Grand Princess Review

Needs Work...Crew that is, not ship!

Review for Transatlantic Cruise on Grand Princess
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Lilamadison
First Time Cruiser • Age 70s

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Sail Date: Apr 2009

The Grand Princess is more than an OK ship. It's not really that grand, but despite what others have said, it is in good repair (we saw none of the worn carpets and other things folks here seem to have written about) but the crew and the ship line need some help fast and badly. The worst part was they were ill-prepared for six sea days between Bermuda and Greenock (Glasgow) and left passengers napping or twiddling their thumbs. The cruise staff was purely awful. Most didn't REALLY seem to care about the passengers, the cruise director was like one out of the 60s with "we know you will want to go to..." this or that in his too-frequent announcements, and the daily ship's agenda has an idiotic name (Princess Patter) and even less information than the name implies. It tells little or nothing about activities aboard-problem is there really aren't many or any that most would participate in. We got so desperate we did origami and took a lot of naps.

The biggest reason was the ship did roll a BIT. We have been on other lines a total of 12+ times, so we'd know rough if we felt it. This was NOT rough. But the staff immediately closed all swimming pools, most decks and essentially assigned all of us "to quarters". Problem is the Princess folks don't print any daily news sheets, and the TV had no outside broadcasts for days - only rolling notices saying they couldn't get any. No pool, no major walking on the promenade deck (which was closed partly after dark, anyway) and no news or TV and you begin to see why we often felt we were on a prison ship and not a luxury cruise!

Events like the daily afternoon tea were a shambles. Never mind the white gloves of Cunard were gone, but the dining staff didn't anticipate 200-300 of the 1600 of us (not but 1/2 to 2/3 full, depending who you believed) would show up. Of course, when you have no pool, no TV and nothing else, why not?   They wanted to serve the sweets first, used Lipton tea and looked astonished when we asked for real Twinings or English Breakfast or Earl Grey. In short, they apologized a lot, but were clueless as the cruise staff was.

Cabin Review

Cabin D

Lovely space well done, with a steward they need to fire or chuck overboard as he was totally talk and did no cleaning, dusting or service that we could determine.

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