The cruise itinerary was mostly quite good (with the exception of Corner Brook, Newfoundland), the ship was well appointed, and the crew, mostly, did a very good job. In particular, the spa and exercise areas and staff were awesome But, ultimately, Princess and its cruise ship let us down. In a few words, Princess didn't do a good job planning, communicating, and coordinating.

First problem - we had purchased a Princess transfer from the airport to the ship pier. Our plane arrived right on time and we reached the location we had been given on time, but no sign of a Princess agent. After waiting 30 minutes we called Princess to ask where we needed to go to meet the agent. Unfortunately, we reached a Princess call center employee who insisted on reading me a canned script, very quickly, and with a robotic inflection-less voice. When I stopped her to get an answer to me one and only question, she insisted on starting the script from the beginning, not allowing me to interrupt. Hanging up, I called again, and this time was given the correct number of the Princess agent at the airport, who did a very good job helping us. However, the pickup location was at another location in the airport and we wouldn't have know this without the multiple calls

The Caribbean Princess ship was OK, but upon entering our cabin we were greeted with a noticeable sewage odor emanating from the bathroom - a smell which finally went away when we departed several hours later. The mattresses in our stateroom were probably the most uncomfortable we slept on in the past 20 years of traveling; both my wife and I woke up with back aches each morning. The only solution - a partial one - was ordering extra pillows from the cabin steward and using them to construct artificial mattress on top of the real ones. Read more