Overall, we do not feel that this was good experience. We have been on approximately 8 cruises and this was the worst. Following are comments which we feel support this conclusion.

1. The Welcome Aboard brochure stated that we should arrive at the ship between 11 am and 2 pm and the ship would leave around 3pm. In order for us to make this schedule, we booked a hotel room in Newark so we could catch an early flight to arrive in Toronto in this time frame. When we got on the ship we were then told that the ship would not leave until 9 pm that evening. No one ever told us of this change which could have been done simply thru a blanket email to all passengers as soon as this change was known. As a result we unnecessarily spent and extra $210 for a hotel room in Newark to catch an early flight. We could have driven straight from home to Newark later in the day and gotten a later flight had we known of the later departure of the ship.

2. This cruise was to be special as a celebration of our 50th wedding anniversary so we selected the largest stateroom on the ship. This whole thing cost us over $17,000 with this large stateroom. As it turned out, the stateroom was large in square footage but not in functionality. It was only large because of a narrow strip of useless space that had two chairs in it. Since it was on the 3rd deck, it didn’t even have a sliding glass door like the staterooms on the 4th and 5th floor. When signing up for this room, no one at Pearl Seas made any attempt to point any of this out to us or assist us in our stateroom selection. Upon our return home, we reviewed photos of previous staterooms on previous cruises and they were all much more elegant and inviting. Including our 3 cruises on American Cruise Lines. Read more