Diamond Princess Embarkation Day in Yokohama, Japan | Full Ship Tour and First Impressions

Diamond Princess Embarkation Day in Yokohama, Japan | Full Ship Tour and First Impressions

Well, and with that, our cruise has officially set sail. We will see Yokohama in 11 days. [Music] on the phone. [Music] What is going on everyone? Today is imbarcation day here on the Diamond Princess. I’m very excited. This is our first time in Japan. It’s our first time sailing with Princess and a lot of firsts. Absolutely. Of course. This ship or was built in 2004, so it’s an older ship, but nonetheless, I think we’re going to have a great time. We’re going to walk you through the imbarcation process from our hotel to here to the port and uh getting on the ship. So, it’s going to be a lot of fun. I’m very excited. Yes. So, let’s go uh get started. With a time change, I couldn’t sleep our first few nights in Japan. So, I was up early at 5:00 a.m. and ready to watch the ship come into Yokohama. I grabbed a coffee from Family Mart and made my way to the port. You can watch the live stream here in the corner with the little link. It was a lot of fun just to be there and watching the ship come in. But afterwards, I headed back to the hotel to get Taylor so that we could start out for some pictures and coffee. Well, got to watch the ship come in. And now Taylor and I are over here at this park and we’re getting some uh photos of the flowers. What do you think? They’re so pretty. I want you to take my picture. Now, this cruise is all about the Sakura flowers. This specific itinerary is set to travel around Japan, chasing the cherry blossoms as they bloom. But turn your body more cuz the sun’s hitting your face. Funny like then look a little bit more this way. You want the made to stand over there. saw them shooting into the sun. And once they do bloom, they only bloom for about 7 days, which means we could really miss a lot due to weather. Okay, so we’re doing something that uh might be a little weird, but what’s really cool about Japan is like they have these vending machines everywhere. They have a fresh squeezed orange juice one here. I don’t see anybody getting any, but going to give it a go. And now it’s juicing. Just dropped the cup down into here. Oh yeah, here it goes. The juice is pouring in. That was pretty cool. Oh, I got a new coin, too. Oh my gosh, that’s pretty cool. And they got a little thing right here for the straws. Oh my gosh. Flatten cup before disposal. Now, it’s um something that like we kind of talked about in other videos is that like the custom here is to like not uh walk around and eat at the same time. So, there’s actually a bin right here for the cups. What? But it says like flatten your cup before you put it in there. That is a That’s like a Florida orange. Is it good? It is pretty good. You want to try it? Yeah. Oh, wow. It is pretty good. Yeah. But after we grabbed some photos, we decided to make our way over to get some coffee, a little bite to eat, and then Thank you. head back to the hotel to head to the port. We’re in 7-Eleven. Taylor wants some chips. The GoPro is going to die. This is what you want. Yep. I think it’s uh I think it’s fried rice. That ding you’re hearing is people coming in and out. Do you want anything else? All right. No, I’m good. You can Apple pay. I think you got two bags. Thank you. Thank you. Taylor was telling me that they don’t give you hand wipes here. Here, you can stop at the bench and put your chips in your bag. I was just going to carry it. The hotel since you got two. The hotel’s right down here. Okay, fine. Goodbye 7-Eleven. We probably won’t see you again. I know. We’ve been in that 7-Eleven how many times. These are like the best sour cream and onion chips I’ve ever had. They’re so crunchy. My key is in my back pocket. Ah, heat. Now, for us, where we were staying at, the port was a pretty short walk. And what was really great is that the port here is basically open to the public. You can walk right up and walk around. It’s more of a pedestrian walkway than anything that you’ve probably ever have seen in the United States. So, it’s really easy to walk over here with your luggage, walk right up in and get yourself checked. There you go. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you. So, I guess we just hang out. I know there’s not really anybody young. There’s a young girl right there cuz it’s not like this isn’t a closed off section yet cuz security’s right there. Yeah. So, you want to go up top? Yeah. Just go go slightly different to your battery pack. All right, everybody. I wanted to walk you through a little bit here of where we’re at in the boarding area or voiding holding, whatever you want to call this. It’s a little blown out down there, but this is where we came in from down there at the far end. If you get dropped off by a taxi, you’re going to start down there. And then this is all the seating and holding area. So essentially, they’re not letting anybody board the ship at this moment. So that’s why everybody’s holding out here and waiting. And it’s important to know that they don’t have any like actual scheduled arrival times, so to speak. Um, just keep that in mind that when you get here, uh, they may not start boarding until closer to like, um, 11 maybe or noon. So, right now it’s 10:54. Um, and over here at the port there are two different areas where you’re going to enter. So, on the right side is the priority area. So, if you’re a priority member, like a sweet guest or something like that, you’ll enter on the right hand side over here. And if you’re general boarding, which is what Taylor and I, we’re going to be at boarding all the way on the left hand side over here, uh there’s like a little kind of banner that’s up. Just know that the priority uh people here right now have letters and general boarding have numbers. So Taylor and I are boarding group number three. So I just kind of want to show you guys just this layout, what it looks like in here. Right now, nobody has started boarding the ship just yet. uh as we sit here and wait for them to open it up for boarding. Um but I’m assuming that essentially most of the security is on the other side of those walls, which is where we’re going to go through here in just a minute whenever they begin boarding. Once they do start boarding, we cannot actually record or take any videos or photos or anything like that on the other side. So that’s why I wanted to point it out real quick before they start uh boarding cuz it looks like we’re getting close to that point. So let’s go. All right, we’re getting ready to get off. Thank you. All right, everybody. We are getting on. Morning. Thank you. [Music] We have officially stepped on board. Hope we get to captain. Thank you. Hello. Hello. Welcome on board. Thank you. Yep. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Easy peasy. Got my medallion on my watch band. Yeah. So, I’m all set. Oh, yeah. This really doesn’t reminds me of the magic like this setup. Oh, I guess. Yeah. Like how it’s just like a smaller right atrium. So, here’s the main atrium. This is uh it is a little bit on the smaller side, but remember that this ship was built in 2004. So, it wasn’t a mega ship. It’s going to be a little bit smaller, but nonetheless, it’s still beautiful. I think looks really nice. Yeah. Staircase photos. Yeah, I guess. Huh. So, where should we go first? I have no idea. I want to put the stuff in my bag real quick. Can we go up to the buffet food? Is that what you want to do? Well, I am kind of hungry. Yeah. Oh, we could have got on that one. Let’s go back here. Hey, that’s fine. Let’s just go back here. The bars up back here. So, first things first, we’ve got the diamond uh princess. Princess. It’s not diamond, just princess plus. Princess Plus. Oh, this is in the indoor pool. This is the indoor pool. So, we’re looking for the buffet, which I think is right there. But before we do that, we’re going to grab a cocktail because with the Princess Plus package, we get a drink. So, let’s see if the bar is open. Might not be open yet. May I have a Long Island? Long Island? Yes, please. So, just taking a look here at the menu just to give you guys this look. One in these darker colors is the Premiere and in the blue is the plus. So, we can get any drink that is blue essentially. And if you have the Premiere, which is the more expensive package, you can get uh those drinks cuz they cost more than $15. Yep. Oh, wow. That’s really cool. So, first first experience with the medallions. Fantastic. We didn’t even have to give them names. Yeah, we didn’t even have to give them the actual medallions. Nope. They knew it was us. The system reads them. Yep. Um which is super cool. So, you want to grab a table? Okay. Oh, that’s the hand washing station that we passed. Okay, that’s fine. I’ll just go back and wash. Not a big deal. I don’t see any window tables, but that’s okay. Okay, are washed and we are now going to explore the buffet. Yeah, we’ve got plates over here. So, I’m just going to go ahead and grab one. I just need I need to do like a wrap around first. And Taylor’s going to have to help me out here. Got to see what they got. So, we’ve got some meats over here and cheeses. There’s like some salads in the middle. We’ve got a Caesar salad station over here, which looks pretty good. Some chips, tortilla chips, sour cream. Not sure what that is. Uh, soup over here. Some miso soup. Oh, toppings. Oh, yeah. Can add some stuff to it. So, I might come back for that. And we’ve got some other stuff over here. I think I’m going to get a coette with beef tofu noodles. cheese. I’m not a huge fan of tofu, but chicken fried rice, pork. We got fashi or something over there, right? Asparagus and I would like some salmon. Got that plate there. Beef goulash. Oh, we’re going for all flavors here. [Music] Where? Oh, there’s this pretzel. You’re going bigger. Tell me Tell me you’re an American without saying you’re an American. What? Your plate. So, I just got a whole plate of food. And Taylor just informed me that there’s an entire ramen station that we missed. So, we’ll have to go back up and look at that here in a second. All right, we’re going up to look for the ramen station real quick. Oh, yeah. Look at this. So, we’ve got some eggs in here, fishcake, seaweed, bamboo shoots, pork, and then yeah, it’s right here. So, pretty cool. I’m going to get a little bit of dessert, I think. Vanilla mousse. We’ve got an apple cranberry pie over here with some vanilla sauce. And then we’ve got some chocolate chip cookies. You guys know me. Uhoh. I don’t know. They feel a little hard and crunchy. Really weird. There’s a server right here. And hello. Thank you. And like he’s going around and getting drinks. I could see his device and because I was standing right next to it, my face was on the device. So that’s like it’s really cool how the technology works because you just you never have to like actually take it off or give it to anybody. You can always keep it on yourself, which is kind of cool. It reminds me of the Magic Bands, like whenever you’re on a ride at Disney and it automatically like scans your Magic Band or whatever, right? And then your picture pops up on your account or how some of the rides used to do it where they would show your name, right? They don’t do that really anymore. Used to be in some of the cues and but Yeah. So, this is weird. It was weird, but it was really cool. So, I want to try cooking. Really cool. I’m surprised you didn’t come back with some ramen. You thought about it, didn’t you? You know what? stop me is that there’s actually somebody else to serve you the bowl of ramen. It would have been self served. I feel like that ramen’s probably going to be there this week. It’s going to be what? Going to be there all week probably. Hopefully. So, we’ll see. I don’t need it today. I’ll be more than just today. Yeah, I’ll get it tomorrow or something like that. I mean, it’s a C day tomorrow, so we’ll probably eat up here. But I think the buffet food’s really good so far. I wanted to see if it was going to track us, but it doesn’t look like it is. Do you maybe hit that circle on the elevator? Oh, no. It is. Look at that. Now it’s moving. Are you screen recording? Yes. Right back into here. Or is this it? Good morning. How are you? Good. And you? Good. Ready for your cruise? Absolutely. Okay. And you watch your video, so just enjoy your Okay. All right. Thank you so much. Well, uh I got to say like this hands down like the ship hasn’t even left port yet. We haven’t even been on the ship for a full hour. It’s crazy because I know Josh had watched some videos and said we weren’t like really sure about like the imbarcation process and if it was kind of like a free-for-all or not because I feel like we didn’t have a ton of information, but like coming into the cruise port technically our time was 12 to 2. We did get here earlier cuz our hotel was so close. Um, and it it’s been like seamless. It was it was really easy. It was not I I think a lot of people don’t show the imbarcation here for the ship to show too though because like you have security and you can’t really show but nobody showed really anything like they just basically walked in and then like that was it. We’re going to get on the ship. So hopefully that video that we did today will help you guys a lot. But I mean like the technology alone like the app being able to walk you to where you need to go on check in for your muster station. Like I don’t know what our room number is, but like I know on other cruise lines like when you don’t have your room key yet, you have to know what your room number is so that they can like get your drink package and stuff. But we got our medallions in the mail and super easy. Like I mean like it’s just really great. I don’t know why other ships or cruise lines have not adopted this technology, but they are way behind. They can’t maybe, but I don’t know. So they need to cuz this is awesome. We’re going to now go and explore a little bit of the ship as much as we can until the rooms are ready, which should be hopefully in about 45ish minutes. So, let’s go. I would like to do like a get up early in the morning walk around one day. So, we’re back here in the main atrium. We’re standing on deck number [Music] six. And it is really nice in here. I mean, like, it is a lovely looking ship. Lovely. It is. I didn’t know that was in your vocabulary. I know. I love that. We should uh at some point get a picture with the diamond princess down there. We should, you know. Yeah. So, let’s go down to deck 5 and see what we can see. So, we’re going to walk through the park west area. This is where all of the artwork is. Um, you know, if you want to buy some artwork or look at some artwork, this is where it’s going to be at on deck 5 in the midship area. If you do ever get lost, right, usually they have uh a little information here for where you need to go and what you can find. So, we’re on deck 5. Uh, state rooms are forward plus the laundry mat. We won’t go that way for right now. We’ll head back the other way towards the dining rooms and everything else. So, so here is the shore excursions desk. If you’re looking to change or try to add anything, this is where you’re going to come to do that. And over here is where we have another bar. And this is also where the coffee is going to be served in the morning. So, they actually have a coffee menu over here. The good spirits at Sea. Yeah. And then they have a a selection of beers that they have here on the ship. I don’t know if any of these are what is included and what’s not included. Some of them might not be, so I don’t know. And I think these are also part of the uh premium snack options. Oh my gosh, look at that. The cakes. I can’t wait to see what that cake looks like in real life. Yeah, looks pretty good. $5 per slice right here. You can upgrade or get it added to your package. And so we already have the Princess Plus, but we could in we could upgrade to the Premiere, but we don’t need to do that. Or if you didn’t already have Plus, that’s on on the other side. Yep. So, just to show you guys real quick again what we’ve got with the Princess Plus, we have drinks are included. The casual dining meals, we have two of those per sailing. That’s included. Max Wi-Fi, so streaming, which is really great. Oceanell delivery, which means that we can order on our phone and have it delivered to wherever we’re at. and some other things like crew appreciation which is at the tips. Yes, that’s included as well. Um we’ve got two fitness classes that are included. We’ve got uh who knows if we’ll end up using that. Premier desserts. So the premier desserts are basically these like really fancy sundaes that you can get upstairs like the cakes that you just showed over there. Yeah. Or the cakes and more into that later. A selection of like some of the things that are included as far as drinks and things like that go. So, uh, a minute ago you were talking about, um, if you can’t find your way around the ship, you can also use these screens. Let’s see if it works. Taylor R down there at the bottom. That’s me. What are you trying to find? I don’t know. But you can like if you don’t know where you are at, it’s telling you you’re right here. And then you can find wherever anything is on the trip. Back here is one of the main dining rooms, I believe. Oh, is it? I think so. Um, the Savo. the Savoy. There’s also a giant metal detector right here, a machine in front of that. But then we also have the menu. Now, as far as I know, the menus should be the same at all of the restaurants. And Taylor and I can dining restaurants. At the main dining restaurants. Yeah. And Taylor and I will confirm that here in just a second as we kind of go up the steps. And uh because the ship is in Japan, there are English and Japanese menus, but then also throughout the ship, there are signs that are in English and Japanese pretty much everywhere. As you saw on like the electronic, you know, map that we were just looking at. I think they’re kind of getting themselves set up in there. Onion soup. I’ve been wanting some of that. But that’s kind of the inside look there of what it looks like right now. So, let’s go to the other side real quick. We’ll see the other dining room. Hello everyone and welcome aboard Diamond Princess. While many of you may have sailed aboard a cruise ship before, the step French onion I see on there. It looks like it’s the same. I think it’s the same. Step one, so this side is the Santa Fe dining room. Something probably like for the sweets and stuff is in here probably. Oh yeah. So they’re doing lunch right now. So, the menu is different right now because they’re doing lunch, but I would assume it’s the same later on today. So, International should be on the other side. That’s where Taylor and I are at tonight at 7:30. Pretty late for us, but it is late for us. No. Interesting. Oh, look. Oh, right here, Taylor. It must be Yes, ma’am. To the a stairway. So, we’re at the the internationals at the back of the ship. Oh. So, we’ve got our shops up here, which you’ll find on basically any cruise [Music] line. And now Taylor and I are back where we started, which is at our muster station, which is where the casino’s at. I think there’s more shops up here. I think so. Always lots of shops around the atrium area. We’ve got a watch shop and we’re gonna head back to the midship area. We are midship. Yeah, I know. So, we’re back here again uh at map. So, we’re going to go back here to the explorers. This is where like all the bars are at. Yeah. So, let’s go back here to explorers and see if it’s open cuz it might be closed. Sometimes they’re doing special events, things like that. Oh, we could go outside, it looks like. Oh, yeah. So, this is the explorer’s lounge. Oh, I like this. [Music] We’ve got another bar up here. So, we’re on drink number two here for imbarcation day. Oh, this is like I want to call it shutters, but like the photo area. Oh, yeah. This is the the photo area here. So, if you um scenic photos do photos. Oh, these are the scenic ones, huh? Look at that. Got some prices on there for you. Oh, they’re all over the place. Mhm. And then some the photo studio, right? All right. So, this is the Kaisushi area. So, this is included for us. We have two casual dining uh credits that we can use, and Kai sushi is one of them. So, it’s just this little restaurant. They obviously aren’t making anything right now because they’re not open. Hello. Here for imbarcation day, but we will be dining here at least once, if not twice. We’ll see. And we’ll do like a little dining review for you guys. We will be eating here. Oh, yeah. See, I said that we weren’t going to, but Taylor just said we are. Why wouldn’t we have it included? I’m kidding. Oh, I was going to say we have to eat here. And then this is Sabatinis which is the Italian restaurant which is also casual I think. Hello. Is this specialty? Specialty. Yes restaurant. Okay. Thank you. Yes. So this is the other specialty restaurant which is Satinis. It’s the Italian restaurant and it looks really nice in here. Look at these plates. Wow. Those are like really fun. They look really nice. beautiful restaurant. It’s It is smaller, right? So, I think uh on a lot of the other like newer, bigger ships, uh especially restaurants are really large. These are a lot smaller. Uh has a little bit more of an intimate feel, which I kind of like. Um and I know we would be requesting to be over there by the windows if we eat here. We came through the Explorer Lounge. The other uh lounge back here is Club Fusion. All right. So, we’re going to check out Club Fusion back here. Doesn’t look like it’s open. I mean, it’s open because we’re walking through, but I don’t know if the bar is open yet. This is a huge, huge lounge space in here. So, I’m assuming like this is probably where there’s going to be like a lot of games, entertainment, karaoke, dancing, you know, whatever, cuz they have this huge screen up here and the drum set. But what’s really interesting is this staircase. Where does this go to? There’s a whole little Oh, it’s roped off. There’s like a whole other like little lounge space down here. Wow, that’s kind of interesting. Wa. Does this go down steps? Yeah, but it’s roped off right now. Where’s it go? I don’t know. Here, let me What deck are we on? Seven. Seven. I think I think it’s becoming very clear to me that I am somebody who really appreciates the older style of cruising which is a lot of space devoted to lounge space uh instead of kind of like breaking everything up into like these different like little venues. Um I like this. It feels like it accommodates a lot of people very easily compared to like you know what it might be on other cruise lines where there’s a bar down there. Oh yeah. It’s called the view bar which is right near the international dining room. Oh, okay. Yeah, but if you click that button, it takes you and shows you where you are. And I can see you right near me. Oh my gosh, that’s so cool. Yeah, that is pretty cool. Like whoever you’re linked with or whatever. So you can keep track of everybody. So that is so cool. That’s super cool. Here shortly. Push it open, Taylor. Use your muscles. Wow. Yeah. Look at this. So this is really cool. This is essentially where Taylor and I were earlier. Ah, that’s so cool. Awesome. This is just like that whole space that’s like Yeah. devoted to like pedestrian walkways, which So, I think I think we got on right over there. Yeah, we got on down there. Yeah. That’s so cool. That girl waved, so I waved back and then she waved again. Yeah, this is really cool. And you can you can see that they’re still bringing luggage onto the ship. Yeah, they probably will be for a little while. I can’t wait to see. I hope there’s like a lot of people when the ship goes to set sail cuz I always think of like Port Canaveral. That’s like a huge thing of like people lining up along the coast and like waving and the people bring their cars and literally like tailgate down there. So, it’d be cool to see like how many people hang out up here and see if we can see the international dining room. Oh, right. Okay. Well, we think we found where our dining room is at here, which is the international dining room. We did. Well, it’s actually open right now for lunch. So, since they’re doing lunch right now, we’re not going to walk in. I’m assuming that this will probably be the one that is also open throughout the the two sea days and maybe even on the port days. So, we’ll see. But here’s the menu. Our dining room. Yep. This is the dining room we will be in every night at 7:30. All right. This is the prominade deck. Deck seven. We’re on the starboard side, which means we’re on the right side of the ship. Oh, we were up here earlier. Just says atrium. We just we walked up those stairs over there and then kind of hooked back that way. So, there’s another little bar right here and it looks like it’s pretty popular. I mean, like everybody’s kind of hanging out cuz it’s easy to get to. It’s I think people aren’t really dispersing very much. [Music] So, we must be on deck 7 cuz I think a bunch of the bars are on deck seven, I guess. Huh. It’s a pretty big seat. Like there’s a lot of seats in here. This is a pretty decent size theater. Uh probably goes down to five. This is the Church Hill Lounge. Oh, this must be a smoking lounge, bro. Yes. I think this is like the cigarish. Yeah. Okay, rooms are ready, everybody. Let’s go and check out our room. Door has been unlocked. We didn’t even have to touch anything. Says, “Welcome, Josh.” Oh, that’s kind of crazy. Turns really weird. Yes. Okay, so here’s our room, which actually to me feels like a pretty decent size. The first thing that we come to is uh the closet area. So, this is a walk-in closet over here. So, lots of hangers to hang shirts up and some shelves there for clothing. And then I would say we could probably put our suitcases over here, but maybe we will put them uh down and underneath the bed. And here’s the bathroom. Now, here’s the one thing about Princess on this ship, and that is that in this bathroom, which is still very nice, we have the dreaded curtain. But with that being said, like this shower actually looks like a pretty decent size shower as far as like the space goes. Um, it just kind of stinks that there is a shower curtain here, but towels, body lotion, hand wash. Oh, there’s lotion. Yeah, there’s lotion. And then in Oh, good. In the shower itself, we have body wash and we have shampoo and conditioner if you don’t want to bring your own stuff. Look how big this mirror is, though. And we have a great big mirror here for Taylor. Her favorite outfit of the day. Yeah. And then here’s our room. Oh, our room is a little bit of a different layout here than what we saw in the pictures. We’ve got a desk over here, which is pretty small. But we do have this universal socket, which is 220 volts only, and a European outlet and an American outlet right there. So, kind of nice. We’ve got several things here. We have uh on our desk, we’ve got shore excursion tickets. And then just some other information. And then we’ve got a window. So, this is an ocean view room. Kind of nice. I like this. I love this layout. Um, we do have this like little mini bar set here. I don’t know that these are actually included with our beverage package. Uh, we’d have to ask our stateateroom attendant just to be sure. We also have a mini fridge down here which actually has stuff in it. So, my guess is that this stuff is actually not included in our drink package. That’s what I would assume. Um, this is probably extra to take from this refrigerator itself. So, just be aware of that. I will double check to make sure, but I’m pretty sure this is not included in our drink package, which does sound kind of silly, but uh that’s just how it goes sometimes. We also have a kettle, and that’s really the the tour of the room here. So, not a ton of stuff to see. We do have some little deep drawers over here on the sides. Um we do have this little chair right here that we can sit in. We have a little side or end table right there as well. And then the TV is right here behind Taylor. All right. So, one of the first things that we’re going to get to do here today is see a the breaking of the saki barrel. That’s what he says. The cruise director came overhead. It’s supposed to be kind of like blessing the ship for the sailing. So, we’re going to watch it here in the main atrium and see how it goes. and smash it on the back of the ship before sailing. Now, this is good for two reasons. [Applause] Cheers. It always tastes like soy sauce. Does drink. Cheers. This is drink number [Music] three. It’s good. All right. And with our margaritas, we’ve got some pizza. So, up here at the pole deck, uh, this is the midship pole deck. So, it’s outside. It’s not covered. And I know you can’t see anything. It’s like super blown out. There we go. So, that’s the main area. Right across from this pool bar is the pizza bar, which is not really a bar, but it’s where the pizza served. It’s the PGO pizzeria. And so, right now, they have mearita, ve vegetarian, pepperoni, and Hawaiian. And it does look really good. Wow. I’m glad I caught that just at the right time. It’s so hot. I can’t pick it up. It is really like really cool though to just see like this pedestrian walkway area for people to hang out. All of these people out here, you know? I mean, they’re not necessarily here to check out the ship, but like no, you know, I mean, everybody’s out and moving, you know? It’s a beautiful sunny day. It’s about [Music] 60°. It’s nice. So, we are waiting for the sail away party to kick off here on the ship. And the captain just came overboard. He came overboard. The captain came over with a loudspeaker to let us know that there may be some motion uh tonight and into tomorrow as we make our way to Nagasaki, which is really surprising. You know, I mean, it’s been a long time since Taylor and I have been on a ship where there has actually been motion on the ship. So, I’m actually kind of excited to see if there is any, you know, real motion on the ocean. So, we’ll [Music] see. There we go. We have officially pushed away from the pier here in Yokohama. And look at all these people down here on the pier. We are officially setting sail. Big dog down there. Very, very cool. Well, and with that, our cruise has officially set sail. We will see Yahama in 11 days. [Music] Well, this is our third cruise where we’ve gone underneath a bridge and we’re But it’s only the second time we’ve seen it cuz we didn’t walk in Tampa. No, fourth time cuz we did it in Norway. I did watch it. Yes, we did. Yeah. I forgot about that. It was so cold that day. I’m going to turn it towards us. Look. Look. Look. [Music] Turn around. And unlike every other cruise line, uh what’s great about Princess is that they actually bring your luggage right into the room. So that’s really, really nice. It’s not blocking the walkway or anything like that. They put it right into the room. So we’ve got 11 days here on the Diamond Princess. We’ve got two sea days and the rest are all port days. So uh it’s going to be super exciting. We’re going to get changed, get cleaned up, and get ready for this evening’s festivities. Uh and uh go have some fun. So let’s go. [Music] So as a good part as a bartender, every time you shake, you need to get some honey. So for that good to give some freshness and for sure a little bit of more flavor for the situation. Thank you. It is our first night here on the Diamond Princess. For dinner, we are eating late. Uh late here on the Diamond Princess for traditional seating is at 7:30. So, it’s not as late as some other ships, but just like any type of traditional dining here on any type of cruise line. Uh essentially, you can order as much as you want off of the menu. appetizer, entree, dessert, uh multiple appetizers, multiple soups, multiple salads, multiple entre. Here though, for dinner, they actually have additional offerings that you can purchase for an upcharge, right? So, something like a steak or a lobster or something like that. Not that those specific things that I just mentioned were what were the upcharges for tonight, but that is an option. We’ve ordered our food and it’s probably going to come out relatively quickly and it’s just the two of us. I don’t know how busy this dining room is actually going to get. Some empty tables. Yeah, there’s actually quite a few. The uh the Diamond Princess has several different restaurants uh that are included for the main dining room. International dining room is the traditional five or the traditional early and late seating. The other restaurants are more of like the my times or the casual walkups for whenever you’re hungry and you want to get in. So, we wanted to make sure we had a set dining time. We prefer that structured uh feel. So that’s why we chose to do this. You don’t have to do that as well, but it is an option. Yeah. But it’s cold. First, you got the fresh on French onion soup. Potatoes. Thank you. So, something else that I forgot to mention that was on the menu, which you can see in the video, is that it may be for this like particular set of sailings because they’re out of Japan, but they have a basically like a Japanese type of favorites. And that will vary each night, I’m assuming. I don’t know for sure cuz this is the first night, but they have that and then they have like a chef recommendation and then they have like princess favorites, right? Which is what a lot of cruise lines do. They offer kind of like the cruise line favorites and then like a chef genian soup, right? So, yeah. So, for my appetizer, I’ve got the potato soup here. Um, it so it wasn’t what was on the chef recommendation. This was actually based on our waiters uh recommendation. So, he said uh you know, he doesn’t really go off of necessarily the chef recommendation. It’s based off of his pallet and what he thinks most of his guests prefer. So, that’s what I went with tonight. If you’ve been watching us for a while, you know that Taylor is all about the French onion. So, she’s got the French onion. It’s not in a traditional kind of like croc, right? But, uh, it’s it’s in like a sort of a croc. Not the brown one. Sort of, right? Um, but it does still look pretty good. Smells really good. Very hot though. Had to take a small bite. [Music] Decent flavor, but it definitely needs some salt. And what is interesting is that they do have salt and pepper here at the table. It’s a decent soup. I was tempted to get miso soup, but I kind of thought like that’s probably going to be offered uh throughout the cruise. So, chose not to get tonight. For me, I got a salad today. I got the Caesar salad, and you had the option to get it with or without anchovies. Uh, so I decided to get it with the anchovies uh because I like things to be uh gross and authentic and traditional cuz some people are going to be like, “Oo, that’s so disgusting. Why would you do that?” Um, up at the buffet today, I had a Caesar salad for my lunch and they had like other toppings besides just the Caesar dressing and you could put anchovies on your Caesar salad at the buffet. I did not do that, but Josh probably would. If you don’t know, like traditional Caesar Caesar dressing is made with anchovies or an anchovi paste. So, we’ve made it at home. Yeah. So, this is already like pretty well cut up, but I do want to cut up my anchovies. I will say it’s probably one of the better Caesar salads I think that I’ve had on a cruise ship. The dressing is really good for main dining. Yeah. And this is a pretty wellbalanced dressing, I would say. So, and the anchovies itself, I think, make it all that much better. So, you do you want some water? All right. Our entre have arrived. And I went with the pork curry. So, this was part of the Japanese recommendation uh for tonight. We’ve got the pork and we’ve got rice, pineapple in there, some type of like maybe gravy sauce, and like looks like the curry. Yes, the curry sauce. Uh and then like some cabbage over there on the side. Taylor went with a very traditional This was a chef’s recommendation. This was on the menu for just tonight. The prime rib, of course. Comes with a baked potato and some vegetable. Looks like um green beans tonight. Dive on in, buddy. [Music] Pretty good. Mhm. M pork is super tender. It’s crisp on the outside. It reminds me of a like a really good like German schnitle. I would actually add like a little bit of lemon over the top. Like a squeeze of lemon over the top. That’d be really great with the pork, but otherwise it’s a It’s not snitle, it’s cat soup. Yes, I I know. Uh but it is nonetheless really good. Yeah, you got to get that rice down in the curry there. Yeah. So, oh, excellent. Look at that. Thank you. Perfect. Thank you. It’s a good dish, but it’s a lot of rice. And Josh ate the pork really quick. Yeah, it’s a lot of rice. It’s not a ton of curry sauce. Um, and it is like the pork is I would say like almost pounded pretty flat. So, but it still stays nice and tender and moist. I don’t know if he was joking and I just was like, “Yeah, sure. What? Why not?” But essentially, I got a whole thing of pork and the curry sauce. So you [Applause] happy birthday to you. One more time. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday. Happy birthday. Happy birthday to you. Make a wish. Make a wish. A Mr. Joshua to drink alcohol. Happy birthday. Take a photo. Take a photo. Oh, yes. Together. We did. I I swear I did not know that was going to happen. So, technically I was as surprised as you. Technically, my birthday was yesterday, which we didn’t get on the cruise yesterday cuz imbarcation day was today. I guess that that got flagged. Close enough. Close enough. Just like a I think it’s like a chocolate mousse. That’s a huge bite, bro. In addition to my birthday cake, I also have the flowerless cake, which is what Taylor got as well. So, uh, I love that they have like the basically kind of like the sauce around the side and they’ve got the blueberries and the strawberries on there. Makes it look just really bright, colorful, and very light. All right, everybody. We are back in the room. And, uh, wow, it’s been a long day. Embarcation day is always a long day. There’s a lot going on. Taylor can’t get over this right here. I’ll show you. Look at this. This is my Taylor said my prison photo prison mic. So, it’s been uh it’s been a long day and uh we just finished eating dinner, which was good in the main dining room. I was actually really surprised. Yeah, I I I was I I think that uh I said this earlier, but I think some of the food is lacking a little bit of salt. Oh, I thought everything was good on my end. You know, I mean, I consume a lot of salt now. Uh you do. Oh, I do. Yeah, I usually like salt everything uh really really heavily, but Okay. Yeah. So, first a date down and I got to say that like first impressions um this Medallion technology is really great. It Yes, it is makes everything very very smooth uh as far as just interacting with the uh you know with with the team members and ordering things and whatnot. So, um it’s been good, but we are calling it an early night. I got up this morning at like 3:00 and I’ve been awake since then. So, we’re going to try to go to bed early tonight, sleep in tomorrow, and then be up late the next few nights. So, we’ll see how it goes. We’ll see what happens. Yeah. So, uh let us know what you think about Princess Cruises. If you sailed on them before, should we sail on them again? Um my mind is already kind of made up, but let me know what you think down in the comments below, and we’ll see you all uh in the next one. Bye. [Music] It’s calling me.

Join us for embarkation day aboard the Diamond Princess in Japan as we kick off our incredible cruise adventure in April 2025! In this vlog, we take you along for a step-by-step walkthrough of embarkation, give our first impressions of the ship, and show off some of the highlights you’ll want to see on your own Princess Cruise.

What you’ll see in this video:
• Embarking the Diamond Princess in Yokohama, Japan
• What the check-in and boarding process is like
• First look at the atrium, dining areas, pools, lounges, and more
• Our thoughts on the ship’s design and atmosphere

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We’re Josh and Taylor, a travel-loving couple with a passion for cruising, photography, and creating unforgettable memories. On this channel, we specialize in cruise travel, offering expert tips, destination guides, and insider advice to help you plan your dream vacation at sea.

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