Majestic Princess
We boarded the Majestic Princess in Fort Lauderdale directly after disembarking from Symphony of the Seas in Miami. It used to be easy to do a back-to-back with one cruise in Miami and a second in Fort Lauderdale. After all the two cities are not far from each other. In the past we have just taken an Uber from one port to the other. After disembarking Symphony of the Seas in Miami, there were no Ubers available. We ended up taking a port shuttle to the Fort Lauderdale airport. We got lucky in that particular driver agreeing to drop us at the cruise port after he dropped everyone else at the airport. Apparently not all shuttle drivers would do so. Traffic into the port was horrible, taking an hour to go just a few miles so some drivers probably want to avoid that. The shuttle driver said there used to be a whole lot more Ubers in Miami, but there aren’t nearly as many now because a lot of the drivers got deported. After the Princess cruise we did finally manage to book an Uber out of the Fort Lauderdale cruise port, but it took nearly half an hour to get one and the taxi line wasn’t any better. Odds are a bunch of taxi drivers got deported too.
piazza
Majestic Princess is a royal class ship built in 2017. It is the third ship of 6 in that class preceded by Royal and Regal Princesses and followed by Sky, Enchanted, and Discovery Princesses. Ships of this class feature a large central atrium which is called the piazza. It features open space for 3 decks above the piazza on deck 5, with public spaces like shops, bars, and eateries ringing the edges of all 3 levels. A lot of the onboard activities like games and dancing are held in the piazza.
seawalk
Another feature of this ship class is the seawalk, a short walkway that swoops out along the side of the ship with clear panels in the floor through which people can view lifeboats and the sea beneath their feet.
picture in one of the hallways to cabins
Majestic Princess weighs 143,00 tons with a length of 1083 feet, height of 224 feet, and width of 155 feet at its widest point. It has 1780 staterooms and a guest capacity of 3,560 with 1346 crew. It has 18 decks with the top deck labeled as 19 as there is no deck 13. Passengers have access to deck 4 and above. Passenger areas on deck 4 are limited to the medical center and tender embarkation areas for ports where the ship is not docked. Decks 18 and 19 are not full decks, just smaller sports areas. The decks in between are either public spaces, cabin decks, or a combination of both.
pistachio loveboat heart
Princess introduced a new upgraded menu just a week or two before our cruise. The food was good and the menu still includes some Princess favorites from the previous menu. The chocolate loveboat heart that used to be one of the everyday desserts was only served once, replaced on the everyday menu by a pistachio one. which John really liked. He ordered it several times. I thought the pistachio one was a bit too sweet and prefer the original chocolate one over it. Overall the food in the dining room was quite good and Princess has the biggest and best buffet of all the ships we have sailed on. The ship also has lots of bars and some pay-extra eateries.
Hollywood Conservatory
Majestic Princess has very elegant decor. It had a glassed in area called the Hollywood Pool Club and Hollywood Conservatory that looked like the sort of space that would only be open to suite guests, but it was available to everyone. The other ships of this class we have been on did not have this feature. It was a very nice space that would have had a solarium type feel if it were warmer, but the temperature in that area was kept too cold for people to lounge comfortably on the many available deck chairs in swimwear, especially if they were wet from the pool or hot tub. The hot tubs on that ship were not hot enough either. The curtained off cabanas by windows in the conservatory area were free to use and available to anyone who could get one, which was quite nice since other ships tend to charge extra for similar spaces. There were also board games and tables to play them on in the conservatory area and a bar in the pool area making it a multi-use hangout space.
fountain pool
The ship also has outdoor pools and hot tubs. The raised central pool on the main Lido deck is called the Fountain Pool because it has short fountain shows in the evening where it has colored lights and fountain displays lasting about 15 minutes.
kitchen tour
Princess doesn’t have waterslides or anything like some ships do, but it does have things for kids to do. There are kid’s club activities for various age groups from young children to teens and they can also participate in scheduled activities that are open to everyone, like the galley (kitchen) tour they had one day. There are 2 arcades, ping pong tables, and mini golf. The mini golf is a small space on the very top deck that is more random holes to hit the ball into than an actual course. The ship also has pickleball and basketball courts as well as other games like cornhole.
hallway carpets
For anyone who is at least a little bit observant it’s easy to know if you are in the right hallway for your cabin on this ship. Besides having all of the odd numbers on the starboard side and even on the port side, it also has red hallway carpets starboard and blue port so even if you can’t see the tiny numbers from the elevator/stairway bay you can just glance at the carpet and know which hallway is correct.
Princess medallion in a waterproof bracelet
Instead of ship cards to open cabin doors, scan on and off the ship, and purchase things onboard, Princess has wearable medallions. They come on a lanyard, but other options are available to put them in. They sell a variety of things onboard, but you can also buy the waterproof bracelets on Amazon for a fraction of the price of buying it onboard. These are especially useful for cruises to warm places because you never have to worry about what to do with your ship card if you go swimming or snorkeling. You never have to hunt for a ship card when you’re wearing it either. It even unlocks the cabin door for you before you get there. Medallions also have a sort of creepy, but very useful stalking feature in the Princess app where you can see where your shipmates are in a map of the deck plans.
show with drone lights
We only went to one show on this ship. It was a production show called Fantastic Journey. It was a singing and dancing show with a bunch of fast paced short acts that had nothing to do with each other. Some of the acts had elements that appeared as if they were copied from shows we have seen on Royal Caribbean, most notably the drone lights. Indoor drone lights in cruise ship shows were first introduced in the ice show called 1977 on Symphony of the Seas. I had not seen them on any other ship before Majestic Princess. It’s a lot of work to program them because they can’t use external GPS on a moving ship so they have to be coordinated to a system within the ship.
O’Malley’s Irish Pub
Overall the Majestic Princess is quite a nice ship and we enjoyed cruising on it.
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