Avoid Crown Princess/Alaska until engines are fixed

Crown Princess Cruise Review to Alaska - Inside Passage

Cruises: 2-3 cruises
Review: 1
Helpful Votes: 19

Overall rating:

2.9 out of 5
Crown Princess

7 Night Inside Passage With Glacier Bay National Park (Seattle Roundtrip)

Sail date: May 21, 2022

Ship: Crown Princess

Traveled as: Couple

Reviewed: 2 years ago

Review summary

Cruised to Alaska May 21-28, 2022 but ship had engine troubles that caused 1 full-day port visit (Ketchikan) to be canceled and a second day in Juneau cut to just a few hours. Lost out on all excursions in both ports. Substitute port for Ketchican (Icy Strain Point) was also canceled when engines were running even worse than expected. Reading prior reviews, I now see that these engine troubles and port cuts have been ongoing since the ship was put back into service (post Covid) in April. Probably will continue through the summer so suggest you avoid this ship unless you just want to stay onboard and not get off at any ports. Also found the staff to be undertrained and overworked. They were pleasant, but stressed. Food was sub-par. I expected better compared with past cruises, but perhaps they have drastically cut costs that result in very mediocre food. The Medallion Class app was really a nuisance. Didn't work well and staff had to use it to order everything so it took a long time to do anything and there were many billing mistakes. Also a pain for us since we were frequently unable to look up events and make reservations due to the uneven performance.

Embarkation

4 out of 5

Ship experiences

Food and Dining

2 out of 5

Onboard Activities

2 out of 5

Entertainment

3 out of 5

Service and Staff

2 out of 5

Ship Quality

3 out of 5

Cabin / Stateroom

4 out of 5

Ship tip

Don't go until engines are fixed. They knew of these problems in April and to this day they continue to sail knowing you can't make it to all the ports.

Ports of call

Juneau, Alaska

2 out of 5
Would have enjoyed seeing it, but excursions were canceled due to late arrival and we didn't have enough time to see much at all.

Skagway, Alaska

5 out of 5
Had a nice time. Enjoyed excursions.

Cruise Glacier Bay

5 out of 5

Icy Strait Point (Hoonah), Alaska

1 out of 5
The ship skipped this port. Was supposed to be a (poor) substitute for Ketchikan, but broken engines couldn't get us there in time.

Victoria, British Columbia

3 out of 5
Late night stop so it wasn't what it could have been.

Disembarkation

3 out of 5
Was this review helpful? 19

7 Comments

Gwbigdog    2 years ago

Thanks for sharing your cruise.

AuntPinkie    2 years ago

Appreciate your feedback.

Gwbigdog    2 years ago

Thanks for sharing your cruise

javawoody    2 years ago

Appreciate the update

karlgrgurich    2 years ago

Agreed. Plenty of other Princess ships sailing below capacity in Alaska…They should fix the problem , and let passengers choose one of the other ships.

golfermike    2 years ago

Thanks for your review. I would agree that they should cancel all cruises until the engine problems are corrected.

CruzeFan    2 years ago

Thanks for the review. Princess should cancel all cruises on this ship until it is repaired. That would give people other options for a full Alaska experience.

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