Live blogging from the Ruby Princess - Day 2

Monday, March 12th - San Francisco, CA - day 2 of a 7 day California Coastal Cruise

We made it aboard Saturday after a long drive through uncharacteristically rainy Los Angeles.  We dropped our bags at the World Cruise Center around 11:40am, returned our rental car at the San Pedro Enterprise location and were through security and onboard the Ruby Princess by 12:10 am.

The Ruby, being the last of the Grand class ships and derivatives seems to have set to correct, as best as possible within her footprint, all the shortcomings of the previous Grand class ships.  While the Emerald can take this claim also, as both ships are perhaps the closest of all the sibling ships in the fleet, the Ruby has a few less cabins and some very minor adjustments in decor. At first glance the Ruby is in good shape, in fact perhaps excellent shape given that she turns 10 this year!

With the notable exception of the horizon court seating layout, the ship has nearly all the updates that many of her siblings have received (in hodge podge fashion) over the last few years.

Additionally, for being 10 years old, she is in very good shape.  I like to evaluate bathroom conditions as a good barometer of overall ship condition, and one again considering her age, shes has only minor staining, 1 shower brushing that is coming slightly loose around a spigot, and no missing tiles.  The pools all look pristine, and the furniture throughout is in good shape. I only have gripes about the old Horizon Court chairs being awkward to get in and out of. I really haven’t noticed a single rust spot that has grabbed my attention - compared to my last voyage on the Star, the Ruby is in much better shape in that regard.  And that’s not to say the star is in poor shape at all.

Bathroom in very good condition

Carpeting work

A few things I’ve noticed

• There seems to be a prevalent leak in the Horizon Court on the port side which seems to have an area of 2 or 3 tables completely curtained off.  It may not be a leak at all, but there seemed to be some pulled up carpet and buckets in the area.
• There are more than a handful of folks wearing “Carnival LLC” polo shirts on board - one speaking Italian - not sure what that would seem to indicate.
• While there appears to be new new carpeting and matresses in our mini-suite, we aren’t sure if this is shipwide.  We did notice that the forward stairtower was being recarpeted floor by floor.  Note that it looks awkward becuase the adjacent elevator landing areas are not the upgraded carpet and the brown patterned stair carpet looks awkward compared to the older blue carpet near the elevators.
• The foghorn being regularly blown since about 2pm yesterday until early this morning probably made MUTS hard to listen to last night.
• The deck 16 aft area around Share and Adagio is unfortunately wasted.  The terrace area is such a calm and relaxing location it really could have had a nice “open air” feel added to it when it was transformed from Sabattinis.  Something similar to what NCL and Carnival have done on their promenade decks. Even just having large windows that could be opened would have been a really nice touch in warm climates.
• No shuffleboard to be found, and no matter how many arrows Princess has painted on the walking/jogging track around the Princess Links, people still tend to walk the wrong way.  Also, there are only about 3 actual holes on those links.
• The library is severly lacking - I don’t think its unreasonable to expect at least 200 books on a ship of this size, but several of the cases are empty or actually blocked out.
• The Horizon Court layout on this ship and the other Super Grand class ships handles crowds exceedingly well compared to the original Grand class.  While the grand class ships can all feel crowded from time to time, the Horizon Court has been a nice calm venue every single time we’ve eaten there, even on embarkation day.

We’ll continue to provide more thoughts in the coming days.  Please post questions!