My last cruise to Alaska prior to this one was on NCL Norwegian Spirit. I thought I would pay more for Princess expecting a better experience since Princess IS after all higher tier than NCL. But I WAS WRONG. THIS SHIP'S FOOD WAS ABSOLUTELY THE WORSE I HAVE EVER HAD ON A CRUISE. I have been on Carnival and Norwegian. Their meals were a pleasure. This ship's meals were torture. It seems like Princess was trying to cost cut in the wrong area on their cruise. The value and quality of the food served was similar to my college cafeteria food, cheap and without taste. The food in the buffet was almost the same everyday. There is very little variety. We would have asparagus au gratin for lunch, then pureed asparagus soup for dinner. For lunch they would serve minestrone soup and pork chop. For dinner they would serve "Philadelphia Pepper Soup" which looks and tastes amazingly like the minestrone soup from lunch. The only difference was it was a bit diluted and we found some cut up pork chop from the lunch earlier in the soup.

Dining room food was worse. The "formal" dinning room menu was a subset of the buffet menu. With exception of the lobster and crab leg night, the rest of the dinning room food was just the buffet food scooped on the plate in their kitchen and dished out to you in the dinning room. They were cold and unappetizing. I ordered a "Aged New York" steak, medium. What I got was a well done baked New York Steak. I guess they put that in the warmer for too long. It didn't look like it was even grilled. Those foods don't look like they were cooked to order. So, we ended up eating the buffet every single meal. We avoided the dinning room. I don't care to be served cold buffet food at my table in a formal environment. I'd rather get my own food from the buffet. At least I can see them before I put them on my plate. In my previous 2 cruises, I've every had to eat pizza because the buffet and dinning room foods were so GOOD! For this cruise, I had to resort to pizza for some meals.

My daughter had a pint sized carton of milk one day and it was bitter. Yes, I've never tasted bitter milk. When I tried to bring this to the attention of the buffet supervisor, the excuse given was these milk have been the the ship for 7 days and air could have gotten inside. I don't know how much air can get inside a sealed pint sized carton of milk. But I buy milk by the gallon at home and they usually last 2 weeks after opening in my fridge. In short, he was not apologetic nor did he try to check for the quality of the rest of the milk in that buffet counter. Shows how much Princess cares for the quality of their food and the well being of their passengers. Read more