Awful. Just awful. While I was on board I emailed my booking guy at Princess to tell him to cancel my next two years of bookings - 5 cruises in all. I’ve just replaced them with sailings on Celebrity and Holland America. Princess treated guests like trash on this cruise. I understand they want to save money and recoup losses, but alienating and repelling their loyal guests is not the way to do it.
Embarkation
2 out of 5
Ship experiences
Food and Dining
1 out of 5
The worst. Absolute slop. Only 1/4 of the usual buffet area was open, and it was filled with largely inedible items. One full case was filled with mostly unripe, whole fruits that nobody was picking up, of course; all their little individual (largely awful) mini-salads and small bites not only tasted awful, for the most part, but because of that, very few people were taking them, so they kept putting them out day after day as they got crustier and grosser. I wish I were kidding. I eat vegetarian/vegan food, which Princess tends to treat with disdain to begin with - but the few dishes available at eat meal was just revolting. They kept putting out the EXACT same trays for multiple meals and days - seeming to add tons of salt to try to make their crusty leftovers taste like something besides half-disintegrated chickpeas, potatoes, or Brussels sprouts - and they did not always reheat them to a decent temperature. (!!!) I resignedly put the same garbage on my plate they’d served from the prior day - and when I tried to eat it it was basically cold and inedible. On past Princess cruises I’ve at least been able to make a nice meal-sized salad at the buffet when their veg offerings were few and far between - but appallingly they’ve reduced the salad bar down the size and variety of something you’d see at Wendy’s - which is probably an insult to Wendy’s. Unbelievable, and pretty gross since they’ve gone back to serve-yourself throughout the buffet, and they’ve made the salad bar minuscule, so hundreds of people are trying to access it at the same time with their maybe-washed-and-maybe-unwashed hands. And believe me - management didn’t care. When people would ask why this was happening and why it was all so awful now, they just stared at them. I saw it over and over.
Onboard Activities
2 out of 5
Service and Staff
2 out of 5
In general, service-level crew was still wonderful. Room steward was really odd - didn’t even introduce himself and led by telling me they would only be providing service in the morning, and if I wanted anything else I’d have to pay extra. (Nice to meet you too!) I don’t feel like going through the ridiculous ramifications of service cutbacks here, but trust me - it was bad. After a couple of days I finally was able to talk to another room steward (none were in the halls - no one to contact - only way to get help was through guest services who were permanently slammed with tons of other people having similar problems) - and this other room steward was very kind and made sure the basics were taken care of daily.
I can support the review of the buffet. We have been on Celebrity, Royal Caribbean, Holland America, and Carnival. Never have we had a bad buffet in 14 cruises. Some were better than others but still, no complaints until now. We are on Caribbean Princess right now and the Marketplace buffet is horrible. After Day 1 and a less than stellar breakfast, we avoided the buffet and have had breakfast in Coral MDR every morning. This morning after moving our clocks up one hour and after a late night we slept in and had breakfast in Marketplace. Only one side open and omelet station in back. People in long line to get to eggs and bacon. All other stations less than appealing. We opted for omelets and had long wait as they had ten tickets in front of us. The worst of the worst is that they do not offer cream or half and half for coffee in Marketplace, only milk. What?? You can get cream in MDR. I asked for creamer this morning and told it’s not available in Marketplace. Crazy. Also ate lunch in there one day and that was enough. Now it’s burgers and pizza for lunch. On the other hand the meals in MDR have been delicious but portions are small. But you can order two of everything if you want so not an issue. Also Crown Grille last night was awesome. It definitely lived up to the reputation.
Hi guys.. very sad to read all this about the dearest to us Caribbean Princess ship … very sad indeed. This was our very first cruise ship ever and kept us as Princess family members since.. been on three other ships with them and overly happy with all of them. We have now reached Platinum and getting to Elite so have done 8-10 cruises with Princess when this year is out. It’s a shame you have been put off by one unsuitable cruise and I hope you have contacted them regarding your issues?
Some people have said similar things about other lines and we really hope that you have great things on the other lines next year…
Blessings, john
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