Great ports and history let down by poor staff and ship design

Royal Princess Cruise Review to Europe - Mediterranean

Cruises: 4-6 cruises
Reviews: 7
Helpful Votes: 350

Overall rating:

3 out of 5
Royal Princess

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.

Ship experiences

Food and Dining

3 out of 5

Onboard Activities

5 out of 5

Entertainment

5 out of 5

Children's Programs

3 out of 5

Service and Staff

1 out of 5

Ship Quality

3 out of 5

Cabin / Stateroom

5 out of 5
Obstructed balcony was larger than others on the ship (not saying much) and overlooked by the bridge but not too badly; obstruction was a metal lower half of balcony instead of glass and didn't strike us as problematic. Room was up to usual standards. Can get noisy when the anchor drops so if that's early in the morning then you won't need to set an alarm.

Ports of call

Civitavecchia (Rome), Italy

5 out of 5

Naples, Italy

5 out of 5

Corfu, Greece

5 out of 5

Iraklion (Heraklion), Crete

5 out of 5

Mykonos, Greece

5 out of 5

Piraeus (Athens), Greece

5 out of 5
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5 Comments

bldick72    7 years ago

We have cruised on this ship twice --- and LOVED it. However, I will add that we have never cruised on Grand Class ship. We have heard those are wonderful.

Stevet07    7 years ago

19scout79    7 years ago

Good review...very fair. So there is not a real promenade deck? Too bad. I like my "once around" walk in the early morning. Some of the noise issues are layout of these large ships. The openness of venue has a cost with the noise.

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

Grand class more expensive?

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