Crown Princess Review

4.5 / 5.0
2,240 reviews

Rough embarkation distracts from many good experiences aboard

Review for the Southern Caribbean Cruise on Crown Princess
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SunsetChaser
6-10 Cruises • Age 50s

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Sail Date: Nov 2013

I sailed with wife and parents on the Crown Princess on its first Fort Lauderdale departure after repositioning from Europe.

First impressions went downhill in a hurry. There are really only two options here, either Princess takes responsibility for helping create an epically bad embarkation (haven't seen any acknowledgement yet), or by their silence they state this should be expected as the norm. Government processes preventing embarkation may be beyond the cruise line's control, but knowing this can and will happen after repositioning a ship from Europe to the US is not. PCL should have been ready to deal with 2000-3000 people stuck waiting 2-3 hours longer than normal...water, snacks, more benches, access to more restrooms, etc.

On arriving at 11:30am the baggage handlers directed us to the terminal building where we could request a wheelchair to get my mother through embarkation. The crowd was larger than normal for this time of morning. Efforts to find a wheelchair were fruitless as the terminal folks had all of them tied up for the steady stream of disembarking Southhampton passengers, which didn't slow down until around 1pm. We were early enough to park my mother on a bench to wait it out but too late to talk our way into the terminal building for better seating as we were told 30-40 others inside were already waiting on wheelchairs. There were only enough benches outside to seat maybe 25 people. With nowhere to sit many older people were left standing in line. One gentleman fainted and fell backwards right in front of me, someone's backpack partially protecting his head from the concrete. Fire & rescue responded to a call from the terminal, hauling in a stretcher, so those inside apparently didn't fare much better.

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