British Isles cruise on Caribbean Princess will be our last Princess Cruise! From the start in Southhampton, London there were only problems...the embarkation was a 2 hour nightmare with "cattle-call" lines and a staff that were not efficient at all. Usually cruise lines want to get you right on the ship, not Princess. I can comment openly that my family will never sail on another Princess cruise. The announcements as to why we were not leaving port to start our cruise were few and far between, and altogether lies. The captain would never say what the reason was, why we were still in port the day after boarding the ship. Finally...a bilge pump problem was reported...only after our friends in London emailed us with news that our ship made the London news that we were still in port with mechanical problems. Unbelievable. I won't give a view of all the ports, just an overview of the Princess "experience" on this particular ship. After leaving the port we were told that we would be skipping over Liverpool to get to some other ports for making up time for being stuck in port. Well...unacceptable is all i can say about that, being that Liverpool was one of the major ports that the majority of passengers wanted to see. The captain said for missing this port there would be compensation of a $75.00 credit for this, and that itself is insulting ...being that if you are missing a major port of call for ship errors, compensation should have been much more monetarily. Also, Edinburgh was missed due to not being able to tender in the rough seas. There ended up being 4 at sea days instead of 2 as scheduled.

The main problem with this ship was that during these "non-scheduled" at sea days, there were no additional activities added to the revised schedule and there were hardly any activities on the ship to choose from. the main item provided was watching movies. No additional classes or lectures, no additional trivia sessions or exercise classes, and certainly no one present at the closed bars on board. Seriously people, if you have additional days at sea, you really need some activities to help those who want to do something other than sit in a movie theater. i believe i saw bingo offered twice during the twelve day cruise. Another problem was the entertainment--which i use that word "entertainment" lightly...providing a juggler on board for 5 consecutive nights in the atrium doing three shows a night for fifteen minutes each is not something people enjoy. The shows with the singers and dancers on the ship were very good, but a thirty minute show is a bit short, and instead of offering three shows a night, maybe two shows a night and a little bit longer show would be more entertaining. The entertainment on the ship at night was really lacking and of poor quality at that. When we were in the theater for our thirty minute show, there were no waiters taking drink orders like on other cruises. It was like they wanted to get us in and out quickly, and didn't offer drinks. The bars were empty a lot of the time too, with bar staff being scarce. Usually cruises want the passengers to buy drinks as that is how they make their money. Not so on this particular cruise. The casino was closed most of the cruise, if it was open it was only for a few hours at a time with not much reasoning behind it. during the twelve day cruise there was one poker and one slot tournament.

For the salon/spa on the ship i did experience a great massage, but someone else in our group had a terrible experience. The costs were very highly priced (if you didn't catch a special on board) in the spa, and appointments were hard to get if you did not book prior to the cruise. I did get a manicure, and the salon (where the nails and hair procedures are going on) was a mess and really very dirty. Read more