It was seven in the morning and our cruise ship was sailing in glass-like water, a cold breeze billowing across the deck. A voice over the loudspeaker explained to us what we were approaching, encouraging us to take a closer look at the water. When “crack!” – a sound as quick and as loud as a gunshot made its way across the water to us. We all looked up quickly to see the glacier that our cruise ship was approaching calving into the water. We all watched as the pieces moved towards us and an eagle settled on the ice as a perch.  

This was only one of many experiences we had while on our Alaskan Inside Passage on the Golden Princess. The cruise ship was full of many complementary factors to our cruise, ranging from excursions to onboard activities. And the ship itself had everything you could ever want when you sail the 49th state. Learn more about the Golden Princess and my thoughts on our time on the ship below.

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Trip Details

While I have had the chance to take six cruises throughout the world, from the Caribbean to the Mediterranean, this was the first cruise I have been on in Alaska. I was impressed by all of the things that the Golden Princess included to make this trip Alaska-specific that you couldn’t find on other cruises, like an onboard naturalist, specific lectures with historians, and talks with those who had accomplishments in Alaska, like Iditarod winners.

Itinerary

Our itinerary was a seven-day Inside Passage Alaskan cruise from Vancouver and ending in Anchorage, from June 30 – July 7, 2019. The itinerary looked like this:

During our Glacier Bay and College Fjord days, the Golden Princess entered each area and slowed down, allowing us to take in the scenery. There was also a naturalist on board who would come over the microphone to point out what we were seeing, any animals that were around us (and would tell us what side of the ship to go to if we wanted to see those animals) and to answer any questions.

Our Group

This trip was more of a family trip and initially started out with my husband and me, my sister, one of my brothers (my other brother and his girlfriend traveled to Alaska last year) and my Mom and Dad. Later on, my grandparents decided to join us as well and then my aunt decided to join my grandparents. So, all in all, we had nine people on this trip, with ages ranging from 25 to 90.

Our family is pretty spread out around the country, with my aunt being in New York, my grandparents in Texas and my brother in California. This was one of the big reasons why my family and I met up in Seattle and then spent an additional day in Vancouver before we boarded, as it gave us a little extra time in the off chance that we had travel problems.

Unfortunately, my grandparents had booked their travel through Princess, who had them fly out to Vancouver, the day of the cruise. However, one of their planes had mechanical issues, which meant that they missed their flight to Vancouver and couldn’t get to the port in time. Therefore, they had to join us when we had our first stop in Ketchikan. Luckily, they had no additional travel issues and made that port just fine. I will note that Princess rebooked their flights for them, but they didn’t receive any other compensation.

When We Traveled

Our trip was over the Fourth of July week, which also fell over the same week as Canada Day. We chose this week because 1) It allowed for us to use just a little less PTO because we all got one day off for the Fourth of July and 2) We heard that July was a great time to sail because of the weather. We got unlucky with the weather, however, because it ended up being the hottest week ever in the history of Alaska, with the temperature climbing to a record 90 degrees. But, luckily, we had no rain and the week ended up being very clear.

We also decided to cruise in July as it is a great time to see animals and wildlife on the route. We were about a week or two too early to see the salmon runs, but we spotted plenty of wildlife both on the Golden Princess’s route, as well as on our excursions. It was a crowded week, however, with multiple cruise ships docking at the same time as we did in each port.

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Golden Princess Amenities

Overall, I am very happy that we chose the Golden Princess on our trip to Alaska. It turned out to be clean, comfortable and very well up-kept – It is certainly one of the nicer ships that we have sailed on. The ship also sailed extremely smoothly, as we never really felt the engines, even when we were pulling in and out of port.

Golden Princess Details

The Golden Princess is a Grand-class cruise ship, meaning that it is one of the smaller ships in the fleet, clocking in at around 108,865 tons. The ship carriers ~2,600 passengers and 1,100 crew members and typically sails in either Alaska, Los Angeles or Hawaii.

The Golden Princess has 17 floors which include four pools, multiple hot tubs, a sports court, a kid’s and a teen’s lounge, three levels of dining rooms, a theatre and onboard shopping. Adult’s amenities include a nightclub, an Adults-only area (which includes an adults-only pool), a casino, and multiple bars, including a cigar and wine bar.

Amenities that could be purchased included the beverage package, Wi-Fi, specialty restaurants, onboard shops, the spa, and other cruise add-ons like gifts that you could purchase beforehand.

Our Room

While on the Golden Princess, we stayed in an inside room. This was because my brother and his girlfriend had sailed an Alaskan cruise the summer before and her parents had stayed in a balcony room. After the cruise, all of them stressed the importance of getting an inside room because of how bright it was at night. Even with blackout curtains, they found that they couldn’t fully block out the sun. Therefore, we got an inside room, so we had no chance of losing sleep.

Out of all six cruises I have taken, most of which were in inside rooms, this was by far the roomiest I have stayed in. This was because there were seemingly two rooms – one was the area where the bed, desk, and television sat. And then there was another part of the room where the closet and bathroom were.

When we have stayed in inside rooms before, we found that our clothes and shoes and stuff would find their way around the room due to the lack of space. The fact that we could store our luggage, clothes, and toiletries on one side of the room, and then sleep on the other, meant that we had a much more relaxing time in our room. The bed was also extremely comfortable, which was another huge reason why we loved the room. It was probably one of the comfiest beds I have ever sailed on during a cruise. Amenities that were obviously designed to make your life easier, like the ability to turn your light off behind your bed, were also apparent throughout.

Princess@Sea – The Princess App

I have now had the chance to use a wide variety of apps on cruise ships. And I think the Princess@Sea app worked the best of all of the cruise lines I have tried the apps on. It wasn’t glitchy, the events updated seamlessly, and messages delivered quickly. One of the biggest reasons why I like to keep my phone on me during a cruise is to message the other people I am with – and if the messaging app doesn’t work, then I am probably over the app. But this one worked great!

The best part about it was it really had everything you needed in the app – from messaging, to activities and event, to folio and itinerary information. You could do almost everything in the app – from booking a shore excursion to charging something to your room.

The only complaint I really had was sometimes the app would update events right at the top of the hour, which is a good thing, but also extremely annoying if you haven’t found the activity you were looking for, or if something started a few minutes later (like, say, 2:15 p.m.). The workaround was that you had to go back into the location that you were heading to (i.e. if you were heading towards the Piazza, you needed to click into that location, to see the activity). Something to note if you do use the app.  

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Golden Princess Dining

In my opinion, food is one of the biggest parts of a cruise. Whether it tastes good, whether its readily available and how much variety are all factors in a cruise ship’s food being good. Overall, we found the Golden Princess’ food to be good, but not amazing. The best part of the food on board was how many options there were at (almost) any time of the day.

Main Dining Room – Assigned & Anytime Dining

Out of all of the venues on the ship, I liked the Main Dining Room the most. This was especially because of the service we found at our assigned dining seat. At the end of the trip, I left three comment cards for excellent service: one for our room steward, one for a cocktail waiter in the Explorer’s Lounge and one for our MDR waiter. That’s how much I loved his service!

Assigned Dining

Because of the size of our group, my family opted for assigned seating every night. I prefer eating when it fits into my schedule, so this wasn’t my first option, but it made sense for our group size. We were assigned to the Bernini Dining room on Deck 5.

The one benefit about assigned dining was that after the second or third night, the server knew us and knew what we wanted. When on cruises, I like some vanilla ice cream as dessert to clear my palette. After the second night, he stopped asking me for my dessert order and just said, “Sarah? Vanilla ice cream?” Having a server remember those little things night after night is one of the biggest benefits of assigned dining time.

Anytime Dining

There were a few nights that my family opted to eat the buffet vs. the MDR (they mainly chose this because sometimes our dining time would overlap with a potential animal sighting). David and I prefer eating in the MDR for dinner over the buffet, so we decided to go to the Anytime Dining on Deck 6. We were sat down without any question (seriously – they didn’t even take or look at our cards, they just asked, “How many?”) This was a great option if you end up missing your assigned dining time.

I also noticed that there was very rarely a wait, no matter the party size – they worked very hard to seat people immediately, moving around seats and reassigning waiters very quickly. We were sat in two different sections, though, so we did get different servers each night.

We did ask if there was a penalty for not using our assigned seats – and we found that if you skipped your assigned table twice in a cruise, then you forfeited it for someone on the waitlist (so we timed our second skipped table to be on the last night so we didn’t lose it during the rest of the week).

Other MDR highlights:

• Entertainment – both of the dining rooms that we ate in had “entertainment” on some of the nights – meaning some nights had someone singing, or the whole staff wore Italian-inspired outfits during Italian night and then celebrated while they brought out our dessert (Baked Alaska). And on the final night, they did a farewell song and dance. The only other cruise line that I have experienced this is with Carnival, so I thought it was a nice touch and fun to watch over a glass of wine.
• Our server’s recommendation – we found quickly that we needed to listen to whatever our server recommended when it came to dinner. His recommendations were typically spot-on – but they were also usually the best dishes on the menu. We found that if we selected something he didn’t recommend, it turned out to be less-than-delicious.

The Buffet

The buffet was everyone’s favorite food venue on the ship – so much so that my family had dinner there a few nights instead of the MDR. The options were plentiful, there was always something being served, and the hours were long (it was open from 6 a.m. until about 10 p.m. every day). Another plus was that they heavily encouraged you to wash your hands when you walked in, at a sink located right by the entrance – this made you feel like you weren’t about to get sick with any choice you picked.

Food selection rotated. Rather than just serving what was in the MDR for dinner, they had different themes such as Mexican or Oktoberfest night. Between meals and after dinner, they also have “off-time” food available. Meaning rather than shut the buffet down while they prepared lunch or dinner (as I have seen other cruise ship buffets do), they would set snacking options up near the dessert table to tide you over, like nachos or baked potatoes.

Specialty Dining

When we boarded the ship, we had plans to try out the Crown Grill on our second night in honor of my grandfather’s recent 90th birthday. However, since they had missed the first two nights of the trip, we ended up canceling our reservations since the guest of honor wasn’t there. I was looking forward to trying the Crown Grill out (I always find cruise steakhouses to be delicious). However, I did try to talk to a few people who had tried the Crown Grill and the Italian restaurant Sabatini’s, and I never found that anyone raved about the food at either. Usually, if you bring up a specialty restaurant, someone will begin to rave about how good it was and how you have to try it! So, because we didn’t hear anyone rave about it, we never tried it out.

The only problem with canceling our Crown Grill reservation was that we paid for it beforehand, costing $50/couple. The dining room team was pretty confused when we said we wanted to cancel. This was because it was a bit of a hassle to get our money back – we had to sign a piece of paper that was delivered to our room that confirmed we wanted to cancel. Only then did we get our $50 back, which still took a few days to show up on our onboard account.

Breakfast & Lunch Options

Main Dining Room

We found ourselves dining in the MDR for both breakfast and lunch. Out of the two, I preferred breakfast (one of my favorite things to do on a cruise is to wake up, grab a food book, sip coffee and eat as much as my heart desires while I read a book). Something that surprised me about the Princess MDR breakfast was that it was offered more than just on sea days – you could get MDR for breakfast on most days (and some days we did, even before getting off the ship. It was an easy way to get everyone in one place and allow everyone to eat whatever they wanted). The MDR breakfast options were pretty typical – from pancakes to waffles to eggs and bacon. You also started the meal off with a pastry tray brought around to your table, and as much coffee as you wanted.

For lunch, the options were a little more varied. You could get some fun choices like latkes or fish tacos or burgers or sandwiches. There wasn’t a pastry tray, so you only got what you ordered (so order a lot if you’re hungry!)  We found the lunch service to be MUCH faster, allowing you to be in and out of the dining room in less than an hour.

Pub Lunch

On the last day of our cruise, we tried the free “pub lunch” offered in the Crown Grill. I was pretty excited about this, as I wanted to see what the Crown Grill food was like. And, unfortunately, it was the most disappointing food we had on the ship. The food was lukewarm, nothing really tasted exceptionally good, and the service was very slow (we had to ask to be served). I wish I had saved time and just gone to the buffet.

Additional Food Options Around the Golden Princess

If you wanted something outside of the buffet or the MDR, then there were only a few other options on the Golden Princess. You could grab an ice cream cone on Deck 12, next to the buffet (and the good news was someone served the ice cream to you, so you didn’t have a bunch of hands touching it before you. However, this meant that it wasn’t 24/7 as I have seen on other cruise ships). The same deck, which was also the pool deck, also offered a pizzeria (which was inexplicably closed for one day of our cruise) and a grill that had everything from a grilled chicken sandwich to French fries to chicken fingers.

Other than that, the only other option was the International Cafe on Deck 5. The cafe had sandwiches, coffees, and desserts available at any time of the day, with the selections rotating on a day-to-day basis. The sandwiches could be toasted if you asked for them to, and soups came in cute single-serving cups. The café also had a coffee shop attached to it that was open most of the day, serving espressos, plain coffees and milk-based drinks like cappuccinos and lattes. This was a great place to grab something to eat and then watch a show or activities happening in the main piazza.

Late-Night Food

One of my favorite parts about cruising is the late-night food. I think this is because rather than have to go out of my way for food after a late-night like you would on land, all you have to do is walk to another floor and there is usually the perfect food to hit the spot, like pizza. However, I will say that my biggest disappointment with this ship was the lack of most late-night things, which also included the lack of late-night food.

If you were hungry “after hours” your only choice was the International Café on Deck 5. This was a bummer because the selections were seemingly limited and were definitely not something you wanted after a night of drinking. The late-night options usually only included some sort of pasta salad, sandwiches, desserts, and soups. While these weren’t bad selections, none of these things were what I wanted before I fell asleep. This was disappointing and I oftentimes just found myself going hungry (which is a first-world problem, I know, but late-night food is something I enjoy on cruise ships).

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Golden Princess’ Drinks & Bars

A big part of cruising, whether you’re in Alaska or in the Caribbean, is having a drink at any point of the day. That’s half the fun, right? This wasn’t hard to do on the Golden Princess. There were plenty of places to grab a drink – one could argue more than food!

Onboard bars

There was a bar on almost every deck of the Golden Princess (multiple places on some of the decks!) One of our favorites included the Explorer’s Lounge on Deck 7. This is where most of the “late-night” activities were held on the ship, such as the nighttime activities like the Newlywed Game. Since there wasn’t much to do onboard at the end of the day, we found ourselves here most nights. And we enjoyed it the most because we had a great server here – she knew our orders after the first night and when we sat down, we didn’t even have to order. She prepared them and brought them over and then took our cards to pay for them, which was just impressive service.

Another area I really enjoyed was the wine bar. In addition to getting a wider variety of wine than you could find anywhere else on the ship, you could pick complimentary tapas-style food to be delivered to your seats, like sushi or a cheese and cracker plate. It gave the experience a wine-bar atmosphere and it was fun to sit at the bar and watch the entertainment in the main piazza or go grab some more food at the International Café next door.

Other areas onboard included a whiskey-themed bar on the same level as the Explorer’s Bar, multiple pool bars (including inside the adults-only Serenity) and in the casino and nightclub.

Drinks Service

Everywhere you went on the Golden Princess, you were almost guaranteed to find a cocktail waiter. They were everywhere! When you walked around the Serenity, a cocktail waiter would ask if you wanted anything. If you were playing in the casino, you would have multiple cocktail waiters check on you. And as I said above, if you frequented a bar often, the cocktail waiters would do their best to learn your drink. Cocktail service was exceptional and a big reason why I would sail Princess again.

Beverage Package

When we boarded the Golden Princess, we did not have a drink package. Our reason was that we thought we would be off the ship quite often for excursions.  However, my engineering husband did a quick round of math in his head and realized quickly that, even with the time we were going to spend off of the ship, it would be better money spent if we were to buy a drink package.

We purchased our package at one of the bars on Deck 6 and started counting to see if the price would be worth it. Thanks to the onboard credit we already had when we boarded, the discount made it even easier to break even. We stopped counting after the first few days because we knew that we had saved money by purchasing a package. This was especially true when we included our purchases of coffee and bottled water, which were included in the package.

The other reason why we enjoy a drinks package is that it allows for an all-inclusive feel to a cruise. You don’t have to worry about the price, or if you won’t like the drink. You can order what you want, when you want, and enjoy it as much as you want! If you’re going to have a few drinks a day, I always highly recommend the drinks package.

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Onboard Activities & Entertainment

I can say that I truly haven’t had a better onboard cruise staff than the one on the Golden Princess. Each and every person on the staff was fun, and most importantly, did their best to make sure that you had fun. And the activities were more exciting than I had seen on other cruise ships. We played not only general trivia but also specific trivia like Disney and Star Wars. This kind of range helped to make sure that each day was full of activities, even if we weren’t getting off the ship.

Activities

There were so many things to do at any given time on the ship that I could not name them all. Some of the activities we participated in were a harmonica class (there were multiple of these, taught by an onboard musician, and culminated in a “concert” in the piazza at the end of the week), different rounds of trivia, juggling class, and paper airplane-making contests. Other activities included wine tasting classes, bingo, fitness classes, slots tournaments, scavenger hunts, egg drop contests (complete with a target in the middle of a piazza), a mass vow renewal and dance classes.

Prizes ranged at each activity from coasters to hats to wine stoppers. This made it fun to keep participating – rather than end up with a bunch of ships on a stick, or a bunch of pens, it was fun to try and win to see what you could get! These were great souvenirs and also stopped you from having to spend money on Princess-branded stuff in the store.

At night, the cruise staff put on various shows and activities for guests to participate in that included the newlywed game, the yes or no game, the quest, and modern versions of To Tell The Truth (featuring members of the cruise ship telling two lies and one truth) and Beat the Clock. Additionally, on the first formal night of our cruise, there was also a captain’s reception, complete with champagne waterfall (and as many glasses of cheap champagne as you wanted).

Entertainment

The entertainment was not as good as the onboard activities, with the shows and comedians mostly lacking. My Dad and I went to see the British variety show that was offered, and I literally had to keep pinching myself to stay awake. Even my Dad, who can be very forgiving when it comes to entertainment, turned to me and said, “That wasn’t very good, was it?”

We also went and watched both of the comedians. One of them was a juggling scientist, who tried to be funny but overall was not very good. I don’t think I laughed once. The other was not half bad, but he was a guitarist that sang more songs and did more impressions than necessarily telling jokes. There were also some onboard bands that played, but they were always going at the same time as the other shows or after-dinner activities, so we never had time to listen to them.

Other Onboard Activities

• Movie Under the Stars – every night, and sometimes during the day, a movie would be played on the pool deck. Passengers could watch and enjoy popcorn in a dedicated lounger and special blanket.
• Art and other lectures – In addition to the lectures that were being held on board for the Alaskan portion of the cruise, there were also art lectures and other lectures such as a photography course and a diamond appreciation course.

Fourth of July

During our cruise, we sailed on the same week as both Canada Day and Fourth of July. As part of the Fourth of July celebrations, the Golden Princess held an American-themed party in the piazza. This included a big band playing music to celebrate, a red, white and blue balloon drop and a dance party! My family took it one step further and even added in glow stick jewelry and American flag-themed apparel, which other cruisers loved! We had a bunch of people stop us to laugh and take pictures and it was a fun way to celebrate.

During both Canada Day and the Fourth of July, there were small touches around the ship, such as cake served for both days, the cruise staff dressing up and wishing people a happy Canada Day or Fourth of July or American-themed trivia.

No Late Night

After about 10:30 to 11:00 p.m., there was near-about nothing to do on the ship. You could watch the piano singer (which often got crowded because it was the last thing to do) or hang out at the teen’s bar or the International Café. We tried going up to the nightclub one night and we were the only ones there. The only other option was the casino, which had some people, but was still sparse. The latest bar that stayed open, outside of the one in the casino or nightclub, was midnight. So, if you are a night owl, the Golden Princess may not be for you!

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Other Golden Princess Observations

• Sail-Away – Our favorite things to do during the sail away at the beginning of a cruise is to go to the highest point and watch from there. So, when we were leaving Vancouver on the Golden Princess, we went right up to Skywalkers nightclub on Deck 17 right after muster. We ran up as fast we could so that we could get a good seat, sat down and waited to see a bartender arrive at one of the bars, ready to watch the ship sail away. And thirty minutes later, we finally saw someone – only to be told that we would need to leave! It turns out that Skywalkers is only reserved for suite guests during sail away and that we were not supposed to be up there. However, there had been no signage – even when we did eventually leave, there was no signage. It was something we were supposed to have read in the cruise itinerary. We ended up bartering with the bartender to let us stay for sail away – we promised not to drink or eat anything, and that we would leave as soon as we were in open water. After some back-and-forth, we agreed, and we stayed up there for about twenty minutes more. However, it was a frustrating way to start the week.
• Folio Mistake – On our last day, we received a copy of our folio under our door. Not a problem, until David looked at it further while we were at breakfast and realized that we had been charged $60 for a shore excursion that we had not been on. So, we packed everything up and headed down, hoping that we could get it resolved quickly as our assigned debarkation time, and our excursion in Anchorage was coming up quickly. We waited in line at the guest services desk, only to be referred to the shore excursion desk.
  
  Turns out, no one mans the shore excursion desk during debarkation. So, we had to have someone call the shore excursion representative back from his post onshore. From there, the excursion representative then had to go back into the logs to find out why we had been charged. What had happened was someone signed up for a shore excursion while onshore, and on their paper form they had misprinted a “1” to look like a “3” (don’t ask me how) – which meant that the shore excursion desk had thought that it was something we purchased. They were able to remove it, but they did note that if we had waited until we were onshore/off the cruise, it would have been difficult to verify.
  
  We were frustrated with that because the charge didn’t show up until the last day. Rather than us dealing with it when we had time in the days before, we had to wait to solve it, miss our debarkation time, get separated from our family, and be anxious that we were going to be late for our shore excursion. Keep a close eye on your final bills!
• No speaker in-room – Something I really love about Royal Caribbean ships is that there is a speaker in-room so that you can hear the ship-wide announcements without having to go in the hallway (and you can turn it on and off if needed). There wasn’t a speaker in this room, so you had to pop your head out into the hall to hear anything – even if you were sleeping or in the shower. It was annoying, overall, because we always missed something – especially if we had to get out of bed to hear it.

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Would I Sail the Golden Princess Again?

Yes! I would. This was the fourth cruise line I have sailed with and probably my second favorite (the first is Royal Caribbean). But I found that the ship was clean, the food was plentiful, and the people and service were amazing. Prices were also fairly reasonable, so I never felt like I was overpaying or being taken advantage of. Other than a few small things, nothing major happened, and I found that the cruise flew by because of the fun we were having. Due to all of these factors, I was able to step off of the Golden Princess saying, “I really did have a great time.”

I highly recommend not only the Golden Princess but Princess cruise lines overall – I hope we get another chance to sail with them one day!

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Any Questions?

No matter where you cruise on the Golden Princess, you now know the wide range of what it is offered. If you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments and I will get back to you ASAP!

Want more of my time on the Golden Princess? Take a look at my Instagram Stories (there are three parts to the trip, all labeled under “Alaskan Cruise”). Have you taken a trip on the Golden Princess? What about Princess cruise lines? What did you think? Leave a comment below!

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