20240407 Sapphire Princess South Pacific Cruise Day 4 - Smoother sailing

Sapphire Princess South Pacific Cruise Day 4 - Still unresolved issues but we're hitting our stride

Our second full day at sea finds our account issues still unresolved and the one snarky rep at Guest Services stating, "No, that's why I haven't called you yet." He has a bit of an attitude and it's not customer-centric.

But...it isn't all bad so I wanted to shine a light on the good things. Let's start here. This is Dennis. Dennis is our cabin steward. Dennis asks what we need, and gets it. He takes care of cleaning our cabin. He does his job and does it well, while simultaneously being an awesome, friendly guy.  Dennis rocks and we’re lucky to have him servicing our cabin.

Now, we'll hit something less than stellar - our balcony. I wish we knew how this balcony was configured, but nothing told us it was obstructed. Here's the view when we sit in the chairs. 

The camera is right at eye level. Do you see much of the ocean? No? Neither do we.

If we look up, we can get a glimpse of the starboard wing of the bridge along with all its surveillance cameras.  Yea!

OK - back onto more positive things. Nothing has been fixed with our account, but all online transactions seem to now be going through without a hutch. We have heard from more folks with the same issue so there seems to be a more global problem with their internal accounting. They've got a month to figure it out.

Between trivia activities, I had a chance to look around a bit. Here's a view from deck 16 off the back of the ship.

I'll try to get more photos from around the ship as the trip continues. The ship, overall, is nice. The layout is essentially the same as the ship from our last Princess Cruise on Caribbean Princess. They are both Grand-class vessels and sister ships.

Here's an aggregation of our failed trivia questions today:

• How many cards are in an Uno deck?
• We thought 102 - it was 108
• What color is 17 on a roulette wheel?
• 50/50 - we guessed red - it's black
• If you dig a hole straight down from Wellington, New Zealand, what country would you hit?
• We reasoned Italy, but we were off a little - it was Spain
• What animal has the strongest bite?
• We narrowed it down to alligator or hippo and guessed alligator - it is hippo
• Ancient Romans boiled vinegar and what (maize, chocolate, goat poop, cow blood) to make an energy drink?
• We guessed cow blood, but it was goat poop
• How many countries are in the European Union?
• We guessed 15 - it is 27 countries!
• What is the minimum number of musicians for a band to be considered a big band?
• We guessed 8 - it was 10

The folks we play with are very nice and fun to spend time with. We have folks from Alaska, Texas, and Florida. We decided on Team FAT but thought about it and decided on Team AFT as our team name.

We tried dining in a main restaurant today. Generally, for breakfast and lunch, we prefer quick-access restaurants like the buffet or quick-service places like the pizzeria or burger station. Lunch was fine, but a little slow for our tastes. That confirmed our normal choice. But, that's one of the great things about cruising. There's something for everyone. For the grab-and-go folks, there are plenty of choices. For the "want to be served" folks, there are also plenty of dining venues.

We spent a little time in the room this afternoon. Arlona is working on a knitting project and I did some reading on my Kindle. Tonight was the Captain's welcome with festivities and a champagne tower.

The setup for the champagne tower

Unfortunately, all of that would happen when we were scheduled to dine in the International Dining Room - the largest of the main dining venues.

A bit on that. Yesterday, Guest Services said that they had secured 6:20 reservations for us every night for the remainder of the cruise at a shared table in the International Dining Room. In our app, it showed six reservations at 6:40, not 6:20, and nothing for tonight. We didn’t know what that meant.

I called the DINE line and they told me they would have the hostess from that dining venue call me. When we returned to the room midday, we had a message stating that they had no way to update the app to show the correct reservations, but yes, we were confirmed at 6:20 for the rest of the cruise.

So, we’re good for dining reservations, even though we can’t see those reservations in the app. I guess that’s a win, sort of.

Back to tonight. It was the first of five formal nights on this 32-day sailing. Formal attire is completely optional, but if you're dining in the main dining venues, it is preferred. We were surprised by how many formal dresses and tuxedos we saw. There were also lots of less formal dresses and suits/ties, so more folks than I expected got into dressing up.

Of course, we threw ourselves into it.

Yes, I married up - how good does she look? 💕

Enjoying a pre-dinner libation

Dinner was interesting. We were at a shared table with folks from New York and California. We will likely dine with some of them multiple times throughout the cruise. We'll see as the days go on.

We weren't interested in the production show this evening or the second show from comedian Tom Simmons so we hit up the Good Spirits at Sea bar for a post-dinner cocktail. We ran into a woman we met a day or two ago and spent time chatting. I've said it before - that's one of the things we love about cruising. We meet all kinds of interesting people from all over.

We were ready to call it an evening and headed to the room to return to our casual selves. Tomorrow, we should be able to see at least a minor partial eclipse as we sail, but it will be early in the morning. If I get up early enough, I'll see if I can capture a photo or two.

Perhaps our account issues will be resolved tomorrow. Hahahahahahaha - I crack myself up sometimes.