Earlier this year my head office was kind enough to give us a chance to experience Princess cruise and we thought, why not make it a mini holiday so we can catch up with our friends 😁
15 Nov - 21 Nov 2025
We had a little celebration for my birthday before we flew to Brisbane with Qantas from Sydney. The aircraft also had wifi so we could connect to internet which was pretty cool. We picked up our car hire and drove 2 hours to Noosa where this was our first night at the Sofitel hotel and boy oh boy, the hotel was pretty nice. They gave us a glass of champagne during check in and a few surprise for our anniversary in our room.
We got in late so we went straight to the pool, got some garlic and rosemary fried along with my fav Long island ice tea. The next few nights we caught up with our friends Nick + Christine in Brisbane and Anne + Lou in Gold Coast where they used to live next door to us. We both had to do a bit of work but overall it was a nice chilax trip to spend some quality time with them.
21 Nov - 23 Nov 2025 - Princess Cruise
Prior to getting on the Crown Princess we had to download the app, filled in our information, credit card and our photos which I didn't quite get it at first but in the end it all made sense. At the check in we were given a medallion as this will allow us to get into our room and pay whatever on board e.g. drinks, food etc. We upgraded our drink package to the "Plus" which we could get any alcoholic drink up to $22 (15 glasses max per day), unlimited soft drinks, special desert, wifi and some gym classes. This was around $65/person/day
The ship itself in my opinion was a little bit outdated and very similar to my first cruise with Carnival 2 years ago. The differences with Princess is the majority of people were 60+ with less family or young kids so it wasn't over crowded which was nice. Our room had a stateroom balcony 23sq so it was enough for both of us. Their flat screen tv had a lot of movies/series selection and a HDMI port if you want to connect to your laptop if you have your own movies to watch. The cool thing about the medallion is that whenever you order something at the bar, the staffs can see your face on their app so they know who you are straight away and your order history so you don't need to sign for anything and this made it more personable. Our highlight of the trip would be how amazing the staffs were, super attentive and understand how to interact with their clients.
Food wise I'd rate it 7 out of 10. We did a specialty dining for $68/person and felt like that wasn't really worth it compared to the one included with the cruise fare already. International buffet was also very limited. Too bad we didn't get a chance to try their pizza bar as it was busy. Entertainment, we did 2 shows:
1st show - Singing show. This was a lot of fun and no one used their phone to take pictures or videos. I thought wow, people just wanted to enjoy the moment but I found out later that it was a rule that no one could film lol 🤣
2nd show - Comedy show. Too bad I got sea sick so I didn't really get to enjoy it that much as I was mellowed down from the sea sick tablets. Facilities on board, there were enough for everyone but one of the thing I felt that they could have done better was their spa. Since I did Carnival, their spa had 6-7 different room types for sauna, heated jacuzzi etc where Princess had 3. I was looking forward to use it but it was going to be $50/person and we felt like it wasn't worth the money.
The night before we had to disembark, if we wanted the staffs to bring our suitcase to the port we had to leave it out that night but we opted to take it ourselves as we still need to pack.
On our last day we had a quick breaky and got off the ship around 8.30am which also happened to be our 16th year anniversary together. What a way to finish our trip 😍
This was a 2 nights cruise which it would have been great to perhaps do a longer one so we can experience other things they had to offer. Regardless we had a good time and for me personally and what I do for a living, now I can tell my clients the differences between them. Next year we are going Silversea cruise which I cannot wait. Maybe between now and then I might get a chance to try out another one 😁
Thank you Steve from itravel and head office support team for this opportunity.
Thank you Princess cruise and the team for taking care of everyone so well like VIP.
Thank you Nick, Christine, Anne, Lou and little Buddy for hosting and taking care of both of us.
Thank you to my team: Jam, Solomon and Almarie for taking care of our clients while we were both away.
Thank you to the Tran family for babysitting little Pixie for us.
Thank you to our clients for reading this blog and hope this help you with some insight of our very first Princess Cruise personal experience 🤩
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