Sapphire Princess - Princess Cruises
Fact File - Sapphire Princess
Vessel: Sapphire Princess
Cruise Line:Princess Cruises
Star Rating: Not yet rated
Tonnage: 115,875 grt
Max Passenger Capacity: 3286
Entered Service: June 2004
Description: Sapphire Princess uses its size well to provide plenty of space and diversions for passengers. The vessel's 18 decks offer three show lounges, a casino, disco, Internet cafe, nautically themed bar, martini bar, patisserie, wedding chapel, library, art gallery, and facilities for children and teens.
Dining venues include four themed dining rooms for Anytime Dining, one main dining room for traditional dining, the Horizon Court 24-hour buffet, Sabatini's Trattoria alternative restaurant, poolside pizzeria and grill, ice-cream bar and 24-hour room service. Sports and recreational facilities include five pools (one with retractable roof), paddle tennis, volleyball, basketball, two computerised golf simulators, and a nine-hole golf-putting course.
Twenty-seven cabins are available for passengers with disabilities, and two family suites feature self-contained staterooms connected by a shared living room. Altogether there are 1337 cabins: 960 outside and 377 inside.
Princess Cruises - Sapphire Princess
Some cruise lines have bigger ships, but for Pacific cruising, Princess Cruises is king. Its latest entry in this regard is the 116,000-ton Sapphire Princess, which arrives in Sydney on December 23 as the largest vessel in the Princess/P&O fleet and the biggest passenger ship ever built for the southern Pacific trade. Following in the footsteps of its fleet mate, Star Princess, Sapphire will operate six cruises between Australia and New Zealand, sailing for 12 or 14 days between Sydney and Auckland.
Accompanying this new vessel are several product enhancements - upgraded services and innovative public rooms - that help set Sapphire apart. A wholly new revenue space, Club Fusion, wows guests with 31 high-definition video screens, a bandstand/dance floor and video poker stations. Personally, I preferred Churchill's - a combination cigar and sports bar with 12 televisions. Taking its cue from 1998's original Grand Princess, this clubby room has upside-down pool tables suspended from the ceiling and sports memorabilia adorning the walls with a decidedly British foxhunting motif.
Another great room to relax in is The Wheelhouse Bar, which has become a standard feature on all the company's ships and is best characterised as Princess Cruises' answer to Royal Caribbean's nautically-themed Schooner Bar. Similar in ambiance is the Wakeview Bar, a downstairs extension of Club Fusion. Connected by a circular stairway, this secluded hideout is the kind of nook rarely found on today's mega ships.
Introduced on Grand Princess and improved upon with Sapphire is a top deck disco-in-the-sky. In this latest design, the "trolley cart handle" (as it's now affectionately known) is nestled closer to the superstructure. This design allows for an exterior balcony 125 feet wide overlooking the aft pools. The lateral edges, meanwhile, extend almost as far as the bridge wings, allowing for dramatic views forward. "No other class of ship has these views," notes Mike Moulin, the recently retired commodore of the Princess fleet, who was on board this cruise as a lecturer.
Even the ubiquitous Internet centre has undergone a makeover, becoming a true Internet cafe on board Sapphire and its sister, Diamond Princess. In addition to its 26 terminals (four more are in the library), the cafe serves beer, wine , espresso and cappuccinos as well as juice, soft drinks and bottled water. Internet services, including the use of desktop web cams, cost a reasonable price per minute.
In conjunction with these hardware improvements, Princess has implemented several service enhancements, starting with a new concierge system for dinner and spa reservations. Passengers can also use their in-cabin phone to make appointments for dining or a massage, or they can book on-line prior to the cruise at www.princess.com. Passengers may also use the site to pre-book shore excursions and fill out immigration forms. The system, based on proprietary software created in-house by Princess Cruises' IT team, reduces the need to stand in line, according to Jeffrey Kohl, Princess Cruises' Director of Spa Operations.
Passengers in full suites enjoy a variety of upgraded benefits. These include free Internet access, dry cleaning, laundry service, shoe shining and a selection of canapes is delivered daily from a menu of choices. Other additional extras include the chance to schedule a private sitting for portraits with the ship's photographers, or afternoon tea served in-suite. All passengers, meanwhile, can take advantage of the ship's dining scheme, which has an innovative new twist: four themed restaurants serve Italian, American-style Tex-Mex, Asian Pacific or American steak house fare. These are part of the company's Anytime Dining programme, which allows passengers to eat dinner when they wish. The steak house represents the best deal, since on most other Princess ships it operates as an extra charge restaurant.
In any of the dining rooms, passengers may choose from a themed menu, a ship-wide menu or mix and match. This additional flexibility represents a great refinement of Personal Choice Dining, maximising the selections offered and creating a true sense of alternatives. Other dinner options include the reservations-only Sabatini's Trattoria - an extra charge restaurant, or the Horizon Court 24-hour casual buffet. Traditional dining is still offered in two seatings at 6:00pm and 8:15pm in the ship's main dining room. Passengers are asked which dining arrangement they prefer, Personal Choice or Traditional, at the time of booking.
The most casual dining options, which are generally preferred for lunch or a mid-day snack, abound around the pool. There's Prego pizzeria for a daily variety of pizzas and The Trident Grill offers hamburgers, hot dogs, chicken breast sandwiches and the like, all served with hot chips. For dessert, Sundaes dishes up ice cream for a nominal extra charge.
Even in Alaska, where the air temperature during a lazy day at sea was 18C (rising to the lower 20s in the direct sun), the pool decks were filled with passengers soaking up the rays or the scenery. Older passengers seemed to prefer the Conservatory - a glass-enclosed pool area amidships, while families with children congregated around the open-air pool and Jacuzzis. Indeed this was a multi-generational sailing. One group of 15 ranged in age from two to 74 and another group of 12 ranged from 20-somethings to persons in their 70s. For daytime diversion, Princess presents its ScholarShip@Sea programme, an eclectic line-up of enrichment activities that on this cruise numbered nearly 70 different lectures and workshops. Many topics were devoted to personal enrichment, such as pottery and ceramics, while others focused on the history and lore of the destination. Some, like digital photography, were offered at extra charge; others - like floral arranging or naturalist lectures - were complimentary.
Almost every sailing features special guest lecturers and some may have local connections with the cruise destination. On this cruise Mike Moulin gave several intriguing lectures, one entitled "The Maritime Discovery of Alaska" and another "The History of P&O Cruises."
One of the main benefits of a ship this size is the ability to offer many different activities in a single day. For example, in addition to the many ScholarShip@Sea programmes, there were art auctions, shuffleboard, wine tastings, Ping-Pong, big-screen movies, line dancing, bingo and passenger-participation games based on popular TV shows - just to name a few. One of the more curious activities was pool chipping: golfers took turns hitting balls into hoops, which floated in one of the swimming pools. Then there were the horse races. For those unfamiliar with this time-honoured cruise tradition, the "horses" are wooden sticks with a paper horse's head. Passengers "buy" the horses and "race" them around the pool.
Of course, more sedentary relaxation is available as well, chiefly in the spa. Sapphire Princess carries the line's second Lotus Spa to be operated entirely in-house. "We operate all our other products in-house," explains Spa Director Kohl, "so we decided this is something we wanted to do." In terms of its facilities, the Asian-inspired Lotus Spa comes complete with an amphitheatre-style "swim-against-the-current" lap pool - a design first introduced on Grand Princess. The pool itself is recessed below the deck area for a secluded effect. Surrounding the pool is the ship's gymnasium, filled with the latest in high-tech workout equipment and forward facing views of the sea.
Big ships also mean lots of balconies. In fact, this is one of the reasons these ships are so big: veranda cabins can be stacked on several decks rising above the hull. Aboard Sapphire, there are 748 balcony cabins - representing about 78 percent of the outside cabins. These balconied accommodations come in 17 different categories spread over six decks, and measure 22 to 28.5 square metres for a standard ocean-view (including veranda), 33 square metres for a typical mini-suite, and up to 65.5 square metres for a full suite. The Grand Suite tops the list at 123.5 square metres. Decor is in the familiar Princess palette of light woods, tasteful artwork and subtle earth tones, with mirrored accents to enhance the overall sense of spaciousness.
Best of all, the veranda design is of the sliding glass-door type so the door can be slid open to let in the fresh sea breezes. It's wonderful to fall asleep at night to the sound of the waves gently lapping against the hull.
Written by MT Schwartzman - 17 Spring 2004