This was my fifth cruise, and my first on Princess.

Embarkation was a nightmare, at best. Two weeks prior to the day of embarkation, Princess phoned to alert me that the terminal could not accommodate high numbers of people and that Princess pushed the embarkation time back from noon to 2:00 PM. In doing so, Princess created a major traffic jam on the Embarcadero, and it took several hours to drive 2-3 miles. Bad move. Finally, we embarked around 3:30 PM, and went directly to our stateroom. Princess offers services on their cruise personalizer website, so I naively believed that they would follow through. No such luck -- nothing that I requested be in place in our stateroom was there. The Golden Princess was supposed to set sail at 5:00 PM. Unfortunately, Princess couldn't get things together and our ship didn't set sail until 9:30 PM! Although our 10 day cruise had turned into a 9.5 day cruise and a 0.5 day dock, we were happy to have the opportunity to see beautiful San Francisco at night.

It is unfortunate that first impressions make such a difference. Service in the Donatello dining room the first night was horrid. We sat at the table after our order was taken for almost an hour before our entrees were brought out. Of course, they were all cold, so we had to send them back. Total time wasted at dinner that night was almost three hours! To give some credit, I must state that the Head Waiter, Erno, addressed our concerns at once and reassigned us to a new waitress, Manuela. Our service for the remainder of the cruise was superb in the dining room. Read more