The last port of call – not counting the disembarkation port – on our South and Central American cruise aboard Star Princess was Puerto Vallarta in Mexico. Another new country for us and a place we’ve wanted to visit for a long time although we’d prefer to hit the eastern coast as it gives easier access to ancient ruins. And you know how much we like an ancient ruin! Unless you’re not a regular reader. Which is likely true. Well, we like ancient ruins. Anyway, Puerto Vallarta doesn’t really have any of those but it did have an attractive sail-in on the cruise ship.
We had made good time on our two days at sea from Nicaragua and the landmass of Mexico was still wearing a morning haze as a we got closer and closer to the port.
We’d had breakfast and were on our balcony for the initial approach and first sight of Puerto Vallarta and we had a decent view of the pilot boat arriving to let the pilot board and take over the final docking manoeuvre.
The only issue with having a balcony is that you can only see off one side of the ship and I was quite keen to not miss anything so I convinced my wife that we could take our books (and my camera, naturally) down to Crooners and I could duck through to the promenade deck on either side of the ship depending on what things of interest there might be. The reason for bringing books was that due to our early arrival we would still have quite a wait until our planned excursion for the day was due to depart. As it turned out, almost all of the interest viewpoints were still off the starboard side of the ship so we could have simply stayed in our room. But you can’t tell this sort of thing ahead of time.
Spotting wildlife had been a common event on this Pacific Ocean cruise but that didn’t mean it was getting boring. In addition to seeing the occasional frigate bird in the air and a couple of pelicans skimming along over the water’s surface there was a whole host of birds making use of a concrete mooring point and the walkway extending from the land to it.
But, as you’ll no doubt have already guessed from the title of this post, the most interesting thing on view in Puerto Vallarta was the presence of two other ships. This is only interesting if you like ships and as someone who cruises a lot it’s interesting to me. You might not care less. One wonders what you’re doing reading this far if that’s the case. It’s also not that interesting to my wife who steadfastly refused to leave her chair and her Kindle despite me mentioning that it wasn’t just the Carnival Splendor on view.
Royal Princess is here as well.
Uh huh.
She’s got the Sea Witch design on her. Didn’t have that when we cruised.
Mmhmm.
Did you want to pop out and take some photos as well? I can save your seat.
I’m fine.
Carnival Splendor is a ship we’ve not cruised on nor is it terribly likely that we ever would. As a brand, Carnival don’t appeal to us. Carnival is all about the fun and the problem we find with fun is that we don’t enjoy it. There’s another factor to Carnival, too: that funnel. Which also starts with fun and yet isn’t in the slightest. It’s supposedly fashioned on a whale’s tail but looks to me more like the kind of spoiler you see on flashy cars driven by youths with no sense of style; I associate these cars with ridiculously loud exhausts and these people with excruciating taste in music and a genetic abnormality that means they can only listen to it through thunderous vibrations causing cavitations in their body’s fluids. This combination of gruesomely ugly design with loutish connotations and an abundance of fun pushes Carnival way down our cruising pecking order.
As I’ve already indicated, the third ship in the port alongside Splendor and us was Royal Princess and, as you might have been able to determine from the quoted conversation if you didn’t know already, we’d cruised on Royal Princess before, in the eastern Mediterranean in 2016. While I was standing on the promenade deck taking in the sight of Puerto Vallarta and the ships docked there as we swung back and into position ourselves I overheard a conversation between two American women.
Another Princess ship! Is that Regal Princess?
No, Royal. We were on Royal Princess for the two weeks before we joined Star Princess in Chile.
Oh, wow! That’s amazing! How do the ships compare?
Oh, Star Princess is much better. Better food, better staff, better entertainment, easier to find your way around.
Oh no, that’s not good. I mean it is for us but what a shame! It looks such a big ship.
It’s too big. I think that’s the problem.
Personally, I don’t think Royal Princess is too big but we otherwise shared a lot of the same sentiments following our single experience on her. This pair of matching data points as to the quality of a Royal Princess cruise, though, is nothing worth worrying about if this is a ship you’re thinking of cruising on. The problem with any cruise experience is that it’s very specific to one person’s viewpoint at one moment in time. When I write up my travel diaries and cruise reviews I sometimes feel a little guilty for mentioning problems; I worry that they might come across as sour grapes. These are the sorts of things that when they’re shared on Facebook groups lead to helpful responses such as “Well, that’s never happened to us” and “We were on that same cruise and didn’t have any of those issues” and “Can I wear shorts to dinner?” which is why I’ve got my own site to put up that additional barrier of forcing people to enter a name and email address that tends to weed out casual, unhelpful commentary. Yeah, I’m blaming the inherent laziness of internet users on a lack of comments and not my unengaging writing or unwillingness to spam my content everywhere. That’s so me.
Anyway, Royal Princess may not have left a very good impression on us or our fellow passenger on Star Princess but one very good thing I can say about her, though, is that she’s a lot better looking than Carnival Splendor.
In the next post in this cruise diary travel portfolio I’ll cover our day’s excursion in Puerto Vallarta.