Great ship, mediocre food and service
Sapphire Princess Cruise Review to Other (Asia/Africa/Middle East)
Sail date: October 01, 2007
Ship: Sapphire Princess
Cabin type: Suite
Traveled as: Couple
Reviewed: 14 years ago
Review summary
As large ships go, the Sapphire Princess is probably one of the smaller, but still very large. This cruise had about 2600 passenges. There are many entertainment venues for varied interests. The Asian itinerary was exciting and comprehensive, but in some ports there was too little time to explore many highlights, and some port calls were unexplainedly long without corresponding choices of excursions. The food served in the International dining room was, at best, mediocre. The meats and fish courses were generally overcooked, while vegetables were undercooked. The soups appeared to be all made from the same stock base, thus lacked individual flavors. Dining room stewards, however, were attentive and excellent, and deserve a better place to work. The Horizon buffet on the Lido deck is a worse story. The service personnel moved and acted very lethargic, slow to respond to requests and inattentive. The food served was much like that in the dining room, but sometimes even worse due to being out in serving areas too long. The pizza parlor compared in quality to the cheapest store-brand frozen pizza. The sole exception was the poolside grill on the Lido deck where the choices and food quality were very good. Beverages on the ship were extraordinarily high priced, both alcoholic and non-alcoholic, in consideration of being at sea in tax-free areas most of the time. Worse, though, was having to pay additional for after-dinner cappucino or any coffee other than the regular or decaf mass-brewed version. And having to pay for ice cream (other than one hour of vanilla-chocolate choices each afternoon in the Horizon buffet) was almost insulting.Pros: The itinerary Beijing to Bangkok Oct 1 2007
Cons: The meals and service
1 Comment
cruisellama 5 years ago