The first full day aboard Sky Princess on our week-long UK cruise with Princess Cruises would see the ship docked at Portland, Dorset, and would see us do something we’d never before done while on a cruise. That thing would be… staying aboard the ship! I know! Us! It seems incredible to think of it, especially given that this cruise for us was the first since the pandemic started that allowed passengers to get off at ports, and especially since we are first-and-foremost destination cruisers, preferring to explore and visit places ashore rather than gush over the ship itself. However, the year before, we’d taken a short break along the south coast, because cruising wasn’t an option then, and we’d spent a couple of days in nearby Weymouth. This relatively recent visit to the area and us not having any pressing need to visit anything else around that we’d not already seen gave us the chance to see what a cruise ship is like when most of the passengers disembark. As this wasn’t a full capacity cruise anyway, it turns out that there wasn’t a huge difference but, whatever.
If you remember from the first post in this Sky Princess cruise travelogue series, we had an aft cabin, and the morning view that greeted us in Portland was of the Dorset coastline towards Lulworth Cove.
Once a reasonably late breakfast was out of the way we went for a wander around the top deck of the ship just to see how different this Royal-class ship was to the other ones in the Princess fleet on which we’d cruised. Our experiences aboard Royal Princess (in 2016) and Regal Princess (earlier in the year) had confirmed that, the lack of a Skywalkers aside, the upper decks of these ships was a good design, featuring plenty of pools and an especially-improved adults only pool near the front. But we also knew that the Royal-class ships had undergone some design changes with their newer vessels and wanted to see if these were improvements in our minds or not.
We started at the aft of the ship as it was close to our room, and the following photographs show the aft pool on Sky Princess as well as some of the outside fitness areas: the jogging track and court.
As we moved forward along the top deck of Sky Princess it was nice to look at some of the Portland landscape that we’d not quite reached when we’d walked along some of the South West Coast Path on our prior visit. Our legs had only taken us into part of the walled harbour area in which the cruise ship was anchored but the hill to the ship’s port side was on the Isle of Portland and we’d never quite got off the mainland.
I like a bit of art and we started encountering some sea-themed and Princess-themed pieces around this part of the ship. In keeping with the overall cruise line colours, blue and white featured a lot, and that’s nice but I think it can be bolder to go vibrant and contrasting where such pieces are concerned. At least if you were ever concerned that you couldn’t remember which hashtag to use on social media there was a handy reminder to be found.
The swimming pools are some of the biggest draws for us on a cruise ship, although for other people, being near a swimming pool, taking up space around a swimming pool, and preventing those who want to swim in the swimming pool from having anywhere to put their stuff close by is what they most want. Have I mentioned how much I hate people who lounge by pools but never use them are? Yes, yes I have. Sorry, can’t help the odd, repetitive rant.
Princess Cruises do swimming pools pretty well. There are usually plenty on their ships, and they’re usually a decent size. One difference we spotted on the main pool area on Sky Princess was an altered space between the two pools that had previously been reserved for a fountain show, now adding a couple of hot tubs. That felt like a better use of the space.
The adults-only pool on Sky Princess – the Sanctuary or Retreat pool – was quite different from Royal and Regal, and not for the better in my opinion. It’s possible that the design change was to reduce some of the more luxurious lounger areas in order to encourage more use of the additional-cost Sanctuary itself, while also providing some shelter from cross winds, which the earlier iterations of this area had been exposed to. For the latter, if that was the case then I can confirm this has not worked. This day off Weymouth was beset by a strong and rather bitter wind and our experience was that, even stationary at anchor, far from sheltering passengers in this pool area, it served to somehow funnel everything down into it. That didn’t stop us making use of the pool later in the day, but that’s when we encountered another unwelcome change; the Sanctuary pool depth was simply not deep enough for a decent swim. If you weren’t in motion then you needed to crouch down to keep as little of you above the water line and under attack from the wind as possible.
Overall, we would come to love Sky Princess during this week aboard her – handy, with us having future cruises planned on her as well – but the adults pool was a downgrade from earlier Royal-class ships.
After we’d had a swim and freshened up we decided to have a light(ish) lunch in the form of an afternoon tea. Either side of the savoury and sweet nibbles we treated ourselves to some wine, and, as we were inside the ship, took some photos of the air balloons sculpture that decorates the piazza area because that’s the law. If you see someone has been on Sky Princess and has not taken photos of these striped balloons then make sure to report them to the authorities. There’s no place on a cruise ship for people like that.
The early evening saw Sky Princess depart from Weymouth and Portland ahead of a cruise around the coastline towards Northern Ireland. While we’ve never been massively bothered with sail away events on cruises, happy to be in a bar or showering or anything else really, I had decided before this cruise, and due in part to having the aft balcony, that I’d try to video the cruises out of the ports. Thus it was that we found ourselves back in our room and ordering a drink to have on the balcony as the ship left Dorset.
The sun was starting to set as the ship left the harbour, making for some truly wonderful seascapes and skyscapes. Sunsets are best experienced at sea. That’s a fact.
I was very taken by the Portland Breakwater Fort as we cruised past it. Built a few years either side of 1870 to guard the port, the stone structure was laid down on a granite base of a ring sixty one metres in diameter on the seabed. Originally armed with cannons, then replaced with guns, the fort was in use up until the end of the second world war but was finally abandoned in 1956. A listed building to this day, it is sadly not accessible to the public, but looks like it has a huge amount of potential for an investor.
Here is a video time lapse of Sky Princess leaving Portland Harbour and Weymouth and heading out to sea, in case you find pictures nice, but moving pictures nicer.
Evening aboard Sky Princess was much like any evening aboard any cruise ship: a little bit of musical entertainment around the ship, dinner (in this case in the main dining room, and very good), and drinks in various bars.
So, a quiet day on Sky Princess for us with not a lot to report, but a lovely and relaxing one, and with the promise of more to come. The next post in this UK cruise travelogue series will cover two days at sea and two evenings of speciality dining before we hit another port and, for both of us, a brand new part of the world to explore.