Cruising the Atlantic during hurricane season is not all about the ports of call.
Following our embarkation day, Island Princess continued to the Caribbean, spending the next two full days at sea. We would also cruise a full day going from Puerto Rico to Bermuda and another full day sailing back to Brooklyn where we started. Plus every evening, except our overnight stay in Bermuda.
Tropical storms can obviously mean rough seas. As it came to pass, Hurricane Erin did not have much impact on land when she blew through at the end of August. She cooled the Atlantic Ocean, making for rather smooth sailing throughout our cruise.
Shore excursion talks on sea days share helpful information. Life-time adventurist Jase kept them upbeat and interesting on Island Princess, often interjecting humorous photos of his days as a tour guide driving off-road vehicles around third world destinations.
If you cruise, attend these talks to get the most out of ports visited. No matter how much research you do in advance, you will probably learn something you will find to be valuable once on shore. If you miss the live presentation, you can watch a recording on your stateroom TV.
Over a meal late in our cruise, a couple that recently returned from a cruise on Sky Princess commented that Island Princess entertainment hadn't been on the level of larger ships. You may recall that I wrote glowingly about the entertainment on Sky Princess upon returning on a cruise to Norway and Iceland.
While I agree, that doesn't mean the entertainment on Island was bad by any means.
There were three production shows. "Encore" is filled with full-throated, show-stopping songs performed in formal costumes. We've enjoyed this same show on other ships. The production seems to have additional songs that can be rotated into the show to suit talent, costumes and tastes of different ships, but maybe that just indicates my memory isn't as good as I remember it to be.
"On the Bayou" was a favorite of ours on Island's sister ship, Coral Princess, on our South America/Antarctica cruise with good friends Mike and Linda. Julie and I thought the Island Princess rendition felt more slick and less authentic than the cast on Coral Princess.
Fun show, but no standing ovation this time. Perhaps the venue of the large Princess Theater on Island rather than the smaller Explorer's Lounge on Coral played a part in that.
"Blame It On the Boogie," on the other hand, was new to us, and we thought they nailed it. Many dyed-in-the-wool rockers from the early seventies eschewed disco, but my friends and I liked to dance, including at discos.
What came even more to mind than going to nightclubs, however, were company Christmas parties for one of Julie's employers in the 1990s, when an unlikely group of strait-laced businesspeople boogied down on the crowded dance floor, reliving disco nights when we were younger. "Blame It On the Boogie" is a fun show.
Along the lines of disco, one of the best guest performers was Willis White, whose Princess Theater show backed by the Princess Orchestra celebrated the music of Lionel Richie, one of my favorites (including his band the Commodores) of the Disco Era and beyond. Not a big production show, but a great singer with terrific material. Lionel Richie has a lot of hits.
Julie's favorite was Gen Maldonado's "Tribute to the Divas." Another top-notch singer, Gen also had a good sense of humor, poking fun at herself after getting out of breath doing an amazing rendition of a Whitney Houston anthem.
A performer who didn't win Julie over was Tom Sartori, but I enjoyed both of his shows. His autobiographical set was fascinating to me. The fact that he won $300,000 playing in a poker tournament on stage and parlayed that into a hit song is really cool. When he didn't thank the Princess Orchestra for backing him, it turned off Julie completely.
On a different cruise, we had seen Sartori do a set called "Piano Men," featuring the music of Elton John and Billy Joel. He definitely can play the piano and sing convincingly like Elton John, and he looks a lot like EJ when he does.
Julie left one song into Sartori's second show, "Country Jamboree." For fans like me of the country songs he chose for that set, including appropriately "The Gambler," the show was a hit. Cruise lines, as you can see, offer a wide variety sure to please everyone at least some of the time.
Sartori brought the violinist from the Alex Duo on stage for an energetic take on "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" to close out the set. And he asked the crowd to give a big round of applause for all who joined him on stage.
I saw three other shows that Julie skipped. Michael Minor was promoted as a ventriloquist, impersonator and singer. Perhaps that doesn't sound promising, but he was engaging and talented. He did some impressive vocal impersonations, and while not as much of a fan of dummies as I was as a kid, I still appreciate the humor and talent of a good ventriloquist.
Duo Lyodji, an acrobatic/strength act was supposed to be in the Princess Theater one night, but perhaps because of potential ship movement, they instead performed in the Atrium. I think that was actually a better venue for this act. I watched from the third level, and the man and woman were amazing both apart and together.
There was also a magic act, which I left early, having seen variations of the same illusions on other cruises.
Carlos Oscar, on the other hand, was hilarious when he did his show in the Princess Theater.
We had missed an entirely different set the prior evening in the smaller Explorer's Lounge, so I'm not sure we heard his best material. We did not have high hopes when he seemed nervous at first, but after a few minutes, Carlos had us both cracking up at some very original family material sprinkled with a few cruise line jokes.
Entertainment on a cruise is never exclusively about the shows in the big theater. As usual, we found favorite lounge performers to follow throughout the cruise.
Our favorite was Dennys Vietra, who had sets of different types of music, with our favorites being his rock sessions. I filmed this clip of "Imagine" in Explorer's Lounge, which is where Island Princess hosted the Elite Happy Hour daily.
I started recording after the best part, which was his instrumental introduction, but this is a taste of what his music was like. Dennys is a fantastic guitarist. From Brazil, he apparently learned a lot of lyrics phonetically. Can you imagine how difficult it would be learning lyrics to Portuguese songs?
The second night out of our cruise was formal night, as it is on most cruises. Instead of a cocktail party, Princess hosts a champagne extravaganza with champagne waterfall in the Atrium.
Because we were in a Mini Suite, we should have received welcome glasses of champagne upon boarding but had missed connecting with our room steward Andy. He instead gave us a bottle of champagne to open at our leisure.
Instead of going to the party in the Atrium, we took our champagne to the Elite Lounge, where a waitress uncorked it for us to a bit more fanfare than we'd hoped. It sprayed out before she could start pouring.
I'm not sure how much bubbly we lost, but we finished what turned out to be a very good bottle of champagne before strolling to dinner. It's nice to be on a cruise where we don't need to drive around "town."
Back to the guitarist, my favorite was his first rendition of "With or Without You."
Dennys sang it like Roy Orbison (probably unconsciously), which quite suited his voice and the song. I believe he had no backing track on that take, relying exclusively on his acoustic guitar skills. I thought it could be a hit country song. I told him how much I liked his rendition, and perhaps he honed it further to sound more like U2.
I recorded a subsequent version in the atrium a few days later, which wasn't as good. As always seems to be the case with smart phone videos, you really had to be there to hear how great it was live.
A performer we started following after he performed in the Elite Lounge Happy Hour one night was pianist Louis Dizon.
He played nice background music in various genres.
I don't think he ever uttered a word, which was fine. His piano spoke for him.
The Alex Duo were violin virtuosos.
Our favorite strings sets are always filled with classical music, but I recorded a video only of a snippet from "Volare" when they performed during a jazz set in the Crown Grill Lounge.
As you can see in the video, Crown Grill looks quite classy, it feels luxurious.
Our dinner in Crown Grill on another evening was delicious, but we did notice differences. The service was less on the ball.
We've come to expect anticipatory service in Crown Grills on other Princess cruises, but this time we had to ask for a wine menu and then three times for wine before it was delivered on the third request well into the first course. We usually like having some wine with the tasty garlic bread before that.
Water was not refilled regularly, something which I find annoying at any restaurant, much less a luxe dinner house.
The food was delectable, and our Filet Mignons were succulent and cooked to perfection. Still, the waiter brought my medium (yeah, I know, I'm a troglodyte, but ordering it that way still results in a pink center) to Julie and gave me her medium rare. We had to change plates, which is not a big deal, but only because we didn't drop one. It also shows the lack of attention to detail.
We each ordered two side dishes to share, and we've become accustomed to having too much to eat. This time, each side dish was a definite single serving, and while we had enough for us --- exactly --- it would make a difference to big eaters.
Overall, we received better service in Bordeaux, our assigned standard dining room for the cruise.
Ships on European cruises, where I generally feel dining room entrees are more upscale, had nothing on Island Princess. As always, I had lots of great fish dishes, but there also were more beef entrees to tempt me on Island Princess. I succumbed to this temptation a few times, rather than just tasting Julie's.
Service overall was good, but one evening we were put at a table near the restaurant entrance. Unfortunately, a loud band had been scheduled to perform in the Atrium, a few steps away. It's not that the band was bad, but it was not appropriate dinner music. In addition, service was not good at that table, perhaps because the servers had to escape music pounding in their ears rather than staying to be attentive to diners.
Most nights, the service in our Bordeaux Dining room was very good. Sometimes both the table location and service proved excellent. To be more certain of that perfection nightly, we could have booked a Reserve Collection Mini-Suite, but Reserve Collection costs about 10% more than the next highest category of Mini-Suite, which we were in.
Anyone who is vegetarian also has menu choices available in the dining rooms as well as the buffet.
We were more likely to have breakfast and lunch in the dining room on sea days, but sometimes it is hard to beat a cheeseburger out in the sunshine or a casual buffet meal. I particularly enjoyed a soft chocolate ice cream cones available free by the indoor pool.
While this ship is one of the oldest in the fleet, it is very well-maintained and still beautiful.
The Wheelhouse Bar always feels yacht club casual.
Crooner's Lounge brings to mind jazz and the sixties in Las Vegas during the Rat Pack's prime comes to mind, even if the music played may not always fit exactly with that setting.
The metal artwork on display is awesome, and I can never get enough of the architecture of the Atrium.
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