This is the last post from our time aboard Caribbean Princess during the transatlantic cruise we took on this Princess Cruises ship in late 2024, but it’s not the last post from the travelogue series as a whole as there’s a debark tour to cover in the remaining cruise write-up after this.
A daily account of the actual eight days-long crossing of the Atlantic wouldn’t be of huge interest given that this was the relaxation phase of the cruise so, while we’d headed off to explore new things at every port during the first half of our trip from Italy to America, at this point everyday life consisted of reading, swimming, doing trivia, listening to music, enjoying the sea views and sunsets, drinking, eating, and hitting the nightclub, often until they switched the music off and lights on.
Instead of all that, and following on from a post where I took some photos of Caribbean Princess, this post is going to focus lightly on some of the dining venues we enjoyed during this latter half of the cruise. If you head back into the series posts you can see some of the daily meals we had, including sample dining room menus and speciality dining at the Crown Grill steakhouse (you can find that here: Two Mediterranean Sea Days Aboard Caribbean Princess). There’ll be no main dining room menus here, just some sample meals grouped by course, but the other speciality options on Caribbean Princess were all tested on this week on the ocean so you can see what we thought about them below.
Planks BBQ
You never quite know what you’re getting when something says “barbecue” or even just “BBQ”. Is it just going to be a smoky, charcoal taste like you’d get from something grilled over a pit in the UK? Is it going to be something coated in a super-sweet sauce? Is it going to be something with heat (i.e. revolting and painful chillis)? I don’t mind the first two types. My wife can just about cope with the first type. Both of us can’t stand so-called “heat”. All of this is why we approached a booking at Planks BBQ with a small amount of apprehension. Worst case scenario, though: we could always eat in the buffet if none of this meal was palatable.
As it turned out, however, we thoroughly enjoyed our meal at Planks but we would have needed another stomach each to eat everything. We skipped out on the dessert (much to the waiter’s shock) because we couldn’t face another bite, and no, we didn’t want a doggy bag (much to the waiter’s shock again). In fact, we were both full after the chowder starter, and this would impact how we dined at Steamers later in the week (coming up after the photos), with the two dining options operating on alternate nights in a section of the buffet area.
You can see how much food there is below, and it was great quality. If we were on another Princess Cruises ship with Planks BBQ on it then we’d almost certainly book it again after a full day of starvation.
Steamers Seafood
When it comes to seafood we’re both quite picky. I can eat fish of most types, and that’s about it. My wife will only eat white, boneless fish, but she’ll also happily devour lots of other seafood: prawns, mussels, lobster, etc. I would gag in those situations. We knew that Steamers Seafood would present a challenge but, thanks to also expecting it to be massive thanks to the previous visit to Planks, we changed up the way we ordered (much to the waiter’s shock), electing just to have one main course between us despite paying for two. He was the same waiter we’d been attended by at Planks and he remarked that we were unusual in not wanting the doggy bag option again. Unusual, or just not American. Who would take cooked seafood back to their room? There’s no oven, no microwave. Madness.
We enjoyed Steamers – and the sea view for the evening was lovely – and it’s certainly good value for money, but we preferred Planks of the two alternating dining options.
Sabatini’s Italian Trattoria
We will typically pick an Italian restaurant over any other type; it’s a cuisine that suits us. And Sabatini’s on Princess ships suits us very well too so it’s a venue that we’ve dined at many times on many ships. You can find examples of this on this site if only you knew how to use the search button, and, to be brutally honest, most of those occasions were better than this one. There were unavailable courses, poor quality bread, and service that was all over the place. It wouldn’t stop us eating at Sabatini’s again, but recent price hikes would.
Main Dining Room
As I’ve already mentioned, rather than present menus and meals in full here – there are numerous other examples of what you can expect to have for dinner in the main dining room on a Princess ship elsewhere on this site – I’ve grouped some of the starters, main courses, and desserts from our second week on the ship together as more of a photographic feast for your eyes.
I tended to find more choices among the starters that I could eat, or would be prepared to try, than my wife. All the soups below are hers, as a result.
One of the main courses below is lentil burgers with fried eggs and it’s a meal I had on another Princess ship once just to see what lentil burgers were like, and it was surprisingly nice, and nice enough that I was happy to see it on the menu again.
Princess usually do very well with desserts, and if there’s nothing great to choose from amongst the options of the day then there’s always the “Princess Favourites” including the usually gorgeous New York cheesecake to pick. Usually gorgeous. For some reason on this cruise if there was a chance to put gelatin in the recipe then as far as the chefs were concerned there was no such thing as too much gelatin. The desserts looked very pretty even if sometimes you wondered if you could bounce them off the walls.
International Café
We remember cruising with Princess Cruises before they had International Cafés on most of their fleet, and we’ve cruised on ships that don’t have one since then, and let me tell you this: the International Café is fabulous. We weren’t using it while coming back aboard after a day in port during this second week on the ship (for reasons that should be obvious), but it was the place to head for something to soak up some alcohol in the early hours of the morning after Skywalkers thanks to its 24-hour opening. Savoury snacks, rolls, cakes, and cookies. Lovely.
A perk of the Plus Package that we had booked at the time of this cruise was that you could get two premium desserts a day, which could be a fancy sundae or it could be a slice of large cake from the International Café. We tried a sundae each once, and we tried a slice of cake each once, with the cake mostly chosen just so we could send a photo of us enjoying it in the sunshine on our balcony with a glass of Prosecco to people back home who were experiencing terrible weather at the time. You would, too. The sundae was disappointing but the cake was perfectly fine. I’ve no idea who in their right mind would want two a day and I’m guessing that message filtered back to Princess Cruises because they’re no longer included in the packages. Are they worth paying for? Depends how much you like sundaes and cakes.
Conclusion
Food variety on Caribbean Princess was very good, even if the quality was a bit hit-and-miss on this cruise. A transatlantic cruise is usually a repositioning cruise for most lines so they’re good value for money – this certainly was – but that can mean that stock levels aren’t quite what they could be or the lack of port days might lead to grumpy crew since they can’t disembark. I’m just guessing. We’ve had better, basically, but that’s no reflection on any cruise you might be thinking of taking as these things will always vary from day to day, ship to ship, line to line, chef to chef.
As for the cruise: it was great. The combination of a busy first week with lots of new ports followed by a relaxing second one at sea worked wonderfully. It’s a ship class we know and love and it was fabulous to experience the Skywalker travelator once again, with this being the only ship in the fleet it’s now present on. There were members of crew aboard who’d we’d met before and who remembered us, so that made it special too.
That doesn’t quite conclude this cruise. There’s one more post in this series to go and that will describe our arrival at Fort Lauderdale and our debark tour to view the intracoastal waterway by boat.