Princess is my preferred line and I have always had excellent experiences with their ships, staff, and programs. I am at platinum level with Princess and plan on continuing to sail with them, despite this not so great experience.

For this cruise, we were a party of 4 (myself, DD7, DS3, and grandma). We booked two staterooms - owners suite B750 and the balcony next door B744. We purposely booked early to get rooms next to one another and at the aft of the ship. The suite was great - no complaints as such, though it was definitely showing signs of wear and tear and was in need of an update. However, the balcony room was completely unusable due to the intense smell of mold and damp (grandma is allergic to mold and immediately had breathing difficulties that required medication when she entered the room). We ended up all staying in the suite (fortunately it was large enough to accommodate all of us) and thus paid for a room that was not used. We did not request a different room as we did not want to be at different ends/decks of the ship. Throughout the ship were many buckets collecting water leaks - one cabin we passed on Baja deck had a mini waterfall outside the door (sure hope they had an umbrella - they would have needed one to enter their room). This was not something I was expecting from Princess and certainly did not portray the standards I am used to with them.

The youth centre on this ship was tiny compared to the centre on other Princess vessels. There were signs and notices saying that waitlists would be implemented if too many children registered for the program - not something any parent relying on kid programs wants to see! We were fortunate that our sailing had relatively few kids, but we did get turned away from a few events as they were at capacity. I was also shocked to find that there was only one staff member for each room - I am used to 3-4 staff in each program. The one person in Pelicans was unprofessional and gave the impression that she hated her job. She put my 3 year old in time out for "not listening" on several occasions, berated and chastised him in front of the group, and told me that he would need to leave if there was a waitlist as other kids would get more out of the art activities. Needless to say, I was shocked, upset, and angry at the treatment of my son - he has gone to daycare since he was 11 months old and is not a stranger to cruising or drop off childminding. I have never had any complaints about him before and was more than a little unhappy that a staff member would speak about my child in such a way. I did complain to both the front desk and the manager of the youth centre, but ended up just keeping DS with me the majority of the time. Needless to say, I did not "come back new"! Read more