Ultimate Ship Tour
On the sea day between Norfolk and Charleston, John took what is called the Ultimate Ship Tour. The tour goes places that most passengers never go. It is advertised in the first edition of the Princess Patter.
The Princess Patter is the daily onboard ship’s newsletter. It is full of information about the next port, the course of the ship and when it should arrive and leave a port, and all the daily onboard activities. It is slid under the door each evening, usually while we are at dinner. It is great for planning the next day’s activities.
The first edition of the Patter on each cruise for the last year or so has advertised the “Ultimate Ship Tour”, a tour that goes places that most passengers never go. John decided to take the tour this trip. The tour is only advertised in the first edition of the Patter because the tour is limited to 12 passengers and is only done once per cruise. John’s tour took place on the sea day between Norfolk and Charleston and only had 11 people on it. A waiver must be signed stating that the signer is physically fit enough to go up ladders and stairs, and the waiver holds Princess harmless. The tour had a large fellow with a cane that shouldn’t have been on the tour, but it worked out ok. No cameras were allowed on the tour.
Each area visited was lectured by the head of that particular arena. The tour started with a visit to the backstage area of the theater and continued into the galley areas. Backstage is packed full of costumes and props stuck into every nook and cranny. The director of the theater and the head chef shared information and answered all questions before the tour moved. A projected three hour tour lasted four hours. Champagne and pastries and chocolates were served in the galley. Some of the numbers from the galley were astounding. Each day 16-18 tons of flour are used in making breads and pastries. Each member of the tour was given a Princess Chefs jacket.
The tour visited the print and photo shops of the ships. These are full service areas with mostly up-to-date equipment. The print department was to receive new printers at the end of this month and they were quite excited about that. The photo department is all digital and can print 5,000 photos per hours. Personalized 8”x11” stationery, note pads and business cards were given to all on the tour.
The laundry is a huge operation with monster sized machines that run all day and all night. The employees are cross trained so that they can do every job and are rotated so they don’t become too bored. There are machines that iron sheets in one pass and then fold them and stack them. The same is true of napkins and towels. A gift from the laundry area was a heavy Princess bathrobe that retails in the onboard shops for $90! It is so heavy that we fear it will put us over the allowable weight with the airlines.
The tour doesn’t go to the engine room. It seems as if no one ever goes there! Our waiter said he has been trying for 5 years to have a look. The tour did go to the engine control room with a huge panel of computer screens. That room controls all of the ship’s systems except steering, which is done from the bridge. This particular ship has four 12 cylinder diesel engines and two 8 cylinder engines that exist to make electricity and could power a city the size of Juneau, Alaska. The propellers are driven by electric motors and can drive the ship up to 23 knots.
The control room also runs the sea water desalinization systems and can purify seven tons of sea water per hour. The ship and passengers are using about 120 tons per day but the number of tons rises in hotter climates. Some of the heat needed for this seven step process is recycled from the engines and the laundry.
The Medical Center was next. This ship has two doctors and four nurses along with seven hospital rooms. They have an x-ray machine, an EKG machine, a lab for blood work, and are much like an onshore ER. They seldom need to off load passengers, but it does happen. They don’t off load passengers unless the onshore hospital is better than theirs, or if it would be for a short time while waiting to be airlifted to a better hospital.
Normally, the tour would next visit the stacks area, but it was raining hard and the decision was made to go to the bridge first. In New York, the Commodore of the fleet came on the ship. A Commodore is the ‘Captain of Captains’, at least on Princess. He is a very genial, easy to talk to fellow named Giuseppe Romano who took a lot of time with the tour, posed for official pictures and had more champagne and canapés to share. He showed the radar system, the GPS of ships that showed up on the radar and explained that the mandatory transponders on all ships are VHF and of limited range. Still, he can ‘see’ all around him and see the direction and speed of other ships. He also gets info on the destination of other ships and their cargo. The Commodore was asked about his personal boat. He has a 12’ folding boat that he puts on top of his car and goes into the Everglades to fish with a 5HP motor. His retirement plan is to buy a Ford F-250 pickup with a canopy and tow a 22’ boat all around the US and Canada. He was just a regular guy.
After the bridge, the tour went up the ‘stacks’, the area up high where all of the exhaust pipes are visible. There are about a dozen stacks, some from the engines, the laundry, the desalinization area and the incinerators. It was very noisy and not really all that interesting! The cruise line does its best to recycle as much waste as possible and burns the rest. They offload recyclables in ports.
Between the bridge and the stacks, the tour stopped to watch the sun go down. The tour director at that point thought conditions might be right to see the elusive ‘green flash’ at the moment the sun disappeared totally into the water. This took ten minutes and we were already behind time. A helicopter had circled the ship while the tour was on the bridge, an unusual occurrence that far out to sea. Between the tour lasting one hour longer than the scheduled three hours and the helicopter, Co feared that something had happened and that John was being airlifted off of the ship. At 5:30, she called the Passenger Services Desk who called her back and told her that the cruise had ended at 5:00. John thinks that they called the bridge, the last place the tour would normally be, and was told that the tour left the bridge at 5:00. They did not know about the stack part of the tour being moved from its scheduled place before the bridge to after the bridge. A reasonable thing that put Colleen’s fear factor into Code Red.
John says it was the best guided tour imaginable. Well, unless the engine room was tourable! He still raves about it.
John & Co
The Princess Patter is the daily onboard ship’s newsletter. It is full of information about the next port, the course of the ship and when it should arrive and leave a port, and all the daily onboard activities. It is slid under the door each evening, usually while we are at dinner. It is great for planning the next day’s activities.
The first edition of the Patter on each cruise for the last year or so has advertised the “Ultimate Ship Tour”, a tour that goes places that most passengers never go. John decided to take the tour this trip. The tour is only advertised in the first edition of the Patter because the tour is limited to 12 passengers and is only done once per cruise. John’s tour took place on the sea day between Norfolk and Charleston and only had 11 people on it. A waiver must be signed stating that the signer is physically fit enough to go up ladders and stairs, and the waiver holds Princess harmless. The tour had a large fellow with a cane that shouldn’t have been on the tour, but it worked out ok. No cameras were allowed on the tour.
Each area visited was lectured by the head of that particular arena. The tour started with a visit to the backstage area of the theater and continued into the galley areas. Backstage is packed full of costumes and props stuck into every nook and cranny. The director of the theater and the head chef shared information and answered all questions before the tour moved. A projected three hour tour lasted four hours. Champagne and pastries and chocolates were served in the galley. Some of the numbers from the galley were astounding. Each day 16-18 tons of flour are used in making breads and pastries. Each member of the tour was given a Princess Chefs jacket.
The tour visited the print and photo shops of the ships. These are full service areas with mostly up-to-date equipment. The print department was to receive new printers at the end of this month and they were quite excited about that. The photo department is all digital and can print 5,000 photos per hours. Personalized 8”x11” stationery, note pads and business cards were given to all on the tour.
The laundry is a huge operation with monster sized machines that run all day and all night. The employees are cross trained so that they can do every job and are rotated so they don’t become too bored. There are machines that iron sheets in one pass and then fold them and stack them. The same is true of napkins and towels. A gift from the laundry area was a heavy Princess bathrobe that retails in the onboard shops for $90! It is so heavy that we fear it will put us over the allowable weight with the airlines.
The tour doesn’t go to the engine room. It seems as if no one ever goes there! Our waiter said he has been trying for 5 years to have a look. The tour did go to the engine control room with a huge panel of computer screens. That room controls all of the ship’s systems except steering, which is done from the bridge. This particular ship has four 12 cylinder diesel engines and two 8 cylinder engines that exist to make electricity and could power a city the size of Juneau, Alaska. The propellers are driven by electric motors and can drive the ship up to 23 knots.
The control room also runs the sea water desalinization systems and can purify seven tons of sea water per hour. The ship and passengers are using about 120 tons per day but the number of tons rises in hotter climates. Some of the heat needed for this seven step process is recycled from the engines and the laundry.
The Medical Center was next. This ship has two doctors and four nurses along with seven hospital rooms. They have an x-ray machine, an EKG machine, a lab for blood work, and are much like an onshore ER. They seldom need to off load passengers, but it does happen. They don’t off load passengers unless the onshore hospital is better than theirs, or if it would be for a short time while waiting to be airlifted to a better hospital.
Normally, the tour would next visit the stacks area, but it was raining hard and the decision was made to go to the bridge first. In New York, the Commodore of the fleet came on the ship. A Commodore is the ‘Captain of Captains’, at least on Princess. He is a very genial, easy to talk to fellow named Giuseppe Romano who took a lot of time with the tour, posed for official pictures and had more champagne and canapés to share. He showed the radar system, the GPS of ships that showed up on the radar and explained that the mandatory transponders on all ships are VHF and of limited range. Still, he can ‘see’ all around him and see the direction and speed of other ships. He also gets info on the destination of other ships and their cargo. The Commodore was asked about his personal boat. He has a 12’ folding boat that he puts on top of his car and goes into the Everglades to fish with a 5HP motor. His retirement plan is to buy a Ford F-250 pickup with a canopy and tow a 22’ boat all around the US and Canada. He was just a regular guy.
After the bridge, the tour went up the ‘stacks’, the area up high where all of the exhaust pipes are visible. There are about a dozen stacks, some from the engines, the laundry, the desalinization area and the incinerators. It was very noisy and not really all that interesting! The cruise line does its best to recycle as much waste as possible and burns the rest. They offload recyclables in ports.
Between the bridge and the stacks, the tour stopped to watch the sun go down. The tour director at that point thought conditions might be right to see the elusive ‘green flash’ at the moment the sun disappeared totally into the water. This took ten minutes and we were already behind time. A helicopter had circled the ship while the tour was on the bridge, an unusual occurrence that far out to sea. Between the tour lasting one hour longer than the scheduled three hours and the helicopter, Co feared that something had happened and that John was being airlifted off of the ship. At 5:30, she called the Passenger Services Desk who called her back and told her that the cruise had ended at 5:00. John thinks that they called the bridge, the last place the tour would normally be, and was told that the tour left the bridge at 5:00. They did not know about the stack part of the tour being moved from its scheduled place before the bridge to after the bridge. A reasonable thing that put Colleen’s fear factor into Code Red.
John says it was the best guided tour imaginable. Well, unless the engine room was tourable! He still raves about it.
John & Co
posted by Colleen and John | 3:05 PM
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