance at the time of processing and asking for a credit card – it was never charged. We received them by Canada Post on May 1, 17 days before sailing. With Medallions in hand and a “Ready to Sail” status in the app, we were assigned the Green Lane, which purportedly provides a quicker embarkation experience and a flexible arrival time.
I’m not sure that the Green Lane status changed our total time in the terminal, as the port agent had to take all our Canadian passports to her supervisor to be checked anyway. We didn’t wait very long after that to get onto the ship and were onboard in the central atrium-like Piazza slightly before 11:30am.
Cabin
Our last-minute upgrade was to an obstructed balcony on deck 8. The actual obstruction in question was a davit hoist and part of a lifeboat. I would say about a third of the view was nearly unobstructed apart from some wires, and it certainly wasn’t a situation where the lifeboat or equipment completely blocked any visibility.
It wouldn’t be an ideal balcony for taking pictures, but we did use it more than I’d initially thought – to check out wildlife, track progress in and out of ports, and get some fresh air into the cabin. On a few evenings, the weather was nice enough that I was able to sit out on the balcony with a beverage and the door slightly ajar, so I could hear if a kid woke up and needed something. It should go without saying, but no, we never left our kids in the cabin on their own.
In a quad-occupancy cabin like this, space is tight. The two Pullman beds unfold down directly over top of the beds on the floor, so you can’t realistically configure the two lower beds as a queen/king-size and must keep them separated as twins. While I was disappointed to not sleep in a big bed with my wife for the week, it just wasn’t practical any other way.
The ladders to access the top beds also impede the path to the fridge, balcony, and desk area, and the one for the rightmost bed feels like it is always ready to put a dent or scratch in the wall-mounted TV. They’re not directly attached to the bedframes, so we ended up stowing at least one ladder in the front closet for most of the trip and switching it between beds. We were also able to lift the kids in and out of the top bunks as needed.
There is very low clearance above the bottom beds when the top Pullman beds are down, and the positioning of the bedframe closest to the balcony is such that you can easily whack yourself trying to get past. On this sailing, our cabin attendant kept the beds down the entire trip, which meant there were some tight squeezes and at least one collision with the frame – which thankfully did not require a visit to the medical centre.
This type of cabin also has a motion-sensor light underneath the desk, which I didn’t mind. The Internet did warn us about this and suggest we bring painter’s tape to cover the sensor, but I didn’t understand what the big deal was. [On a subsequent sailing, we realized that there’s also a more obnoxious ceiling-mounted motion-sensor light by the bathroom that shines quite brightly, and that one hadn’t been working in our cabin on Discovery Princess. Bring painter’s tape, easily wrapped around a spare card in your wallet, to cover the sensor.]
We found the large closet to be a less practical use of space, as we didn’t have a lot of clothing that absolutely needed to be hung up. We would have preferred more drawers or cabinets like on modern Norwegian, Carnival or Celebrity ships. I appreciated that the mini-fridge was a true refrigerator and not just a cooler. It also came empty in preparation for you to build your own refreshment centre with the help of OceanNow delivery.
Noise levels luckily did not turn out to be a problem, even only being one deck above a public hallway. The position of the cabin itself was a good choice in terms of access to both mid-ship and aft locations. I’d have no problems staying in an obstructed view balcony cabin again, but there’s no indoor space advantage over an interior cabin. There are also no additional perks on Princess for a balcony booking (unlike NCL, which might give you another specialty dinner) so the price difference would have to be minimal for me to consider it.
One last point about staying in a cabin with four occupants: the cabin class we stayed in (BW, or a standard obstructed balcony) as well as standard balconies BF-BA in the 4-person configuration have two Pullman beds. Deluxe and premium deluxe balcony rooms with occupancy for four have one sofa bed and one Pullman. The upper Pullman bed in the deluxe variants is in the middle of the cabin and parallel to the main beds, blocking mini-fridge and balcony access when the sofa bed is out.
I’d consider a deluxe balcony with that layout to be a downgrade, if I couldn’t access drinks or snacks in the fridge or get out to the balcony without disturbing another cabin mate. On future sailings, I’m hoping to wander by some of the quad cabins while they’re being serviced and get a better idea of some of the space restrictions. We’ll also check out the availability and pricing on the larger mini-suite cabins for future sailings.
Ship
Despite being one of the newer vessels in the Princess fleet, Discovery Princess was certainly not as navigable as the NCL Breakaway and Celebrity Edge-class ships, like it took influence from the older designs of Norwegian Sky and Celebrity Infinity. There are three main dining rooms – one on deck 5 midship, and the other two on deck 6 aft and midship, but there’s no path around or through the deck 6 MDRs. You also can’t get down to deck 5 from deck 6 aft.
Deck 7 also only has a straight path through the ship on the starboard side. Taking the port side, you end up in a specialty restaurant or looking at the rear of a lifeboat assembly with no way through.
The same disjoint flow repeats itself on higher decks. You can’t get to the 3- to 12-year-old kids club areas from the port side of deck 17, as there is a locked door leading to the teen lounge. You must backtrack, cross the area behind the bandstand (if not in use) and wander through the fitness centre on the starboard side. Other options would be to go down one level and jostle your way through the busy buffet to get to the aft stairs/elevators, or down two levels to a passenger deck, head aft, and then back up two levels.
Because we were regularly dropping off and picking up from Camp Discovery, and our preferred dining room was Ketchikan on deck 6 aft, our approach was generally to stay at the aft end of the ship as much as possible.
Princess, at least on Discovery and older ships, also embraces the idea of “named” decks: deck 8 was Emerald, Deck 9 was Dolphin, but then the semi-logical alphabetical sequence of 10/Caribe, 11/Baja, 12/Aloha progresses to the illogical 14/Riviera, 15/Marina, 16/Lido, 17/Sun, 18/Sky and 19/Vista. You did need to know your deck name and letter at various points throughout the cruise, mainly to confirm drink orders in busy bar situations.
In many banks of elevators and stairs, there are several crew-only elevators that would be hidden behind restricted corridors on other ships. You might enter the stair/elevator area from one side but have to move into the next section to get to guest-accessible elevators. Some staircases are quite narrow – certainly adequate for one person to go up and down, but a bottleneck occurs if you have luggage, or another passenger tries to go the opposite way.
I did like that there were three elevator banks at forward/midship/aft (rather than the two on Norwegian Breakaway-class) and there were no confusing interior corridors on passenger cabin decks, unlike some of the large MSC ships. However, there were noticeable waits for the lifts during peak periods, especially on embarkation day.
The three-deck Piazza spanning decks 5, 6 and 7 with spiral staircases and panoramic lifts is certainly a visually impressive area of the ship but became less enjoyable when the music from the various bands and venues (piano bar, Irish pub, bandstand on deck 5) clashed or was too loud.
Perhaps the biggest drawback of the layout on Discovery Princess, though, was the position of the smoking-permitted Princess Casino on deck 6. The entrance is near the casual dining sushi restaurant and the forward section of Crooners piano bar. Cigarette smoke was noticeable in these areas, even at times wafting up to Bellini’s bar on deck 7. I wouldn’t consider myself especially sensitive to smoke, but it was once again a downgrade from NCL ships with a separate, enclosed smoking area or Celebrity ships where the casino is smoke-free.
The casino is also the starboard route to get to the Princess Theatre at the front of the ship. While one can move through the non-smoking Take Five on the port side of the ship to get to the theatre as well, it was not a hugely inviting venue, with perpetually closed doors and lowered lighting. [Later in 2024 on multiple Royal-class ships, including Discovery Princess, Take Five was modified to include a non-smoking casino section and somewhat regretfully eliminate the live jazz, but the main casino still permits – and therefore emits – smoke.]
All said, Discovery certainly is not my favourite layout for a ship, but by the end of the vacation we’d gotten used to these quirks. The actual venues and amenities on the ship were extremely well-suited for our family vacation. Even with the cooler Seattle and Alaskan weather, we made great use of the all-ages pools on the Lido deck. The two midship ones were heated on this sailing, and we also enjoyed the hot tubs when space permitted and our kids wouldn’t be too intrusive.
Towels and blankets were readily available from stations and didn’t need to be signed out. There was easy access to food and drink. And at our kids’ age, the lack of “extreme” activities such as roller coasters, giant water slides or other noisy attractions was a benefit rather than drawback.
Maintenance and cleanliness of common areas and the usually overlooked spots in the cabin was good, although the wooden plank over part of the glass SeaWalk above was sort of terrifying.
Food: main dining rooms
There were three main dining rooms (Ketchikan, Skagway and Juneau), each serving the same menu. Of the three, Ketchikan (aft deck 6) seemed to be the one always open for breakfast, lunch and dinner seatings; Skagway was used for afternoon tea when offered on some sea days, and Juneau was mainly focused on dinner. Princess has since changed their restaurant assignments to support pre-booked, ad-hoc and fixed dining, but at the time we sailed, Skagway seemed to focus on tables for larger parties or sharing tables if you were in a group of six or less.
Dinner items were mostly different each day, although there were daily staples including shrimp cocktail, Caesar salad, fettuccine alfredo and New York strip steak. For my palate, there were generally at least two mains and two appetizers that I was interested in on any given evening. It was also possible to order half-portions of the pasta, which helped avoid feeling entirely bloated for the rest of the night.
The children’s menu also had common staples like mac and cheese, hamburger, chicken tenders and a pasta choice. While we tried to get our kids to eat from the adult menu as much as possible, there were decent side and appetizer choices like veggies and dip or fruit plates that could be brought out quickly for the children, which helped keep everyone in a good mood.
Breakfast was a fixed menu each day, with two rotating daily specials and North American-style options for pastries, egg, potato, meat and grains. Lunch had some menu variations, with embarkation day being an abbreviated menu with hot dogs and hamburgers, and another day as a “pub lunch” with options like fish and chips, bangers and mash, and chicken curry. On most days, the lunch menu would have a broad selection of eight static appetizers, with two rotating and eleven fixed mains. All the lunch choices I tried were fantastic, with highlights for me being the street tacos and spaghetti aglio olio with shrimp.
Food quality, temperature and speed of service were all great on this sailing, comparable to most of our Norwegian MDR experiences. Consistency of drink service at dinner was really the lowest point, with the serving team occasionally forgetting to take Kayla’s drink order even as others at the same table were prompted. It was also only about a 50% chance that you’d be proactively asked for a refill during your meal.
Having said that, our dinners were often at a larger table with family members (between 8-12 people) and so we suspect the bigger group size had something to do with it. By the end of the sailing as the staff had become more familiar with us, and in what I’m sure was an attempt to solicit better NPS ratings on the post-cruise survey, wine refills were prompt and pre-emptive.
In contrast, breakfast and lunch meals were universally positive with none of the above issues. The brightest spot was service, attention and friendliness from Uros (restaurant manager) and Tristan (whose badge noted that he was a waiter, but clearly operating at a senior level) was among the best our family has had on a ship. They went out of their way to entertain the kids, expedite their food orders, ensure we had seating right away at every meal, and arranged a truly special experience for our whole party one evening. This was a crucial part of making mealtimes, and therefore the cruise, a very positive experience.
Food: other dining options
The Princess Plus package that Kayla and I booked gave us two meals in the casual dining venues, which included Gigi’s Pizzeria by Alfredo (pizza/calzone), O’Malley’s Irish Pub, and Ocean Terrace Sushi Bar. The kids were not included in this package, and we only were able to visit one of these venues (Ocean Terrace) for an early lunch.
At Ocean Terrace, the casual dining credit covered a $14.99 prix fixe selection which included edamame, seaweed salad, four sushi pieces and four rolls, as well as accompaniments such as wasabi and pickled ginger. We were also able to use the Princess Plus drink package for the Japanese-themed beers and cocktails on the menu. I enjoyed the quality of the sushi, but the quantity was relatively small, and so I had room that day for an afternoon hot dog without ruining my appetite for dinner.
The buffet (“World Fresh Marketplace”) was also comparable to NCL’s variety – still not at the quality level and presentation on Ascent or Edge, but a step up in taste and number of options as compared to Lido Marketplace on Carnival Celebration. The staff here were also friendly, bringing coffee and tea to your seat in the morning and circulating with complimentary iced tea/lemonade at other times. On future sailings, I think we might choose to eat here more often rather than a full-service main dining room meal; especially if the kids are ravenous and/or twitchy. We had a chance to speak to one of the managers in World Fresh as well – it was very clear that he and the staff took pride in delivering a delicious, safe experience.
The International Cafe offers a 24-hour food option. Even though room service was included with Princess Plus, this was a wonderful venue with sandwiches, desserts and fresh fruit options even into the late hours. While it doesn’t compare to the hot food options like wings and fries at O’Sheehan’s/The Local on Norwegian ships, it’s much quicker, and they absolutely will warm up your ham and cheese or salami sandwich. I ended up here on several nights and tried most of the savoury options. The Princess pizza muffins seemed initially promising, but the sauce was not great. I rediscovered a great love for tuna on a croissant.
While not of the same calibre as the Carnival quick service options like Big Chicken and Street Eats, the Salty Dog Cafe (burgers, hot dogs, chicken strips, fries) and Slices (three or four types of pizza slices) on Lido deck were good quality, savoury and made for great lunch or mid-afternoon choices. My children both agreed that one of their favourite things on the ship was Swirls, offering soft-serve ice cream during its opening hours, and popcorn later in the evening. They often wanted to skip the dessert options in the main dining room in favour of going to Swirls for an ice cream cone.
Drinks
On paper, Princess Plus allows the participants up to 15 alcoholic or specialty drinks per day, up to a value of $15 each, plus unlimited soda and “juice bar.” In practice we were not charged for the occasional soft drink or smoothie intended for the kids, either. Kayla was also able to use the package for specialty coffee drinks without extra charges.
Standard bottled water seemed to be available from any bar without needing to be rung through, and Perrier/San Pellegrino didn’t count towards the 15 cap. We noticed no billing errors or overcharges, and I was able to order two alcoholic drinks at a time like on NCL.
I did manage to reach the 15-drink cap once, on Day 6 of this sailing, but at that point in the day was not disappointed and took it as a sign to switch to water before bed. You can check progress in the Packages section of the Princess app, and the counter does appear to reset around 6am as in the official terms and conditions.
One way to make the best of this limit was by ordering bottled beverages (eg: beer, cider) along with some bottled water to your room through the OceanNow app. I did this on embarkation day, where after dinner I was certain I was not going to get close to 15 drinks that night. I ordered four bottles of beer and four bottles of water to the cabin. They will bring the drinks to you, unopened, on a tray with a bottle opener and napkins.
If you do order two drinks (where one is obviously for your partner) with Princess Plus, the serving staff will occasionally allocate both drinks to one person’s quota. I think it happened once or twice to me over the whole voyage, but never got to the extent that it was a problem. You can deliberately ask for drinks to be split between both parties – but I found that trying to be a decent person to the bar and serving staff combined with regular $1 cash tips made that split the default.
Ports
This sailing officially had four ports (Juneau, Skagway, Ketchikan and Victoria) along with scenic cruising in Glacier Bay on Day 4. Glacier Bay is officially a national park, and often touted as a highlight of an Alaskan sailing.
We did make it off the ship at three of the four ports, albeit with no ship-sponsored or independently organized excursions. The cost for children (often at only a slight discount from adult rates) as well as the potential boredom factor meant that a short wander around the town – often with a visit to a store that sold dessert items – was the best option.
In Juneau, we stopped at the Del Sol shop close to the cruise ship dock, for some long-promised colour-changing items for the kids. We then had a decently lengthy walk up Seward Street and found the Capital School Playground which was open to the public. Both the equipment and weather were damp, but the playground made for a good kid-friendly activity before heading back down the hill to the Alaskan Fudge Company for some treats.
Our next stop in Skagway, a new port for us, was highlighted by a visit to Mollie Walsh Park as well as a stop into the Kone Kompany for ice cream. The weather was sunny and warm, putting everyone in a decent mood.
Discovery Princess drew the short straw on the day we arrived (2024 dock schedule) and docked at the Railroad Dock Forward location. Due to the 2023 rockslides, passengers could not just walk off the ship and had to take a very short tender boat ride to reach the shore. Celebrity Edge was behind us in the Railroad Dock Aft position, and while passengers weren’t permitted to walk along the dock, coach buses were regularly running to get guests between the ship and the harbour parking lot.
A unique feature Princess offered on the Skagway day was an event called “Puppies in the Piazza”, in which the staff showed off puppies with the potential to become competitive sled dogs later in their lives. This event was well-attended; the layout of the Piazza permitted some good views even if you weren’t on the base level, but it was about 25 minutes of Q&A with an Iditarod competitor/dog sled team owner (who also was hawking merchandise) and 5 minutes of puppies circulating. I think I’d skip it in future (“we have dog at home!”) or join during the last 10 minutes if pressed to attend.
Ketchikan was the least interesting of our ports, only because the weather was cold and wet comparatively, and we didn’t have any specific child-friendly activities planned. We did browse through some shops and stopped in at Jellyfish Donuts for some sweet treats, but quickly headed back to the ship. There were recommendations from other passengers about the lumberjack show, which I think we’ll check out on an inevitable return trip.
The Victoria stop was little more than technical in nature; we arrived at 9pm on Day 7 and sailed away at midnight. By 7am Discovery Princess docked in Seattle for disembarkation. In the evening, your tourist options in Victoria are somewhat limited, and I suspect most cruisers would have already been packed to end their cruise the next day. There are legal reasons for the stop in the first place and certainly cost/operational/environmental reasons for the short duration, but it’s really disappointing that cruise ship visitors don’t get the full perspective of such a beautiful Canadian port. I hope that on future cruises, we’re able to spend more of our day here.
Glacier Bay was an incredible area to cruise through, and Kayla especially appreciated the opportunity to see some wildlife and listen to the park rangers who had come onboard for most of the day. It was definitely a step up from the Hubbard Glacier we’d seen on Infinity in 2018 – even though that was a certainly impressive view.
Medallion and OceanNow
A key feature (or gimmick, depending on your saltiness) of Princess is the Medallion, which is an AirTag-sized device issued in place of a cruise card prior to or at embarkation. The ship is equipped with powerful RF readers that, with their density, permit fine-grained location tracking. A primary use is unlocking your cabin, which in practice triggers from about one or two cabin doors away and doesn’t require you to get within inches of the reader.
Another useful location is at bars, where the overhead readers allow bartenders and servers to know who is in the general area. Assuming the technology is working correctly, the point-of-sale tablets will display passenger names and pictures to the bar staff, so they can accurately assign or charge drinks to the correct individual.
Sometimes in busy situations you’d be asked for your cabin number as a backup mechanism; this is where knowing your deck name came in handy. “D” sounds a lot like “C” which sounds a lot like “B”, which also sounds a lot like “E” in noisy environments. My initial attempts to use the NATO phonetic alphabet were unsuccessful, so I somewhat begrudgingly learned the Princess deck names over the course of the sailing.
Because Princess has gone all-in on the technology, all POS terminals, slot machines, and other venues are fully equipped with area-proximity or tap-proximity options depending on the type of transaction. On some Norwegian ships where the ship cards are RFID-capable, they’re still encoded with cabin and folio details on the magstripe – but some bars or restaurants will fall back to card swipes, sometimes in a frenzied manner to process the transaction. Having everything on the ship fully support the Medallion as a baseline was just that much more convenient.
There’s also a component in the app, and on the large touchscreen displays in the elevator areas, where you can locate members of your party around the ship, assuming they have their Medallion on or near them. I used this a few times to find the rest of the group either as the designated kids club pickup parent, or the one who was able to squeeze in an added ten minutes of uninterrupted reading.
Other benefits of the Medallion are somewhat contingent on the Princess Plus or Premier package. With these bundles, you also get access to complimentary OceanNow food and drink delivery. It’s a theoretical improvement over room service – if you’re wearing your Medallion, you can have your order brought right to your location on the ship rather than just your cabin. Both the food and drink menus in the app are somewhat limited, and there are a few upcharge options, but I’ve also never had the urge to order room service on any of our other sailings – so this was a novel experience regardless.
Delivery time for OceanNow was inconsistent. When I placed my order on embarkation evening to stock the mini-fridge, it took just over an hour from order submission to delivery at the cabin, and I’d nearly fallen asleep at that point. A similar order made later in the cruise only took fourteen minutes. In a testament to the responsiveness of service in the bar and lounge areas, we would sit down and open the app menu – but before we could complete our selections, a server would come by and directly take our order.
Connectivity and app
The Plus package allows one device per person to connect to the Internet. Coverage across the ship was generally good and Internet performance was probably the best of my cruise experiences so far. While we weren’t regularly streaming video or doing anything too bandwidth-intensive, social media scrolling, online news, Spotify and Libby synchronization, and Slack messaging all worked just slightly slower than a land-based connection.
The Princess phone app, which primarily uses the local network on the ship, occasionally triggered a sign-out throughout the week that prevented OceanNow orders and other operations until signed back in. You’ll want to have your password manager cache things locally if it’s not a default setting – 1Password was fine here for both of us.
Camp Discovery kids club
This program was a highlight for our children and adults alike, so we were able to take some time to ourselves to unwind and socialize with relatives. We’d registered the kids online several weeks prior to sailing but ended up filling out the same information during the open house/registration time on embarkation day. I think the main advantage to filling in the information on the website is that Princess might be able to better plan staffing based on pre-cruise registration numbers.
For the most part, Camp Discovery was open daily during 9am to 12pm, 2pm to 5pm, and 7pm to 10pm timeslots. Princess does advertise paid babysitting from 10pm to 1am, but we didn’t investigate that option. There were slight variations to the schedule for port days and for one day with the kids’ dinner, but the detailed schedule of activities didn’t always match the high-level hours of operation. It was best to verbally confirm every day.
In any event, these times worked out well enough for us. Ignoring the days and times we spent off ship, we could eat a leisurely family breakfast and get the kids upstairs to Camp Discovery for 9am; pick them up for lunch and an afternoon activity like swimming; get them back to camp between 2 and 3pm; and collect them just before a 5pm dinner reservation. While they were excited about the possibility of going to some of the evening sessions, we would start to see signs of tiredness with irritability or separation anxiety right after wrapping up dessert, so they didn’t attend the 7pm session on more than one day.
We were also asked to be back for pickup at least 10 minutes before camp closed, mainly to let the staff leave on time in the event there was a line of parents picking up their kids. They did also ask for one parent only to stand in line to ensure the hallway was kept clear. Depending on where we were on the ship, it was necessary to keep a good eye on the clock and account for an additional 5-10 minutes in travel time to get across and between decks – especially as elevators got busier at peak periods.
Disembarkation
On Day 5, I’d purchased Princess-sponsored transfers to the airport ($29US/person) based on some messaging in the daily program. I could select a late disembarkation timeslot and bag tags (estimated 9:30 AM call time) as our flight home was not until the day following the cruise. We’d booked the Hilton Garden Inn Seattle Airport which had a 24-hour complimentary airport shuttle and a pool.
While exiting the ship was quick, we spent what seemed like was an unnecessarily lengthy time in line waiting to be assigned to a coach bus – even as there were several of them just waiting for passengers.
The hotel and its included swimming pool were both decent, and a good way to cap off our last full day of vacation before travelling home. Our late lunch was at Sharps RoastHouse which was within walking distance of the Garden Inn. They featured a children’s menu with truly close-to-home item names. While not as humorously titled, the adult-focused options were quite good too!
Retrospective
While throughout this post are a few criticisms of Princess or our experience on the ship itself, I hope that anyone who makes it this far sees these notes as my attempt to be balanced considering what I would say was an overwhelmingly positive sailing. I think the best thing I can say is that we plan to give Princess more money in future in exchange for a cruise, when that is not a certainty with other lines.
I talked a lot about our disillusionment with Norwegian in Bliss 2023; revealed more about some sailing-with-family drawbacks on Carnival Celebration closer to the top; and while it wasn’t quite the same carefree adult experience as Celebrity Ascent earlier in the year, this was the best family cruise we’ve had so far. Maybe I’m conflating our children growing up and maturing with a particular sailing, but I’d still say Discovery Princess was a good ship to have this feeling associated with.
We did not get to experience some of the other ship features like specialty dining, late-night Movies under the Stars, the theatre entertainment, or the adult-only Retreat Pool area. Perhaps on a future sailing!
Going forward
I mentioned that this was a cruise-heavy 2024 for our family, and this can be attributed to school, childcare and day camp arrangements that evolved throughout late 2023 and early 2024. By the end of January 2024, we’d determined our kids would need supervision for a couple weeks during the summer that were not covered by a camp and decided to take some vacation time.
We selected sailings for these two weeks: one on MSC Seascape at the tail end of June and into July and the second on Enchanted Princess in August. The next review/set of notes in sequence will be our family experience on MSC – a cruise line I’d tried independently in February 2022 and could now enjoy without the spectre of COVID-era restrictions.
A follow-up post will review Enchanted Princess. When writing these notes months later, it was difficult to separate the experiences. The ships have an almost identical configuration, and the cruise product is very consistent, even with a different set of crew and itinerary. Some things that we didn’t even know were lacking on Discovery Princess were revealed on the next sailing; some things on Enchanted were substandard compared to Discovery.
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