Peek behind the curtain on the Sky Princess

It can be hit or miss when you stay in a suite on any cruise line as to whether they will offer any behind the scenes tours of places on the ship.  These are normally areas only accessed by the crew. We often will ask whomever is working with suite guests such as the concierge to keep us in mind if any such tour is offered. These are all at the discretion of the head crew member for the area, especially as far as what day and/or time a tour gets scheduled if at all. 

We've been lucky to experience many of these tours on various ships. It has been very interesting to see the differences even on the same cruise line when the ships can differ so much in size. While talking to our shoreside concierge pre-cruise to organize all of our reservations and preferences, he said before I could even ask, "And you will have a bridge tour." I asked if that was an included perk now for the Sky Suites and he said yes. We mentioned it onboard to Josue when we hadn't seen any notice for several days and had already noticed some things that should have been delivered to the cabin that weren't. He confirmed that a tour would be happening and was disappointed that his planned surprise of one had been revealed. So yes, if you book the Sky Suite, start practicing your surprised reaction. :)

While on the Sun Princess, a ship that has multiple Sky Suites, they scheduled two separate visits assigning each cabin to one of the times in order to keep the group small. On this Sky Princess sailing, where only two Sky Suites with a total of 6 occupants were on board, we showed up at the meeting place to discover that the group gathered basically included every other suite guest. Imagine 15-20 people crowding around to try and watch the same phone screen. 

Our tour was led by two female cadets who did their best to split the group so we could crowd around the instrument panel on one of the two identical bridge wings. They took the time to explain each piece of technology, what training they've done to get to this position, and what the routine schedule is like for bridge officers. Our half of the group had many questions and our cadet was super patient in answering them all. Even split in half however, there was no way everyone could see what the cadet was pointing out on the panel. Given that the waves on this sea day were making being anywhere on the ship feel a little off balance, Dad and I were happy to hang back and hold up the wall until the presentation was over. 

One of the more pleasant surprises that made this bridge tour unique was that Captain Tony Draper stuck around to greet everyone when we first arrived. He gave a brief rundown of his own work history and talked about what it was like working on the Sky Princess. He only answered a few questions and then passed us off to the cadets. Usually, these tours are given by one of the junior officers not currently on the watch and you never get to meet the Captain. Thank you Captain Draper for taking the time out of your busy day to say hello!

Dad spotted this display on the bridge proving that even the crew likes to collect Cruising Ducks. I'd say that tall one looks like they have the drink package and the one next to it is trying to stay upright on this rocky sea day.

The bridge's front view looks out over the crew pool and hot tub. Just like on your balcony, someone's always watching.

Another surprise tour that we were invited to was to tour the galley. Once again, this was a single time where anyone staying in a suite got to attend. Dad saw the crowd gathered and decided to go play trivia instead. Executive Chef Naveen Quadros, who led the tour, apologized for having to rush us through as he only had a short window of time in between having to prepare for several events. A great tip for those cruisers who would love to see the galley but aren't invited to a "private" walkthrough - Princess offers a comedic cooking presentation in the theater on one of the last days of the cruise. After the show, anyone is welcome to meet at a designated door where someone from the galley will guide you on a walkthrough through the space. If you've never seen it, it really is quite a fascinating setup when you think about how many passengers and crew need to be fed multiple times a day in multiple restaurants on board. 

The photo cards displayed on the wall behind Chef Quadros serve as reminders to the galley crew how each dish needs to look.

Butter anyone?

On one of the last days, we got another invitation in our cabin. This time it was inviting us and 18 of our closest friends (aka the other suite guests) to tour the Engine Control Room. This was an area of the ship that Dad had been interested in seeing. While the other invitations at least gave us half a day or more's notice, this one actually arrived within about an hour of the meeting time. After seeing how crowded the other tours were, we decided it wasn't worth skipping our planned onboard activity to attend. If we hadn't already seen many of the ship's crew areas through invited and paid for tours over the years, we would have given a lot more thought to attending. 

Thank you Princess Cruises and the crew of the Sky Princess for giving us this small glance into all the people and all the hard work that goes on behind the curtain!