Crown Princess Drydock Adds O'Malley's Pub, Updates Casino

Princess Cruises brought Crown Princess back into service after a Singapore drydock, adding O'Malley's Irish Pub, refreshing Gatsby's Casino, and converting the former Internet Café into an EFFY Lounge and High End Vault. Guests booked for the ship's Australia season and its long World Cruise from Sydney are the main audience for these changes, because they will be sailing with the updated venue mix for weeks at a time. Travelers should review the ship's latest deck plans and daily routine assumptions, especially if they used Wheelhouse Bar as a reliable meet up spot or relied on the Internet Café footprint for quiet work time.

The Crown Princess drydock upgrades matter most in how they change passenger flow on sea days and evenings, because they swap a familiar bar for a higher energy casual dining venue, and they refresh a casino space that tends to concentrate demand during peak nighttime hours.

O'Malley's replaces Wheelhouse Bar and is positioned as a full Irish pub experience with comfort food, live music, and a larger seating footprint, including 134 seats and 12 at the bar. Princess also frames the pub as a guest favorite concept that already operates on several other ships, which is a signal that the brand is standardizing venue choices across the fleet rather than treating Crown Princess as a one off refresh. For travelers, the practical shift is that the ship now has another casual dining anchor that competes with other late evening options for time, reservations, and capacity.

Gatsby's Casino received a redesign aimed at guest comfort and game variety, with upgraded equipment, newer slot themes, and a reworked casino bar and cashier area. That kind of refresh can change where people cluster, how quickly seats turn over at the bar, and how loud or lively the space feels relative to adjacent corridors and lounges. On longer voyages, especially a world cruise with many sea days, even a subtle casino layout change can affect where passengers spend time, and where lines form during popular evening windows.

The third major change is retail and lounge space. Princess says the ship now has an EFFY Lounge and High End Vault in the former Internet Café location, which shifts that footprint from a utility style space into a shopping and browsing venue. If you typically build buffer time into your day to do email or trip logistics in a dedicated quiet room, this is the kind of swap that can change your onboard rhythm, because the replacement space is designed for retail dwell time rather than laptop time.

Who Is Affected

This update most directly affects travelers already booked on Crown Princess for the Australia program that begins with the ship's arrival in Sydney, Australia, on January 4, 2026, and runs through May 2026. It also matters for anyone considering the May 10, 2026, World Cruise roundtrip from Sydney, because onboard venue quality and variety tend to weigh more heavily when you are committing to months at sea rather than a single week.

Passengers who previously sailed Crown Princess, and chose it partly for specific public spaces, are the group most likely to feel the change immediately. If Wheelhouse Bar was your preferred pre dinner routine, or if you used the Internet Café location as a predictable quiet corner, those assumptions no longer apply. Travelers who prize consistent venue layouts across Princess ships may view this as a positive, because it aligns Crown Princess more closely with other ships that already carry O'Malley's.

There is also a budget and package angle. Princess lists O'Malley's as casual dining with a listed $14.00 (USD) a la carte price point, and it is described as included with Princess Premier and Princess Plus on the venue page. That makes this a decision lever for travelers who are on the fence about packages, because an added casual dining option can increase the real value you extract from a bundle, depending on how often you actually use it. If you want deeper context on how those bundles changed for 2026 sailings, see our earlier coverage, Princess Cruises Boosts Premier, Plus Packages for 2026.

What Travelers Should Do

Start by treating this as a layout change, not just a menu change. Pull up the latest Crown Princess deck plans and identify your new default meeting points, because Wheelhouse Bar being replaced can create small, recurring friction if your group's habits were built around that space. If you are traveling with a party that splits up often, agree on one new indoor rendezvous spot and one outdoor backup, so you do not burn time searching during dinner rush or showtime transitions.

If O'Malley's is a must have for your trip, or if the loss of Wheelhouse Bar meaningfully reduces the experience you wanted, use a clear threshold. If your sailing is still months out, it is usually better to ask your travel advisor or Princess about alternate ships and reprice options now, before airfare and pre cruise hotels lock in, rather than hoping the new venue feels identical once onboard. If your sailing is soon, the better move is often to keep the booking, plan one or two fallback evening routines, and avoid anchoring the whole trip on a single venue that may be busy during the first post drydock weeks.

Over the next 24 to 72 hours, monitor for the practical artifacts that follow a drydock return. Look for updated deck plans in Princess channels, recent sailing reports that confirm opening hours and music nights, and any notes about crowding patterns in the redesigned casino bar area. If you are sailing early in the Australia season, build a little extra time into your first two evenings to learn the new flow, because the first voyages after a yard period can reveal small operational tweaks in staffing, hours, and wayfinding.

Background

A drydock is when a ship enters a shipyard period for scheduled maintenance, inspections, and targeted upgrades that cannot be done during normal passenger service. For cruise travelers, drydocks matter because they often combine technical work with public space changes, and public space changes are what you feel every day onboard, especially on longer itineraries.

The first order effect of the Crown Princess update is on onboard behavior. Replacing a legacy bar with a branded casual dining pub tends to pull foot traffic into one concentrated evening hub, which can change wait times at nearby venues, and it can shift the "after dinner" pattern that spreads passengers across the ship. A casino refresh similarly concentrates demand, because new machines, a redesigned bar, and a layout reset draw curiosity, and that can ripple into louder adjacent corridors and longer service lines during peak nighttime windows.

The second order ripple shows up in planning, pricing, and itinerary choice. When a cruise line adds a casual dining venue that it advertises as included under certain bundles, it increases the incentive for travelers to choose those packages, which can change onboard spending mix, dining availability, and perceived value for longer voyages. The same standardization logic is visible across the fleet, where Princess has also used drydocks to add or reposition signature venues on other ships, as seen in Sapphire Princess adds Makoto Ocean, Crown Grill. For travelers deciding between ships and sailings, that fleet wide convergence can be helpful, because it reduces surprise, but it also means you should verify each ship's current venue set rather than assuming last year's deck plan still applies.

Sources

• Crown Princess Returns from Drydock Featuring Popular O'Malley's Irish Pub, Redesigned Casino, and Fresh Enhancements, Princess Cruises
• O'Malley's Irish Pub, Princess Cruises
• Crown Princess Enters Drydock in Singapore, Cruise Industry News
• Diamond Princess in Singapore, Crown emerges from dry dock, Seatrade Cruise News
• Crown Princess Returns from Drydock with New and Redesigned Public Spaces, Travel Market Report