Coastal - West Coast Cruise Reviews

First time we sailed from our "home port" of San Francisco. Not flights involved! Sailing to and fro the Golden Gate is pretty special. The stops along the way are ok for a Californian, had been to them all - but the leisurely way the boat traveled was nice.

The  California coastline cruise was a great cruise, we would definitely consider going on this cruise again. The ports are very nice and all the destinations were beautiful.

Lots to do and see on the cruise. Great excursion to Buchard Garden. Good shows on board the ship. Food at the Horizon court buffet was just so so. Bland tasting food and not a lot of meat choices. Ordered room service for breakfast one morning and the food never came, so we went to the buffet. So the service was not what I expected. Anytime Dining option resulted in some long waits.

Trip was great. Only thing is Princess should update the Star Princess with more outlets for Tech gear that everyone now has. Also the Internet is outrageously priced, why not free Wi-Fi like most hotels?

We have also booked a balcony for my daughter and her two sons.  One night at 8:pm the sofa bed of my daughter's room was still not set, so I called room service.  The guy showed up and complained that he had many other rooms to serve.  In my twenty some years of travel, this was the worst I ever experienced.   

Anytime dining is a joke.  The ship has three small dining rooms. Every evening the seats were all taken by 5:15 pm and then you have to wait for one to two hours.  Reservation is allowed at 8 am.  By the time we called each morning, the earliest reservation  is 7:30 pm.  It seems that Princess has decided the best way to make money is to squeeze as many passengers as possible and let them eat buffet, which is just ordinary.

This was the second time we have cruised on Princess.  Service was excellent except in the Horizon Court buffet where service was almost non-existent. Room was very nice and bed very comfortable. Room steward was friendly, cleaned our room promptly and gave us exceptional service.  Quality of food in dining room was much better than at the buffet . Entertainment was enjoyable and they showed first-run movies each day.  Did not take excursions since easy to get around by ourselves and see all we wanted to see at each port.  All in all a very relaxing and enjoyable cruise.

I really liked the cruise, loved my cabin but unfortunately did not like the food in the buffet area called Horizon. The food in the sit down dining halls was pretty good! Wish they had the formal night during both Sea Days but the last formal was during one of the off-shore excursions day.

Our party of four selected "anytime dining" as a our choice. We believed it would would provide us more flexibility. It resulted in reservations for only late sittings and or long lines with up to an hour wait.  Many others were surprised by this debacle. 

The other aspects of the trip were enjoyable.

Note:  we did not receive our $50 on-board credit automatically as stated in our initial paperwork.  We were told to follow-up with Cruise.com after returning home.  Can you tell me how I can claim this $50 credit.  The other couple in our party were told they would receive their $25 check in the mail.

Great ports to visit on the California Coastal cruise.  Have gone on it twice and would go again but at a different time of year.  Thought "spring break" was over but had 700 plus (20% )of passengers that were children.

We enjoyed the food and the service staff very much.  I was not happy with the internet service and the high cost of it.   It was too slow and cumbersome to use.  Getting into the room with my walker was difficult.  I wish they had more trivia games.  My husband enjoyed the shows and the choice of movies offered very much.

Santa Barbara port was a disappointment when walking along the beach walk.

Everything was under construction and homeless every few hundred feet,

All other ports were very good.

I was very pleased with this cruise for husband Gary and myself.  As we live in southern California and March has very variable weather, we did NOT pre-book any shore excursions, but did get off at all ports.

It's easy to use public transportation in San Francisco and San Diego.  Note that Santa Barbara's electric shore and Old Town shuttle at Wharf is only 25 cents for seniors; although it's not a HopOn-HopOff tour, the city is so small & cost so low, you can easily go to end of ride, then start again & stop at agreed-upon attraction. 

Again, we were very pleased with Crown Princess ship, attentive ship staff and their food service, and the stops.     

I have been on over 56 cruises, My week on the Crown Princess "Topped" them all.  Everything was perfect, the service, impeccable, the food, amazing, the staff, exceeded expectations!  It was a terrific vacation.  My opinion about only traveling to far places, has changed, who knew you could have such a fabulous trip in your own backyard.  The Crown Princess has a special place in my heart, and always will.  Tony Bennett left his heart in San Francisco but I left mine on The Crown Princess! Until we meet again......

For my First Cruise, I found it to be an experience. The staff on the boat were Great.  When first getting on the boat there was a request made for some items and it took over 5 hours to get a response. When finally getting the response to our needs, the issue was still not resolved. When calling the front desk of the ship and asking over and over for our request they had no answers.  

It also became a nightly occurrence of banging noise above us. Finally found out that it was a storage unit for Art work. This would go on for a couple hours after 10pm.

We are from MN and stay out in CA for several months each winter. While there we decided to book this Princess cruise. When I checked with purser about getting the disabled veterans shipboard credit, they told us we have to produce my husband's form DD214. Since we we could not get it because it was back in MN and booked the cruise when we were in CA, they refused to give any credit. We sailed many Princess Cruises and used the Veterans' credit on a previous cruise and had faxed the form at that time, we thought they should have had that form in their records. They said no. A fine way to treat your 100% disabled Viet Nam veterans.

Comparing this cruise to a similar one we took on Crown Princess in Sept. 2014, I have to say that the staff (dining room, buffet, front desk) on Ruby Princess was nearly flawless, but somehow the Ruby Princess acquired looooong lines for everything, particularly for meals.  We had "Anytime" dining, but they don't tell you that only 20% of the dining room seats are available for reservation, and those few are gone (at  least for the 5:30 dining time) between 8-9:15 a.m.. If you don't have a reservation,  the queues for 5:30 admission start forming up at 4:45 !  There is even something of a (shorter) line for those who DO have reservations! And we were completely unable to get into the Afternoon Tea that is supposed to run from 3:30-4:30.  We arrived at 3:40 and the line was so long and so slow-moving that 45 min. later, we'd only advanced a few feet and gave up.  On the Plus side, we were really happy that there were many more ballroom dance opportunities this time, and even ballroom dance classes!  May ballroom dancing long continue on Princess!  The stage shows were quite good, especially the Magic Musical on the final night:  an excellent production with very, very high-energy performers.  Since the weather was cold outside, we were very glad to have a good assortment of movies available on our stateroom TV (most of the other daytime activities were either sales talks or games like bingo or trivia). Would have appreciated some craft classes or real lectures that were not selling something.   However, on balance, this cruise was a good value for a short break.

We had a WONDERFUL experience with this cruise. My daughter and I are in a gluten-free diet, and I was amazed at the variety of food available to us. We were in paradise at desert time something we rarely experience with our diet. 

I was worried about three days non stop sea travel, but with all the fantastic shows, music and entertainments we didn't feel the time pass. 

I totally recommend this cruise to all.   

As usual, the Princess staff were great, very helpful and a pleasure to be around.  The ship is great, with so much to do, for every age.  Very relaxing trip and a great destination - Vancouver.  

Stellar food and service. Could not beat the price. I will definitely do this again! The ship was so beautiful, and the shopping was also a great value. We upgraded to a balcony stateroom which was lovely and well worth them cost. I can't say enough about how friendly and service oriented the staff was. While the food in the dining room was excellent, our evening dining at the Crown Grill was a superb highlight of the trip. Lenny, our travel agent with was so helpful, and I can't wait until we book our next cruise through her. Thanks Lenny!

This was our first Princess Cruise, it was a little disappointing since we had such high expectations of Princess as a cruise line. 

The food was good. Service over all was great. The hostess at the Capri Dining Room was a bit abrupt the first night. There was a 45 minute wait for seating which we'd never experienced on a cruise with anytime dining