tudor01

Excellent overall bur badly marred by a simple incident that Princess simply did not handle well. Our door entry system - medallion - failed and we could not get into the room! To cut a long story short it took an hour late at night before a man with only one of 2 keys on the entire ship could get us in and all due to an expired battery in the door! The big issue though was my partner getting very stressed as time went on as she was concerned she could not get her medication. As a result, the following day she was reluctant to leave the room. What really was galling is that, despite registering at the front desk our concerns, Princess never got back to us to check we were OK. Had this happened we would probably have accepted that Princess did all they could to deal with the problem but no - we were merely customers - and this was the 70th birthday gift to my partner - which, if Princess had checked, they would have known about. At the time of writing still no response from Princess so management customer care - zero, on board waiter staff care - 11 out of 10. Odd considering that a primary rule of any business is to ensure your customers are looked after. We sought no additional favours etc, merely an acknowledgement that we had been put into a position of some awkwardness and that Princess understood this. After all - what happens next time another passengers door does not open?

Just come off the 14 day cruise round the Med on Sapphire Princess. A lovely way to spend two weeks. Rather bumpy on Day 1 but I love this and then very hot indeed on all the port days. We were to arrive in Barcelona at lunchtime but due to a medical emergency we arrived by 9.00am. Why could this earlier arrival not have been included in the first place? Overall the Sapphire is a very friendly ship indeed with great waiting staff and a good atmosphere in general. The new mattresses and bedding are superb additions but the cabins are now slightly dated and could do with some TLC. But they are good so don't be put off by this comment. The port destinations were fine and all worth visiting. The only negatives I have are the usual - sort out the wifi - in this day and age it is far too expensive. I was actually happy not to have any connection except in ports but I cannot help but feel that cruise companies are missing a trick by their over-pricing of the internet as many of the guests then don't communicate on Facebook etc and so the free publicity the cruise lines could get does not happen. The casino was spectacularly empty almost the whole time and the relentless selling of paintings and jewellery was ignored by most seasoned travellers. The positives were much more - good food on the whole and plenty to do if you wanted it, for example. Overall, I would sail on this ship again and much of this is down to the good nature of the ordinary day to day staff who were so efficient and friendly. Well done, Guys! Disembarkation was a shambles - we were an hour late getting off as were many others. Embarkation was slick and well organised.