Sky Princess Solar Eclipse Cruise August 2026 Part 1. Embarkation day and sea day.

We’re off again on Sky Princess in August 2026 on a Solar Eclipse cruise from the Queen Elizabeth II cruise terminal at Southampton, visiting Cherbourg, Getxo, Malaga, Cartagena, Gibraltar, Lisboa and Coruna. The first thing you need to do if you’re going on a Princess cruise is to download the app to your device. Our hotel was just across the road from Southampton Central train Station. The Ibis Southampton Central is a hotel I would recommend, it was comfortable, convenient for restaurants and shops and within walking distance of some of the cruise terminals. It has a lounge bar which we waited in because our embarkation slot was after the checkout time. I found out where to board the ship by looking at this web site, which told me that Sky Princess was scheduled to arrive at the Queen Elizabeth II cruise terminal at 6:30 am on 8th August. We booked a taxi to the cruise terminal with Radio Taxis Southampton who provided tracking information so we could see when our driver was arriving at the hotel. It was a smooth ride to the cruise terminal and I would recommend Radio Taxis. The drop off lanes were under cover which I thought was an excellent feature. Luggage drop off was quick and easy. This was the queue for our arrival group, and there was a waiting room for early arrivals with toilets and refreshments. Checkin was quick - we presented our passports and collected our medallions. Then, upstairs we were directed to sit and await our turn for security. We were onboard after half an hour at two o clock. Our cabin was ready and here is a brief glance. I do have a cabin review from last year’s trip on Sky Princess, the link to which is here ... https://youtu.be/ItQjRQRgczk The cabin was E611 on deck 8, and has a restricted view balcony. All our luggage had arrived by 3 pm and we were able to get on with our unpacking as soon as we had finished lunch at the International Cafe in the Piazza. We went up to the pool deck to see the sail away celebration where some of the staff were encouraging us to do some line dancing. Then to the theatre to hear the Cherbourg destination talk from Jase. There was early evening ballroom dancing in the Vista Lounge. We had booked reservations in the Cielo Dining room at various times depending on what time slots were available. Any slot after 6:30 meant a 10 to 15 minute queue to be shown to our table. This was a late one, but we had many slots at 6:30 when there was no queue at all and we went straight to our table. Every day we would have breakfast in the Buffet and our first full day onboard was a port day in Cherbourg. I will publish a separate video for this visit, and when I do so I will put a link in the description. That evening we discovered Infinity Strings. Two violinists from Argentina and Ukraine playing contemporary and classical music that we could dance Ballroom and Latin to, including Argentine Tango music such as Por una cabeza and beautiful waltzes. And following on from last year’s cruise we knew about Philippe Lavoipierre Trio and made a number of visits to Take Five to hear them play. Day 3 was a sea day and here is the programme. You can see that we had a busy schedule planned but we still fitted in some time for relaxation and reading, eating and drinking and the occasional nap in our cabin. Our favourite place to lounge in the sun was deck 7 aft port side. As you can see there aren’t many people here and that was the nice thing about it - it was quiet - no background music. The line dancing was great fun and very well led by Angela, but it was oversubscribed in the piazza. We went to the theatre to hear Michael Murray the visiting Astronomer who gave an enrichment talk on the Total Eclipse. He was entertaining and amusing but in a way that was clear - he didn’t chop up his sentences with sarcastic remarks and witty throw-away comments - he was easy to listen to. Well done Michael Murray. We enjoyed listening to the Abba tribute in the Piazza on our way to the theatre for the first of three shows by the show-cast. There was always more than one sitting for each show, but a word of warning, if your schedule requires you to attend the most popular sitting - go early. For us even 15 minutes early wasn’t enough to get a seat with a decent view. Particularly for the Five Skies show where there were mobile device props that blocked the view from the side. Fortunately for day 3 Spotlight bar we were early enough for a decent seat.