Great ports and history let down by poor staff and ship design
Royal Princess Cruise Review to Europe - Mediterranean
14 Night Greece Turkey & Italy Medley (Rome Roundtrip)
Sail date: September 10, 2016
Ship: Royal Princess
Cabin type: Balcony
Cabin number: E102
Traveled as: Couple
Reviewed: 7 years ago
Review summary
Note: this was a 7-night cruise from Rome to Athens, not the 14-nighter it keeps choosing instead.
This was a pretty last-minute deal, our fourth cruise, all with Princess, and the first to not be on a Grand-class ship; as such there were a few surprises in store and mostly not to our liking. To start with, the things about the ship we liked: the food offerings in the buffet area were excellently laid out, plentiful, varied, and difficult to fault; the adults-only pool area was a great place to get to on most afternoons if you fancy an uninterrupted swim like us; embarkation was swift; the interactive TV in the state room was larger than expected and more useful than expected too. Now for the things we didn't like: the TV studio wasn't very useful, had poor chairs, and meant there was no Explorers lounge; balconies were woefully tiny; the Crown Grill was tacked onto the Wheelhouse Bar making it noisy and bright and losing all its specialty status; food service in the Crown Grill was slow, indifferent, and they got my order wrong; service everywhere was generally slow and unfriendly with none of the experience of the staff getting to know you and your habits we'd had on other ships; no promenade deck; SeaWalk was a gimmick and one that served to mostly block out views and impact on privacy for many cabins as far as we could see; Club 6 was a poor substitute for Skywalkers and became a corridor whenever the theatre kicked out; the relaxing atmosphere of Crooners was destroyed by the constant din of activities rising up from the large atrium. We weren't fans of the ship, as you can tell, but it was the really poor service that was the worst of it all with little interaction from the bar staff at all. The ports we stopped at were fantastic, each one steeped in history. For a short cruise it was port-intensive but that's the Mediterranean for you. Kotor, Montenegro was apparently a late replacement for Ephesus, Turkey and it was a stunningly gorgeous, standout replacement in our minds, making a nice contrast from the Greek/Roman history elsewhere with a fantastically beautiful, medieval setting. We could definitely see ourselves cruising the Med again to see more of the many historical places but it would have to be a hell of a good deal to get on a Royal-class Princess ship again.
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5 Comments
bldick72 7 years ago
Stevet07 7 years ago
19scout79 7 years ago
neonbubble 7 years ago
@kathyron I don't think so although I can't imagine why not; the economy of scale should set a lower price as you get more passengers on board but I don't believe that's the case from looking at cruise prices for the newer Royal-class ships compared to Grand-class. Difficult to say in this particular instance since we got a good deal late on but generally I think the reason Princess and other lines are moving to the larger ships, sadly, is because they can get more people on and charge them more for the new features on the larger ships too.
kathyron 7 years ago