Grand Princess Sea Day

We have a sea day today so it’ll give me a chance to share more about the ship:

• Crafting sessions are held twice a day when at sea. They did do one crating session (quilling) while we were in Puerto Vallarta but it had a slim turnout so was repeated twice again today with much better participation. So far all craft sessions have been in Sabatini’s.
• The bar staff is a bit stressed at the moment and their stress level will only get worse. They have been undergoing training this week in preparation for the bar menu changing next cruise. It’s a huge change. New cocktails are being introduced and new alcohols will be found some of the standard drinks. Wines are changing, too. Bar staff aren’t quite sure how they will be balancing (and storing) old stock and new stock at the same time. It’ll be an adjustment for passengers and personnel alike. 
• The ship is looking old. Like I’ve said before, furnishings are worn and carpets are badly stained. The calking in the cabin and public bathrooms is looking pretty black, almost mold-ish looking. And just the other day at the pool I noticed dozens and dozens of missing tiles. It’s like they have just given up on deep cleaning and repairs. I’m guessing they are waiting for dry dock (which is several months away), but some of these things could have been better maintained than this.
• I’ve been dropping off the encouraging word money pocket each and every day in the Wake Show comment box. It was mentioned once on the Wake Show early on in the cruise but I haven’t heard a word since. Just like every other one I place somewhere, I hope the person who needs the encouragement in that very moment is the one finding them.
• I heard that on the Sapphire Princess unused internet minutes weren’t rolling over on back to back cruises. I checked with the internet manager here on this ship and was told they would not roll over for us, either. She even said it was always that way – you lose your unused minutes. Uh, no. We’ve done plenty of back to backs and have found they usually roll over automatically. Only when I pushed a bit about losing so many minutes did she agree to adjust it for us. Once the next cruise begins we will have to visit her again and she will add the minutes to our new cruise, but only if we had, in her words, “a significant number of unused minutes”. I don’t know what she is considering significant. 30 minutes? 100 minutes? I’m not sure if this is a new policy Princess is implementing or not, but it could potentially be a big pain. Since the internet sucks so bad on this ship, it could be an even bigger pain over the next week for me. I already blew through my allotment in the first few days of this cruise so hubby has graciously allowed me to tap into his minutes today to be able to publish this blog post. If we don’t keep a “significant” number of minutes to roll over, there may be no blog posts next week. And no photos uploaded for the rest of this cruise, for sure.
• They are still showing holiday movies on channel 27. We’ve watched several so far, most with titles that escape me. White Christmas must be a singalong version because when the songs begin, the lyrics pop up on the screen. 
• This morning we saw dining room waiters marching through buffet cheering with pompoms, dressed in sleeveless tuxedo tops and shorts. It looked like some kind of party but we didn’t figure it out until later. There was an interdepartmental tug of war competition at the pool today. I was at the craft class and missed it but it looked like it was going to be a fun activity to watch. Next cruise, I guess.
• As we’ve been leaving port, they’ve had live music on the Horizon Terrace at the back of deck 14. It’s nice to have that as a secondary sail away celebration location.

One more sea day tomorrow!