WORST CRUISE EVER

We wanted to share our recent cruise experience to Alaska on the Crown Princess, May 6th thru 13th.     
We have been on several cruises in the past and never have we experienced such disregard for the passengers.  There are several things that went wrong with this Cruise: customer service was rude and condescending, the food was cold and nasty, and the ship was dirty on decks. This was Just an overall horrible experience. This cruise line started out bad and continued to go downhill.   

We got to the cruise ship terminal early and went thru 2 customs lines; the entire procedure to get on board took about 5 hours.  Which lead to a 4 hour delay in departure! Days and hours changed, times lost and wasted to the itinerary.  Princess thought it was a good idea to come into Juneau from 2:30 to 11:30, would have worked, but changing us to come in on a Sunday (Mother’s Day) the town shut down at 7:30, wasting 4 hours in port.

Most of the food staff we’re rude!  If you wanted something hot and fresh you have to fight with them to make that happen.  Every food line you’re forced to use the hand sanitizer and if you didn’t they wouldn’t give you a plate.  You think the food would have been fresh and hot.  On most day’s we found the food to be undercooked or had been sitting out way too long.  This was a reoccurring theme throughout the cruise.  This is why I was extremely sick and retired to our cabin the first day.

The ship was dirty in areas; our cabin had stains on the pillow. The hot tub in the rear of the ship was not maintained, very dirty, with bottles, glass, trash, used towels, and the staff had the nets rolled into a ball were it could be tripped over.  The crew painting near the food line, the smell of oil based paint was so strong and so close to the food eat made it hard to eat. We tried to enjoy the movie under the stars, but when we arrived there were no clean blankets but plenty of dirty blankets lying around.   The blankets finally arrived 30 minutes into the movie. 

On our way back home to Los Angeles we completed the survey received from Princess Cruise line.  On the 18th Kyle from Princess called we went over the trauma we had experienced on the boat, all the memories lost and things we missed in Alaska.  Kyle said there is nothing that he could do, they don’t have any control of what happens at the ports and that we signed paper work saying that we (Princess) has the right to change the itinerary and the only thing they would do for us if we travel with them again, is that they might be able to give us $100.00 each on board credit or a free meal.   My husband laughed and said he would follow up with a letter and post on several travel websites about our experience.  Kyle seemed a bit cavalier about it and said “that’s your right, go ahead.”

We followed up our letter to the president and customer relations department of Princess Cruise and Kyle return or call and offered us 250 pp discount on a future cruises. Which was still laughable and we haven’t heard back from there president yet.

We planned this trip months in advance.  We took the time looking into things like cost, itinerary, towns, excursions, flights, hotels, rentals and of course the ship.  Only to have it all change on you in a moment.  Memories and experience gone.  If you’re planning on taking a Cruise to Alaska, I would not recommend Princess Cruise line for TRUE Alaskan experience.