Very Disappointed. Warning! Poor Service. dirty room. Bland food. Pay for your Coffee. Won't let you off the ship.

I loved Glacier Bay and I loved the beauty of Alaska and the people there.

This was my 3rd Cruise and my first and last with Princess Cruiselines.   We went on the 7 day Alaska inside passage on the Golden Princess.  I have been on two cruises before this one.  Royal Caribbean and Norwegian.   I wanted to go back on Royal but their ship was not leaving at the time we could go so being that I have heard good things about Princess, I gave them a call and after talking to a few friendly people that worked there I was convinced it would be a great experience.  Sadly it was not. 

When we boarded the ship nobody greeted us and we thought this was odd because the first two cruises there were always friendly people on the ship who greeted you and made you feel welcome.   After getting into the room and putting my luggage down I noticed the room was dirty.  There were big stains on the carpet near the refrigerator and when I went into the bathroom the toilet lid was scractched and dirty and there was actual feces on the inside top of the toilet lid.  When I called the attendent he said he would take care of it.  We then left the room to go get something to eat, came back to the room an hour later and ran into the attendent.  He said he took care of it the best he could bet when I went back into the bathroom it was still the same.  We went down to the customer service desk and I complained and a couple hours later they put a new lid on the toilet.  Something they should have done before we got into that room.  We had to also ask the manager  to clean the dirt stains that were in the carpet and after it was cleaned you could see the carpet was starting to wear out.   Most of The food was good during our assigned dinner dining but the food was bland at the buffet and food courts.  I was really disappointed at the international cafe where the desserts were very small and tasted like they came out of a bag and you have to pay for the coffee.  Other ships i've been on  the coffee is free with the dessert.  On the other two ships I cruised on the entertainment was much better and on this ship most activities were boring and the only reason for the activity was to get you to buy something. On the last days of the ship they were running out of ideas for activities and laying out plastic cups and having people see how many balls they could drop in a cup.  Also at the main assigned dinners the waiter and head waiter kept plugging the two special restaurants with up charges.  I do not drink and I noticed they are much nicer to you if you purchase alcohol and they tend to ignore you if you don't.   The last two nights on the Cruise the service went down hill and It seemed like the staff was in a hurry to rush us off because they were getting the ship ready for the next group of cruisers and our time was almost over.  That is the way it seemed.  Especially when in line and staff were chit chatting to one another and making you wait.  I talked to seasoned cruisers who have sailed on Princess on many occasions and they told me it has gone down hill.   After leaving Ketchikan, that night we had very rough weather on the ship and the next morning the Captain made an announcement and said that because the rough weather slowed us down he could not let us out at our next stop and said Princess Cruise main office told him not to let us off because they did not want to be off schedule for the next group of cruisers. That was a big lie because a Norwegian Cruise line Ship that was right behind us let their passengers off for a couple hours in Victoria.   I thought that the least Princess Cruise could do was offer the passengers a free drink or show some small token of compensation but they did nothing.  So we never got to see Victoria which was the last stop on our Itenerary.  When coming home towards the port of Seattle I could not sleep and woke up very early in the morning hours before arrival and noticed that the captiain was sailing very very slow and just taking his time on his way to Seattle and I have no doubt he was doing this so that he would not pull in too early.  If he had been going normal speed he would have arrived in Seattle two hours ahead of schedule and I know we could have gotten off in Victoria just like Norwegian's passengers.