My wife and I, both in our late 20's, took this cruise with a group of about 60 friends and family members of varying ages. This was our first Princess cruise, and definitely our last. We are both working professionals from the San Francisco Bay Area and have done lengthy travelling both in the United States and abroad. Having said that, our week with Princess rivals the poorest service that we have ever experienced from any undeveloped country, and had it not been for the wonderful group that we came with, we probably would have chosen to fly back from the first port we stopped at. I'll try to list most examples of why the cruise was so bad, but the list is really quite long and most readers would be hard pressed to finish my review if I included everything.
DISEMBARKATION: This went fairly smooth, except for when we were checking in at the counter at the port. Our first encounter with a Princess employee, should have been a signal of the attitude to come. We were told that My wife's passport had scanned a different passenger's name in their system. We had assured them that this must be a problem with their system, as we had used the same passport numerous times in our travels without a problem. We also presented additional identification to support our claim that she was who she said she was, but were ignored by the Princess agent. After 5-10 minutes of denying us access, she finally acknowledged that it had been corrected. No apologies. Getting on the ship was fairly smooth, considering the amount of people to board. We waited about 45mins-1 hour and were on board. Once on board, we encountered several employees and learned of the second major problem with Princess workers, lack of English communication skills. We asked a simple question about where our stateroom was, and were answered with dumbfounded looks by two employees. Might I add, that these were two uniformed employees stationed by the first elevator you encounter upon boarding the ship. Even basic courtesies, such as greeting people, smiling, thank you's, and apologies are not practiced. Our one other complaint about the embarkation process was that we checked our luggage around 10am and boarded the ship shortly after noon, but we didn't receive our luggage at our stateroom until approximately 6pm, when dinner was to begin.
DINING: Our first dinner seating was a disaster. Our travel agent, who was also on the cruise with us, had requested 6pm dining for our entire group. However, only about half the group was assigned this on their cruise cards, the other half were split between anytime dining and the later seating. When we arrived to be seated and tried to clarify this issue with the dining room staff, we were rudely denied our claims by the host. After much arguing, they agreed to try to accommodate everyone for the next evening's seating, but again would not apologize or acknowledge their error.