First Cruise--Some good, some bad.
Royal Princess Cruise Review to Europe - Mediterranean
Contributor Level:
Purser
Cruises: 1 cruise (first)
Review: 1
Helpful Votes: 38
7 Night Mediterranean & Adriatic (Athens To Barcelona)
Sail date: August 05, 2017
Ship: Royal Princess
Cabin type: Inside
Traveled as: Couple
Reviewed: 7 years ago
Review summary
We're not likely to use Princess again, at least not until we're senior citizen on a budget. We made great moments, but the company is stuck in the past. Cruise lines need to move away from jewelry showings and rigid dinner schedules, toward free wifi and espresso; away from excess entertainment budgets for smoke and mirror performances, toward good quality performers in the lounges; away from 'trivia with the crew,' and toward swimming options to accommodate 4500 cruisers.Embarkation
We had been traveling for work prior to leaving, so I had spent hours at home printing out luggage tags, packing a stapler, and carefully reviewing all the protocol. The guys in the Athens port start ripping up all our tags and taking our bags from us without explaining, yelling at the other official. They finally turned to us and said that our tags (printed from the official website and tagged in the official way) were invalid because they didn't have the room number assigned to them. So our entry into the boat was terrifying. All the Princess people wanted to do was take our picture and make money, rather than help us.
Ship experiences
Food and Dining
Traditional dinners are nice. All the food was high-end, although rarely did something really resonate as exceptional. But it was all decent food that fit a high-end menu. The other areas were fine. The dining rooms were quite hot and humid, and the wait staff in those dining halls were fairly incompetent (some meals never getting served, sometimes having them just bark at us "WATER!" "COFEE!"). It was our first cruise so we had no clue what our options were for beverages and their English was so bad that we just kept getting "WATER!! WATER!! YOU WANT!! YOU NO WANT!!" We never felt like they had the time to serve or help us.
Onboard Activities
If you're really into putting money into activities, like buying jewelry or playing bingo, then you're well supported. But if you're young travelers like us, without a ton of money, you end up just looking at an overcrowded pool that you can't possibly get into because one pool (and one adult pool) is supposed to serve 4,500 people who want to swim on "At Sea" days.
Entertainment
The shows and the main entertainment were great in the theater and the piazza. The lounge acts (singers, piano) were SO bad that they frequently ran us off from where we were sitting.
Service and Staff
Very much mixed. Love our evening traditional meal waiter and waitress, loved our housekeeping attendant. Since they were most important, we had a pretty good cruise despite everything else. But in the overcrowded areas like the dining halls and cafes, the help is atrociously rude. Once I was choking on a scone and needed a glass of water, and the cafe and the bar passed me back and forth 5 times before I finally just ran to the toilet to drink out of the faucet. I mean, they were truly abysmal people.
Ship Quality
Fine, but it does smell like a geriatric center and an airplane combined. But in general, very clean. Design weakness is the lack of outdoor water space for a ship of 4500 people.
Cabin / Stateroom
We liked it! Fine if you don't need a view from the room and generally comfortable and well planned.
Ship tip
Go swimming before 8am or after 9pm. It's the only times you'll be able to enjoy it.
Thumbs up
0
Ports of call
Started here. As mentioned before, the port officials were terrible and ripped up our tags without explanation. But Athens as a city is amazing and we found everybody very hospitable.
If you go in August, just know you may feel your skin frying off of your body. It's a fine stop but hard to decide what to do when there are many options and none of them stand out as especially unique (hiking ended up being our best option).
Neat! Unexpected. We did a biking excursion down the "25 turns" above the city, which provided great views. Lots of smelly seafood garbage around the city and cats after it, so not romantic or charming. But a fun little stop for seeing the mountains with an old city.
I only rank it poorly because our half day stop was ridiculous when our cruise boat kept recommending everywhere that we go to Taormina. We got to Taormina with an hour and a half of travel and had only an hour before needing to head back to the boat. Since Taormina is a tourist haven for thousands, we waited almost an hour just for food. Needless to say, all we saw was the inside of the restaurant. When we got back to Messina, we realized it was perfectly lovely. So . . . go to Taormina only if you have the time, enjoy Messina!
Naples is great, but if you've never been before just be warned that it's one of the dirtiest cities in the world. Most buildings are covered in graffiti and grime, thousands of homeless people on the streets, and very little tourist-centered accommodation. We went to the National Archeological Museum and were shocked that such priceless treasures were not climate controlled, were getting the city's filthy pollution on them, and the museum had no amenities (no cafe, no wi-fi, no air conditioning) to help out tourists like us who had walked 3 miles in the hot sun to recover. Think of putting your 1000 objects as important as the Mona Lisa in a fifty square mile sewer and that's Naples :-)
Barcelona is a true gem. Perfect city; great tourism and attractions. Just needs to find ways to accommodate them all, as the weekend and cruise ship tourism has overwhelmed the local culture. But they're trying.
Disembarkation
Easy, fast, perfect.
9 Comments
Bill847 7 years ago
Too bad your first cruise experience wasn't up to your expectation. It's hard to be perfect for a ship of this size to please everyone. However, I agreed Princess is most likely aim for a older generation and some of your suggestion would be nice. I don't like the jewerly shows, painting show, all the over hype photographers. Too many ways for Princesses to trying to get another dollar off the uninformed.
lwright1949 7 years ago
Only been one one princess cruise, the royal princess, and I found pros and cons. Loved the movies under the stars...the staff puts cushions on all the lounges before the movie starts and has blankets laid out on lounges too and they have popcorn that is free and readily available. On the downside we were looking forward to the 80s party at one of the bars and no one showed up. We had a great time but is a much slower pace than carnival.