In response to review, CrusinTim says ...

Thanks for your review. I was on the Crown in September for a short coastal cruise. The ship was great we had a good time had no issues. Embarkation took three ours in Vancouver but that was no fault of Princess.

Got to reading your review and it reminded me that I have to request robes for our mini-suite next week, turned out though, I had already checked the pertinent boxes in our cruise personalizer. Not sure what you are referring to when you say no robes in our room as advertised. Yes, you get robes, but you have to request them in advance. We have never had any problem with that Princess procedure, so requested and said robes were waiting for us on our arrival in the cabin. Do you use a TA or something?

We just got off the Regal two weeks ago, Europe, Baltic and TA hitting the Canadian Maritimes on the way across the pond. Excellent voyage. Wednesday we wing our way to Toronto to begin a 19 day cruise tour. This will make 209 days total sailing with Princess and we are working on 600 days all total (4 cruises on Princess in the last year). We use Regent and HAL as well as Princess.

In recent years we haven't ran into embarkation problems or excessively long lines on any of the three lines we frequent. It used to be that lines were longer but technological advances have really improved embarkations, in my opinion. The only real problem we have had in that regard, that I recall, was on Princess but it was disembarkation not embarkation, at San Fran about 13 years ago. I say 80% of the fault then was due to the port authority but Princess helped the confusion by setting us up with too close an arrival at the airline terminal for our airline departure, we were one hour late as a result, and we were using Princess Air and transfers. That taught me a lesson, look closely at the disembarkation tags and times they give you, sometimes they have the wrong airport, airline terminal or not enough time to check in, etc. If so, head down to the main desk right away and they make it right.

Sure sorry you had a bad cruise, can't prove it by our Princess cruise experiences though as we have had many a memorable voyage with them over the years.

We had a real long wait for boarding on the Crown Princess, too. I never took another Princess cruise. It wasn't the long line. I am willing to wait my turn like everyone else. The part I was annoyed at was that the princess staff kept moving guests from other lines to the head of ours. They had their own much shorter lines but they moved them to ours. It really started off our cruise on a bad note.

We had a real long wait for boarding on the Crown Princess, too. I never took another Princess cruise. It wasn't the long line. I am willing to wait my turn like everyone else. The part I was annoyed at was that the princess staff kept moving guests from other lines to the head of ours. They had their own much shorter lines but they moved them to ours. It really started off our cruise on a bad note.

Thank you for posting your review. Like CrusinTim said, embarkation is managed by port authority and other land-based agencies/unions so not fair to lay the blame at Princess' doorstep.

You did not mention what time you arrived to board this cruise versus the others where there were no delays. One of the reasons that cruise lines stagger boarding times is to avoid lots of people having to stand and wait. That may have been a contributing factor.

In any event, hope your next trip goes more to your liking.