Emerald Princess Cruise Reviews - Reviews

The entertainment was not as good as expected.  There needs to be more information about each port previous to landing.  The food was not up to the expectations of Princess.  That said, we enjoyed the chance to be together with our family and the various things going on gave each person an opportunity to do their things yet get together for supper.  Our grandson enjoyed the youth program immensely.  Our room was always clean and the people on board who served us were excellent.  Our room steward always seemed to be busy and was extremely friendly and helpful.  The ship was clean and spacious.  We appreciated that alcohol was not pushed, available but not pushed all the time.

Loved our cruise! So worth the money for a balcony - we own our own business and have a hard time, even on vacation, truly getting away. This was heaven! Room was great, food was delicious, plenty of areas to relax or there was always a fun activity. Loved every minute!

We had a wonderful time on this cruise.  All of the Staff were friendly and very helpful.  All the services were excellent and we will do another cruise with Princess Cruises.

I love this port.  Great parking and great people working the pier.

The ship is beautiful, especially with all the holiday decorations.

All the staff was great and the ocean was beautiful.

If you live in Texas or the nearby states, this is your best bargain in cruising.

This is our 1st cruise, we had good days on the ship, most of servers are friendly, except the host "Mario" in Da Vinch dinner room.  We have 5 in our family, he assigned a small round table which can seat for max 4 people to us on 1st night, and we went on 4th night same place and he assigned the same small round table in different spot to us AGAIN, we lookED around that all of the party of five that they have been seated on table for 6.  It is not acceptable for this kind treat, hope you can have him notice even he worked at Princess for 40 years.

Beautiful ship, good food & services. Don't like that the drinks are expensive, virgin & alcoholic.

And not being able to drink the alcohol bought at ports, before arriving back to home port.

Also, all restaurant's on the ship should be free.

The Lido deck buffet is actually separated into four buffets.  Near closing time for one buffet another one opens.  The guy at the carving table in the3 buffet doesn't have anything to carve, and wants you to wait until the next buffet on the other side of the ship opens in twelve minutes before you eat.  The food is going down hill for the passenger unless you wish to pay the additional for the specialty restaurants on ship.  At the sit down dinner they fill the menu with items that are very rarely requested.  If not for my wife, I would go to the buffet for the evenings (better food) and you can see what you are getting.  The cruise was ok, the food so-so, the shows - marginal.  This is the only cruise that I have been on that I do not know the  cruise director and I have been on about twenty-five cruises.  I did like the efficiency with the boarding and post boarding the ship.  Best I have ever seen.  Met the captain and he seems to be a great guy.  The head of the hotel seems to be qualified.  I would terminate the head of food service and the cruise director.  Liked the comedians but went to there second show and it was a repeat of the first.  Maybe some more depth would be nice instead of embarrassing the people that get up to leave or the ones that were late (this was a large part of their show). 

Nice cruise.  Crew was helpful and nice.  Enjoyed the taped concerts by the pool.  Loved Mahogany Beach and swimming.  Food was good.  I was a little disappointed in the any time dining experience.

The cruise by itself was great. Excellent services rendered by the people involved, chamber help, restaurants and etc. However, we did not have much availability for the handicaps and those needing more in the way of moving around. The rooms much small, the corridors too narrow. A walker and a person could not move alongside! The room doors were so small that we could not move the walkers inside.

It would be so much better if some rooms could be modified to the need of handicaps, closer to the elevators and with a larger entrance doors.

This is not a criticism, but suggestion and hope that it will receive some attention.

Thank you.

The ship and crew were fine, well-trained and guest oriented.  The food was limited in offerings for breakfast and lunch.  There was a sameness to the offerings.  The food needs to be improved at meals other than dinner.  The dinner meal had good meals and well prepared.  The specialty restaurant was a highlight of the trip.  The ship was nice and well appointed but needing some more comfortable chairs for seating. 

The room was a big let-down.  In order to get more people on board the room was equipped with two beds hanging on the wall thus negating easily getting into and out of bed.  I found it difficult to bend appropriately to rise from the bed.  It was difficult to stand up straight and move along the side of the bed.   I expected better than this from Princess lines.  At no time did I indicate there would be other than my wife and I in the room. 

The "shows" providing for evening entertainment did not meet my expectations.  I have cruised with Carnival and found their dancing shows to be of better quality and precision.  The other entertainment, the illusionist and comedians were good bettering my expectations. 

My wife and I both became ill while on board with colds and coughs,  This certainly influenced my evaluation of the voyage.  A strong emphasis of the ship was the provision of sanitizer for the travelers. 

Carnival caters to a younger group of people which I enjoy.  The  passengers on the Emerald Princess were a much older group of people,

enjoyed the cruise and ship. Great food. Fun entertainment staff. Everything about the onboard experience was great. Not so much the ship associated tours and shore excursions. Very sterile. You get what the cruise line wanted to show you plus a lot of ship/cruise line provided shopping. While this provides a safe atmosphere, you don't really get a flavor of the locals. I go for the shore excursions as much as the onboard experience. 5 stars for the ship, 3 for the excursions. 4 overall.

My wife and I sailed between holidays.  The prices were very good.  The service, dinning, shows, crew attention to detail and space available to relax was great.  I look forward to another cruise with this line.

The ship was confusing to get around on. I can't remember any elevators accessing all usable floors. You were up then over to another elevator and maybe up or down to your confused location. 

The ship was quite nice with great crew members. 

I would take the same cruise again.

I booked this cruise strictly because I have always wanted to sail on this particular ship.  I booked with no knowledge of the Houston port or looking at the itinerary.  

We sailed the Sunday after Thanksgiving.  No problems with Princess transfer from airport to the cruise terminal.  Ride wasn't as long as specified.  Overall we were at the airport at 10:45, at the cruise terminal by 12:00, had a short wait in line for the bus to pull in.  We ended up being onboard the ship by 12:45.  Rooms were ready, dropped off luggage, went to the dining room for lunch.  Food and service here were good.  

Overall we had good service in the dining rooms for dinner, we had the anytime dining.  Never waited more than a couple minutes.  We dined with others and also by ourselves.  Food at dinner was good.  Overall I found the buffet choices for breakfast and lunch to be lacking, especially lunch.  Also peculiar the buffet was closed on one side almost all the time.  Long lines for pizza, burgers.  I also didn't like milk not being in cartons, no chocolate milk. Also husband likes cream of wheat, they had it one day only.  This being my 4th cruise with Princess, it was a little umipressive.  I also found when on the Grand the international cafe seemed to also have better choices.  Not sure if that varies from ship to ship or not.  We did dine in the Crown grill one evening, food and service both excellent here.  

Overall our cruise was marred by a horrible excursion in Belize.  The weather and excursion started off fine with a long bus ride.  Once we got to the boat to take us to Lamanai it began to lightly rain.  At this point the sale of ponchos began.  Once in Lamanai the rain really started to pick up so that it poured, we were unable to take any good pictures, and really didn't get to see much of anything.  The boat ride back was awful.  Pelting rain in the face, water poured down our backs, to the point I had my camera in a case, inside another bag, covered with a towel. When we got off the boat for lunch my new camera was in a puddle of water and now doesn't work.  I then had to camera to take any photos of the ship.  In speaking with a front desk rep, I asked if they had anyway of a camera for me to borrow.  His reply was the cruise was almost over why did I need to worry about taking any pictures now.  So while my husband and I usually take a sea day and get up early and walk the ship taking photos - didn't happen.  I got a few with my cell phone, but those won't be of any good quality to really have any good photos.  So I don't really have much in the way of anything to remember the trip. We booked the excursion as we had previously done the same to Altun Ha and had a wonderful time, this really has not given us the best impression now of Belize.

Bought the drink package for myself, hubby just really doesn't drink enough to do the package himself.  He did take advantage of the Wheelhouse bar happy hour specials.  Wait staff in the Wheelhouse bar were exceptional.  They at least help to make up for some of our disappointment.  

In the end my husband and I don't really care to sail with Princess again at this time.  This overall was my 16th cruise and I usually never complain on anything.  Just had to be a more depressing trip.  Really wish the excursion had just been cancelled.  

This was our third cruise and we will be cruising again. Our first one was on Holland America and the last two were Princess. They were all awesome. The food was very good and the staff were wonderful. Our shore excursions in Belize and Cozumel to the ruins were very good,the guides were very knowagable and the ruins were interesting. In Roatan, we did the botanical gardens. I wasn't impressed..would do something different next time. The one thing I would say that I wasn't impressed with was the walk off system they have to do the final disembarkment..it was very disorganized.

Although the weather on our cruise was not very good and we were unable to enjoy two of three ports, our time spent on the Emerald Princess was vey enjoyable and relaxing. We drank Champagne while enjoying the atmosphere at the piazza one day we couldn't get into port. The staff was very attentive without being intrusive and we had a real good time aboard the ship. The food of course was amazing. The fettuccine Alfredo was the best I've ever had anywhere in the world. If you book a cruise on any Princess ship you won't regret it and you won't want to go home. 

Great staff always helpful. Food was great. Rooms were great ant room service was better than expected. Although weather was not the best the ship did it's best to keep every one happy

This was our first time cruising out of Houston and we found it a bit of a challenge figuring out where to stay the night before (coming from the West Coast that's pretty much of a necessity) and the most economical way to get to from George Bush International to the port.  We found that our best choice was to rent a car through Costco from the airport and drop it off in Webster near our hotel.  We stayed at the Best Western Nasa and were quite happy with it.

We chose to book obstructed view staterooms for ourselves and son and daughter-in-law.  There's not much to see out on the sea, but we like to tell night from day.  Our only complaint with the room was the minuscule shower.  I am a small woman but found it a real challenge to shave my legs in that shower.  The bed was comfortable and there was a comfortable chair.  Storage space was fine.

Service was excellent.  We experienced bad weather so that we were unable to visit Belize, a real disappointment.  Cozumel was very windy so that snorkeling was a challenge and we gave up on it pretty quickly.  This meant that we had five days on the ship with no ports.  Nevertheless, we had a great time because there were excellent activities.  There was that old favorite trivia at least twice a day.  In addition there was a golf chipping contest most days in which contestants attempted to chip a golf ball into one of several hula hoops floating in one of the pools - not easy.  There was bocce ball, croquet, paddleball, hoops contests.  At night we enjoyed Majority Rules, Liar's Club (try to guess which of three definitions for words is correct - and these were words that must have come from a search of an unabridged dictionary to find the most impossible words), Marriage Match (definitely PG-13).  I felt that these were some of the best activities I've enjoyed on a ship.  I would have liked lectures like can be found on Holland America or Celebrity.

The ports would have been good had the weather cooperated.  We had been to all three ports several times before and they are really good ports.  We arranged a boat snorkeling tour for Roatan with Roatan Ecotour and that worked out very well.  There were whitecaps at West Bay but Alex Manzato took us to the other side of the island for excellent snorkeling.  I had arranged a cavetubing and zipline tour with cavetubing.bz for Belize.  We didn't get to do that, of course, but we had done the cavetubing part of the tour with the same company on a previous cruise and enjoyed it thoroughly.  We took a cab to the Money Bar on Cozumel and were able to use a comfortable beach lounge for the price of a drink and also got lunch there, very good for a reasonable price.  We had been there before and had very good snorkeling there.  Our son and daughter-in-law found scuba operators off the ship in Roatan and Cozumel for a reasonable price and were very happy with what they did.

From the moment you walk on-board, you feel like someone special. You are welcomed with smiles and courtesy from the staff members. The rooms were kept very neat and tidy by our steward "Ronald". The buffet was pretty good on most days. The Botticelli dining room was amazing; the food was outstanding and our servers "Antonio" from Portugal and "Leo" indulged us in our every whim. These particular staff members made us feel like royalty. The shows in the Princess theater were pretty good especially the magician, he was awesome and funny. The one thing I would like to mention is the coffee in and around the buffet, it was pretty awful. It either tasted burnt or like dirty water yuck. The weird thing was, that in the dining room and through room service the coffee tasted just fine, haven't figured that one out yet. Another thing that I would like to mention is the fact that "smokers" were limited to so few places that they could indulge. Is this really fair? don't smokers deserve as much courtesy as anyone else? Our money was the same as non-smokers when buying our tickets, it is something people in the travel/entertainment industry need to think about. Ok, off my soapbox, overall the cruise was wonderful and I do hope to travel on more cruises in the future. 

We left port an entire day late- miss our first port(roatan) washed out at the replacement(costa maya) even though there was a Royal Caribbean that seemed to be able to port there ok..? All excursion cancelled for Belize(walked around in the rain to get off the ship) excursion for Cozumel cancelled- got a taxi and found a beach.. Travel desk was NOT helpful at all- food was poor-salty overcooked..Lobster was rubber- Activities were not well  advertised- couldn't hear announcements-missed second formal night change announcement, came under-dressed!  Horizon court food was not good- couldn't even eat the mashed potatoes-too salty No service there either for 4 days no one offered to get drinks or anything.. 

Room was nice and clean- and room attendant was kind

Emailed Princess and have had no response as of yet.