Royal Princess in Cabo (before drydock)
Royal Princess went into drydock at the end of October in 2027. Changes were made during that time to some cabins and to some of the public spaces on the ship.
large balcony with metal wall
Not all of the changes to Royal Princess are physical. Some of the stateroom categories are scheduled for a classification change. None of this is beneficial to the passengers. It’s just a way for the cruiseline to extract more money out of people. The room we had was classified as obstructed view balcony when we booked. It has an oversized balcony with a metal wall instead of plexiglass under the railing. Because of that those few cabins on either side of the front of deck 8 booked for less money. There aren’t very many of them, just 5 on each side of the ship, but it was a great deal for anyone managing to book one since you got a room with a large balcony at a lower price than the ones with the regular sized one. Under the new classification the price for these rooms will increase.
used to be the retreat, now part of the Sanctuary Club
Another change that affects a whole lot more people is the former retreat area. It was a really nice free adults only sundeck with a pool, hot tubs, and pergolas for a bit of shade. It has now joined with the sanctuary in becoming a private area reserved for people who book their new class of sanctuary rooms. The sanctuary area always cost extra, but previously anyone could buy a pass to go there rather than it being reserved just for specific rooms who will of course pay extra for the privilege of using those areas. The once free retreat was one of our favorite hangouts on a previous cruise on this ship. Back then it had some nice shady cabanas people had to pay to use, but now the cabanas are gone. There’s some beach umbrellas scattered about that are new.
sanctuary club sign
The new sanctuary club area was open to all adult passengers during our cruise since sanctuary class wasn’t a thing yet when anyone booked this cruise, however it started out closed to everyone because they didn’t have it ready when we boarded. The part that was originally the retreat opened on the first sea day, but the part that was originally the sanctuary is still under construction. Full suites are all now part of the sanctuary class. Some mini suites are designated as sanctuary on the deck plan, but most are not. The people in sanctuary cabins also have a special dining room just for them and their own line at guest services.
laundries are half the size they used to be
One thing that will benefit a few people is the addition of 6 solo cabins, however this comes at the expense of space that formerly belonged to guest laundries. The ship does still have self-serve laundries available. That is something nice that Princess provides. A lot of cruiselines don’t have any self-serve laundries at all. The ones on Royal Princess once extended all the way through from one hallway to the other, but now they have been reduced to only one side of the ship. Each laundry only had 2 washers and 2 dryers. They had 4 of each when it went all the way across the ship. They could still have 4 in each laundry if they had replaced the current single units with stacking ones, but they didn’t. Besides having the size of the laundries cut in half, some were not open making even less laundry space available on a long cruise where people definitely need them.
bow pool
Some former crew cabins got converted to forward-facing guest cabins. Likely a disappointment to the crew members who previously occupied those cabins. Forward facing cabins didn’t appear to be the only thing the crew lost. A door at the forward end of the hallway on the starboard side of deck 8 now has a sign with open times instead of saying crew only. There’s a pool and a couple hot tubs out there, none of which had any water in them when I went out there to investigate. The paint around that area was wet at the time as well, though there were no signs warning of that.
O’Malley’s Irish Pub
Rumor on the internet prior to the drydock had the Vines Wine Bar getting renovated into O’Malley’s Irish Pub, though nothing official from Princess showed that as happening and in fact some posts denied that it would. None of their official deck plans showed it, even the ones for cruises at future times. It did indeed happen though. The former Vines is now O’Malley’s. A lot of the deck plans including those on Princess’ website still showed it as Vines last I looked, though the deck plans in the onboard information on the app for this cruise did show it as O’Malley’s.
door panel
Boarding day was quite unimpressive for a ship where everything should have been in good working order considering it just came out of drydock. Or at least that’s what we expected, though some other people have said the cruiselines just use drydock to make changes planned well in advance rather than fixing anything regardless of how badly things need fixing. We got to our cabin and found that our medallions would not open the door, though they did work fine for scanning onto the ship or into the muster station or if we wanted to buy something. After an hour in line at guest services we finally made it to the desk and were issued key cards. Having the medallions so you don’t have to use key cards is one of Princess’ best features so that was a disappointment. More than 3/4 of the cabins in our hallway did not show names in the little panel by the door that first day, indicating that medallions did not work to open any of those rooms either. Needless to say guest services was a nightmare of lines all day. Later they got the panels to show the names which gave most people access to their rooms, but our medallions still wouldn’t open the door for a couple more days until someone came out to fix the individual panel to that cabin.
app
Medallions weren’t the only thing not working right. The ship’s app has issues as well. Off ship as long as I don’t log out when done using it at home I never have to log in, it just opens. Once onboard it logged itself out and then said my login info was wrong even though it’s the same login info that worked on the app before and still works on my computer. It let me login once with the booking number, then logged itself out and said that was wrong too when trying to log back in. It also logged John out of his normal login so he had to login with the booking number as well. It logged itself out after each use requiring a new login every time Soon the booking number didn’t work either, but logging in with the room number did. Mine stayed logged in longer that way, but logged itself out and was inaccessible when we were off the ship and his continued to log itself out after each use. Updating the app was supposed to fix that problem, but didn’t.
leaky cabin doorway
We were lucky that our main issue was the medallions not working to open the door for the first couple days compared some other guests’ problems. Some have no working AC in their cabins and this cruise is through a hot climate. At least one room flooded and I ran into a couple ladies wandering the ship in the middle of the night with pillows looking for a place to sleep because their cabin smelled so musty it made them physically sick. Our bathroom smelled a bit musty on boarding day and like sewage after that, but at least the smell was confined to the bathroom and not permeating our entire cabin. One cabin had a bucket in the doorway with water dripping from a pipe above. That was not the only leak. Sitting in a seat at the theater I first though someone walking by spilled something on me, but then got another splash with nobody near and realized it came from the ceiling. After standing up to find another place to sit I noticed the seat was wet as well. A couple other seats in that area also had leaks above them and I got dripped on once while walking through the casino.
directional panel
There were also issues with some of the directional signs by the elevators which were dark sometimes and frozen to one screen at other times when people are supposed to be able to use those to locate things on any deck. When working they are quite useful.
elevator bay carpet
The carpet in our room was clean, but didn’t look new. Some people said they thought the ones in their cabins looked new. The ones in the cabin hallways looked the same as the last time we were on Royal Princess about 10 months prior, but the ones in the elevator bays looked new.
giant hole above the casino where there used to be a stairway
The thing that I hoped they would do most during the drydock was to remove the stairway from the casino to the shops and fill in the giant hole that served as a chimney for smoke to spread to the rest of the ship from the casino on the last cruise we took on Royal Princess. They did remove the stairway so they could fit in more slot machines, but left the giant hole. That turned out not to matter on this cruise though because they very wisely switched the smoking casino from the big wide open one to the smaller fully enclosed one so they can now keep the smoke contained within the smoking area. Hopefully that’s a permanent change and not just for this cruise. Once it gets to Australia there won’t be any indoor smoking as long as it is sailing from there because Australia does not allow indoor smoking on any cruises sailing from their ports.
new suite lounge
One of the other changes to the ship this drydock was removing the library that used to have games as well as books. Now their daily schedule has times people can get books or games from one of the dining rooms instead of having a dedicated library where they can get those at any time. They also converted a space that used to be a wedding chapel which was open to anyone and a concierge for the suites into a fancy and really nice lounge for suite guests only. It even has one of those fancy coffee machines that makes all sorts of different coffees. A great addition for people in suites, but a loss of a public space for everyone else. Probably not a space a whole lot of people used much, but we did once host a duck exchange in the wedding chapel on Enchanted Princess.
hallway by Princess Live
Other changes included the finish to some of the walls in the hallways. It’s now very shiny by Princess Live (a theater and bar/coffee bar) and the furniture in the hallways of that area is new and different. There are also changes to the wall finish and new furniture in the adjoining area, and the photo shop was relocated.
gluten free muffins
As is usual on Princess, the food is good. Princess has one of the best buffets at sea with quite a variety of different food. On this cruise even their gluten free muffins were really good. They actually looked and tasted like real muffins and were nice and soft like a muffin should be. On past Princess cruises while most of the food was good, the gluten free muffins resembled hockey pucks in looks and were not much better in taste or texture so it was nice to have good ones this time. Hopefully that is a change to their recipe rather than just someone on this particular ship that knows how to bake gluten free food.
Although conditions on the ship haven’t been as perfect as we expected we’re still having a great cruise.
