Asleep By 8 P.M.

I give the cruise a "good" rating because of the price that we paid. However, the cruise crowd was a little too old for our taste. I saw two children and one teen the entire time we were on the ship. My wife and I kept joking that we expected to see scooter races or walker relays in the daily agendas.   Our sailing was only half full (nice) but we did feel like we were at times on a ghost ship. The entertainment was very limited to a sub-par magician, comedy, a very short, 30 minute, but ok, "Do You Wanna Dance" theater production and some very off key piano bar singers. Most of the night time entertainment was focused on the movie on the open, very cold pool deck.  A few times we saw a few people sitting with blankets or towels covering them. We had a mini-suite and it was kept clean by an efficient room steward. Our only objection was that the balcony was totally exposed to the upper floor balconies. This was at times awkward but we dealt with it. We ate in the main dining room every night and found the food mostly favorable. Service was impersonal but polite. The buffet was chaotic and provided very little variety. The food was tasteless and very often ill prepared. Two health concerns that I noticed were the infrequent use by fellow passengers of hand sanitizer (and the lack of concern for this by the crew), and on several days I noticed massive amount of fruit flies on the fruit and other sweets. One day, I pointed to a plate of brownies with hundreds of insects and the staff just swatted them away. After objecting again, the plate was taken away; however, the flies just looked for something else to munch on.  My wife and I enjoyed Princess Cay. We rented a bungalow and the staff delivered our food, drinks and kept checking on us to see if we wanted/needed anything. Nassau in my opinion is a waste of time. Nothing to comment. Princess service was good; however, not outstanding. This is the first cruise line that we have been on, that we felt that the auto-gratuities were actually hurting the moral of the ship. We found that the staff were attentive, but none of them (that we experienced), actually exceeded our expectations.  (Usually I am a very generous tipper but not on this trip. This is the first time in 20+ cruises that I didn't feel the need to tip beyond the required.  We felt that the staff were on autopilot .) This was our first sailing on Princess and they have some strange policies in place that didn't make much sense. On board purchases are held until the end of the cruise. Pre-cruse amenities (cheese tray, wine, shrimp...) were not delivered to the stateroom on embarkation. You had to call room service to have them delivered. I pre-ordered vodka and when I asked about it the room service delivery guy outright accused me of taking the bottom ticket. After several telephone calls, it was discovered that those tickets were held by customer service, to be confirmed by room service and then signed for by the passenger. Strange system. I ordered a champagne breakfast (pre-cruise) and it took three phone calls to get it delivered. Once delivered, it was very nice. In closing, we enjoyed ourselves. We just walked away feeling as if Princess Cruises wasn't the best fit for us. If you can entertain yourself and enjoy being in your stateroom by 8 p.m. then this is the line for you.