Crown Princess
Today is a sea day and so it might be a good time to write a few words about our ship, the Crown Princess. Her first voyage was from New York in 2006 and she was refurbished in October ‘22. More recently built ships tend to be larger, but in her day the Crown was one of the biggest. She’s certainly long and from our cabin towards the front, we get plenty of steps in making our way to the dining room at the aft. Up at our end we have the fitness center and spa as well as the large theater, where we watched a young Elvis “impersonator” last night. More on that later.
At the opposite end of the ship, on deck 18 (just under the mini-golf course) is skywalker lounge. During the day this is a quiet place to read or play games and enjoy an expansive view of where the ship has been. I imagine the atmosphere could be different in the evening, but I’ve not ventured that yet.
Mid ship, with the three-story piazza, is the main center of activity. We often listen to the Mimosa Strings duet play here in the evenings. This area is flanked forward and aft by bars. The Wheelhouse bar is my favorite because they have Belgian beers here that you can’t get elsewhere on ship. I haven’t mentioned the pools. They don’t hold much appeal in Alaska.
At any moment there’s at least two events ongoing, although often it involves a sales pitch. That’s fine with me. Between looking for whales off the balcony, eating, writing blog posts, and going to shows there’s plenty to do even on sea days.
Later today we are going to take a tour backstage to see how they produce the shows every evening. So far most nights we made it to the theater have been “production” shows, with 15-20 people on stage dancing and singing to well-known classics. Night before last the theme was soul music and we sat behind Dan Middleditch who would be performing the following night as “Elvis”. He was attending the Soul Music performance (in part) because his girlfriend was in it.
Last night Dan/Elvis tore it up with lots of leg twitching, pelvic thrusts, and other acrobatics. Just before he sang “Love me Tender” he announced that his girlfriend was in the audience. As he led the audience in song, I spotted her in the row in front of me with tears in her eyes. So sweet.