.We boarded the Sun Princess after 5-00pm in 38C heat in an building without aircon because of a ship sanitisation caused by the norovirus. Third cruise in a row as it turned out that the virus was on board and the third ship sanitisation. Sometimes 70 plus cabins reported illness overnight and so it went for the entire cruise.

A challenging time for guests and crew. But when no-one was checking that guests washed their hands on day one so perhaps no surprise. The virus struck 2 days after embarkation and cases were reported on the last day of the cruise at sea. Questions have to be asked about food hygiene and cleaning procedures as the same cloth was used to wipe down seats and the tables in the buffet as well as clean up food spills by serving staff. Also the buffet offered almost warm and sometime cool food and the servers could be seen scaping cold food from near empty platters onto fresh food.

The ship itself was in good condition and our cabin A352 cramped with a small TV and was just below the pool deck which made the cabin noisy early in the morning while crew set up tables and chairs above. So much for an unrequested upgrade given to us less than two weeks before the cruise so we could not ask that no change be made as we selected our cabin 7 months ago after checking Cruise Critic cabin reviews. Read more