80's themed 5 Day Cruise, Ruby Princess - Galveston to Cozumel and Progreso, April 9-13, 2023

 First cruise on Ruby Princess, thoughts.

Embarkation/Disembarkation were fast and easy. They have it all worked out.

The medallion wearable makes it very simple to enter and leave the ship, open your stateroom door, get drinks and shop onboard. There are accessories you can buy to try and make it look like stylish jewelry, but it's basically an air tag, it's clunky. But that's OK. Buy air tag accessories before you go rather than buy any accessories sold on the ship, much cheaper!

The ship itself is quite pretty inside, with an 'art deco' theme for most the interior; some stained glass touches here and there, and a water feature in the atrium next to the glass elevators midship. Understated, elegant, and comfortable.

We had a cabin upgrade to balcony and that was super nice. We enjoyed sitting out on our balcony morning and evening, and on Cozumel day it was fun to sit and watch the passengers come and go, and other ships come and go as well. So relaxing to just sit in our own quiet haven and enjoy. Embarkation day there were some raucus people on their balconies, "woo woos" as Flavio would have called them. But they had their sailing away party and then they didn't make a regular habit of partying on the balcony after that. OH! and I saw dolphins one day, while out on the balcony, playing in the ships waves that were off to the side of the ship. So cool!

Duty free liquor on board was really a bargain. We did not purchase any bottles until the last sea day, and they just gave us our purchase...no checking in/later delivery of alcohol. I don't know if that was due to buying on the last day, Princess policies, because we'd bought the drink package and thus no temptation/incentive to sneak liquor, or just untrained staff. Still, kinda cool. We got some local liqueurs in Progreso and either due to getting back on ship late, or training issues with staff, there was no one at the liquor check-in desk. We *did* see them on our Cozumel day, though.

So, ship prices on liquor were nice. Or perhaps it's better to say that nothing in Cozumel or Progreso is terribly inexpensive. You're paying US prices for pretty much everything now, no deals to be found in the cruise ports. You can haggle a bit if you like but you're still gonna get rooked.

The medallion phone app is not great; the wifi reception on ship was not great for keeping it connected and up to date, so the feature where you can suposedly find your travel companions and the staff can find you for food and beverage delivery is lacking. At one point I was sitting on deck 15 and the app showed me still in our room. We ordered drinks and food through the app and it usually took hours for our orders to reach us, if they reached us at all.

You could use the app to mark that you were interested in an event but as far as I can tell, there was no 'my events' list nor 'reminders' that the events you were interested in were about to happen. I ended up keeping the paper daily schedule with me and still managed to miss events I had wanted to attend.

and sometimes (often) the app would either not open, lag considerably, or close unexpectedly.

• Oh, yes, thats a thing I didn't like at first and then got used to: phone app. I like(d) cruises because people weren't glued to their phones and would talk and socialize and interact...now there's an app. And it's kind of disturbing how quickly and easily it became 'normal'...so normal, in fact, that I initially left it out of my review post-up. 

   

   

   
• Formal dining was a bit of a cluster. The app supposedly would let you make reservations for as many of you and your shipmates as you selected, but it seemed most nights most of the reservation times were unavailable. And the times we got made us too late for the early shows in the theatre, and too early for the later shows, so we ended up missing a lot of entertainment.

   

Ralph Harris is one we got to see twice, one regular show and one more adult themed. Great comedy, we laughed and cried! He was awesome And then we saw him just 'off duty' on the ship a few times, just out and about. Several of the acts we saw, actually, we got to see just sitting around or having lunch or whatever. That was kind of cool.

Mysterious Duo was a string duo, pretty girls playing energetic covers of contemporary music--think "Bond" and their amazing Led Zeppelin "Kashmir" cover or the "Vitamin String Quartet" (music on Bridgerton)

Best music on the ship that we heard was Symphonee--the male and female vocalists were *amazing*...they had a lot of range and amazing 'sound alikes' to a lot of famous artists. Covers of a lot of good 80s music. We also heard them do some country covers from the 80s which was technically incredible, and somewhat nostalgic, but c&w is not really my thing.

I had best intentions of hitting all the 80's trivia, but missed most of that. John was quizzing us beforehand with songs so we were ready to dominate, but we just didn't get around to it.

Gambled a little in Gatsbys, the ship casino. Didn't win big but had fun. The Gatsby's bar had the best drinks. Unlike most ships, you didn't have to walk through Gatsby's to get from one end of the ship to the other on the floor where the casino was located, it was of to one side.

Found the ship's cigar lounge, but once again, didn't get around to sitting in there for a cigar. Dang it.

Skywalkers, the dance club at the top of the ship, was a fun late night stop before bed, just listen to some good music, dance a little, enjoy the ambiance and then go pumpkin. I ain't as young as I used to be. But I did a lot of late nights and early mornings anyway. So many glorious sunrises from the balcony, or just with the drapes open and snuggled in our *very* comfortable bed--mattress, bedding, and pillows were so SO soft and fluffy  and cozy comfy. :)

Last night of the cruise, we sat in the back of the ship near the empty Horizon Buffet and played some games. That was super fun.
We had brought our own cards and dice, but the library, though small, had a GREAT selection of games for passengers to take out and play, many copies of each game they carried, all in new or at least very good condition

The food on the buffet and in the dining room was fantastic. No complaints there. All the bread was baked daily and amazing. The service was spotty, until the last day when the staff got real friendly and helpful and reminded us to fill out our surveys and give them 10s! LOL. that's a strategy, I guess.

Our room steward was ON IT. We couldn't leave our room for 5 min without him going in and making the bed, giving us fresh towels, etc. Poor man. We are not slobs but I still felt like he was working too hard!

The ship played 80s music pretty much everywhere except the spa area. That was great. Nothing too obscure, mostly pop. I heard the Violent Femmes once, and Depeche Mode a couple of times, but it was a lot of Tiffany and Miami Sound Machine and such. And the ship had little signs and decorations everywhere reflecting the theme. Very fun.

After this short 5 day cruise, one of the crew said that the next stop for Ruby Princess is a repositioning cruise through the Panama Canal (14 days, 10 sea days!) and then they'll start an Alaska route for the summer.

We got lost a lot; the ship being so understated/elegant made it somewhat homogenous so hard to get oriented as far as front/back, and where you were as far as mid/fore/aft....so we got turned around a few times and Thax felt like he didn't see or wasn't able to find many of the places on the ship.

We got the prepaid gratuities, wi fi and drink package. Drink package included 15 drinks per day...we didn't come anywhere close to having that many but it was nice to just be able to have a drink whenever you felt like it and not worry about it.. As far as cost, I'm not sure we got our 'moneys worth' but not having to think about it was nice.

Not sure if we'll go on Princess again but it was fun to try it once.

• Oh! Another thing I appreciated on this cruise: no clowning. The room steward did not make towel animals, the dining room staff did not sing and dance and do the napkin waving dance. I was glad they didn't have to do that in top of all the hard, real work they were expected to do.

   

The drive home was fast and the dogs were happy to see us. My brother A watched the dogs and house while we were gone and did a LOT of cleaning and dusting (we didn't expect or ask him to do that, it was a nice surprise) The un - nice surprise is that Thax's car started making a wierd noise on the drive back so we dropped it at the shop after unloading all our bags and we expect it to cost a bundle to fix. :/   But we are safe and the HarveyBug is still running like a champ, so Thax can get to work Monday, no problem.