Good but needs some work especially with technology

Cruises: 7+ cruises

Review: 1

Helpful Votes: 33

Review summary

The cruise itself was good overall. However, the tech issues in registering and onboard were very disappointing. Princess needs to fine-tune and/or upgrade some aspects of their technology infrastructure in order to deliver on the customer experience. The following is a summary of the issues: 1) I previously cruised on Princess in 2002 and as a result was in the system under Christopher Thomas. The registration for the cruise I just completed was booked under Chris Thomas. As a result, the website and app would not allow me to link the account to the upcoming cruise using the booking number. And it would not allow me to create a new account under Chris Thomas since my contact information matched an existing account. 2) I called customer service a couple of weeks prior to the sailing and the tech department agent informed me that there were widespread issues with the app system and to try to register again in 24-48 hours. They recommended that I call back if it didn’t work in the next few days. 3) I called a week later, and the tech department agent identified the problem with different first names on the existing account and reservation (Christopher vs. Chris). She tried several times to fix the problem but with no luck. She then manually entered all of the information for my party. There seemed to be lots of issues with how the system was set up and designed and I had to provide the same information (names, ages, passport numbers, etc.) multiple times. This took an hour and a half to complete. The representative was excellent and did her best to help. She set up a ticket for someone else on the tech team to fix the name issue and said they would call. 4) The only call back I received was a message few days later informing me that I hadn’t registered my information and that this was mandatory before the sailing. I called in and was informed that everything had been entered and I was good to go. 5) When I spoke with the tech agent who registered the information manually, I asked about COVID testing and was told I needed to do this with two days of sailing and to try to do so just before we got on the plane. My family and I went out of our way to get tests on the day of our departure only to learn when we arrived at the port, that the tests had to be within 24 hours and as a result we had to take another test before boarding. It wasn’t so much the issue of having to take the test before boarding but the time and effort that was wasted on the day of departure. 6) When we completed check-in and boarded the boat, we found out our rooms had been moved. Because we have young children, we had booked rooms across the hall from each other. In fact, this was one of the main reasons we booked this particular cruise. Instead our rooms were five decks apart on different locations of the boat. We stood in line for more than an hour and then worked with a customer service agent who was rude and at one point when my wife was asking about how the WIFI worked told her to stop talking or she wasn’t going to be able to try to fix the issue. Despite the boat being less than half full, the best solution the customer service rep could find was rooms that were two decks apart but supposedly on the same side. When we went to the rooms, they weren’t on the same side of the boat. My wife waited in line again and a different agent was very helpful and was able to move one of the rooms next-door to the other one. 7) The only issue with changing rooms were the medallions, which the system struggled to change. We had to go to customer service and then the other three prior rooms multiple times to try/reset the medallions before they finally worked. Some of the medallions stopped working and we had to go to customer service and then to the other rooms yet again. Customer service was finally able to four of the medallions to work on both rooms but we finally gave up on getting the other two to work. We spent a lot of time during the first few days working with customer service to trouble shoot the issue. 8) When I asked the tech agent who registered us about fixing the Chris vs Christopher issue, so the app would work. She said someone should get back to me, but if they didn’t the ships have different networks and I shouldn’t have a problem once I was onboard. Unfortunately, onboard the app still didn’t allow me to link to the cruise. I went to customer service once and they were not able to address the issue. I ended up giving up after that and unfortunately wasn’t able to use the features of the app, including ordering drinks. We recognize that the cruise industry is fortunately coming back and in the process there are lots of bugs and issues. At the same time, it is imperative that steps are taken to address these, especially since technology is an integral part of a new flagship medallion program. Otherwise, the customer experience suffers and it’s difficult for us and others who experience these problems to recommend and/or justify cruising with Princess.

Embarkation

Ship experiences

Food and Dining

Onboard Activities

Entertainment

Children's Programs

Service and Staff

Ship Quality

Cabin / Stateroom

Ports of call

Civitavecchia (Rome), Italy

Naples, Italy

HERAKLION, CRETE, GREECE

Kusadasi (Ephesus), Turkey

Istanbul, Turkey

Mykonos, Greece

Piraeus (Athens), Greece

Disembarkation