Caribbean Princess Review

4.0 / 5.0
2,772 reviews

Prince$$ is Carnival by another name!

Review for the Eastern Caribbean Cruise on Caribbean Princess

Having returned 10 days ago from a 7-night Eastern Caribbean cruise on the Caribbean Princess, I wanted to provide potential cruise passengers with the facts about this line and their "customer service." 1. Princess is not competent to record reservations correctly. They made errors on our travel insurance, Captains Club membership, and the name on the Visa card that we supplied for our incidentals. When these items were brought to their attention, our requests for correction were ignored. 2. The "Concierge Service" for dining reservations is available certain hours of the day and will make reservations for only 2 nights hence. It's disingenuous to have a "concierge service" that is unavailable after 4:30 pm, which is the time most people return from shore excursions. Besides, when you try to make reservations, you can't because they have to keep half the dining room available for walk-ins. 3. The beds are substandard. Don't expect pillow tops or fluffy pillows. These are worn out, old mattress and lumpy foam pillows. If you have a bad back or a stiff neck, cruise with Holland America. 4. The staff are rude and can be nasty. At the time I was boarding the ship, the four security staff started chasing another passenger who was disembarking without using his ship card to "click out." Although I waited, they did not return in a timely fashion, and so I walked on and up to my room. About an hour later, I received a hostile call from the Front Office, commanding me in an angry, loud voice to "get downstairs and get your picture taken, right now!". Instead of hearing "please", "thank you" or even "good-bye", the caller abruptly hung up on me. I was shocked that this was the way Princess trains its staff--and that this was the type of impression they wanted to give at the beginning of the cruise. Although you may perceive this is an isolated instance, Princess personnel gave me a hard time during check-in, when their agent ordered me, a tired traveler, to walk back through the check-in area to "go back" in order to drop off a form that their staff had not picked up at the appropriate point. Staff aboard the ship are not familiar with it. Often the staff could not tell me where the exits were on certain decks and sadly, not all the elevators in each elevator bank worked, so you could be waiting for a long time for an elevator. To top it off, Princess gave us incorrectly color-coded luggage tags for our disembarkation time, despite our having filled out the disembarkation form on-line and again, in hard copy form after boarding the ship. When I asked the Front Desk staff for another copy of the survey so my husband and could each fill one out, I got a dirty look and the response, delivered in a surly tone, "we give one per cabin." Is this customer service? Apparently Princess has no standards or poor staff training. 5. The ship has a tiny library with a poor choice of books and no magazines. No daily newspaper is provided with the daily program ("Princess Patter") to your stateroom, since that would cost extra staff time and effort. 6. Princess makes you drag your pool towels back and forth. Apparently it is easier for the laundry to have the cabin stewards put them in your room than it is for the line to provide you with the staff/customer service to have them available poolside. This also means that if you want to use more than one towel, you are out of luck. And be prepared to get your own drinks, since there are very few staff who are available to serve drinks poolside. 7. Meal service is devised to save Prince$$ money. You get to carry your own plastic plate, napkin and silverware in the Lido, and even though there are supposed to be staff with beverage carts, you wind up fetching your own beverages because the staff are nowhere to be found during meal times. There is no ice cream dessert at lunch; instead Prince$$ requires a surcharge for ice cream ($3.75) and yogurt ($1.50). Smoked salmon and other items are recycled as "sushi". Choices at dinner are very limited, salads are unusually small, with skimpy,tasteless dressing, and even though the dining room is the only place you are served on Sterilite china, you are not trusted with a full silver setting or crystal salt-and-pepper shakers. 8. Other cruise lines provide their passengers with free souvenir tote bags, that you normally use to go to the pool or for shore excursions. Not Prince$$! Princess makes you buy them for $10 each in the on-board arcade, unless you brought your own, like some Holland America passengers did. 9. Don't forget to ask for nuts with your drinks in the night spot$! Prince$$ staff doesn't bring them, unless you clearly request them. 10. Take a good look at the doors, floors, and handrails in the common areas. I never saw Prince$$ staff wiping door handles and handrails down, cleaning the common areas, or vacuuming. Instead, I saw heavily fingerprinted doors and lots of food on the floor in the dining areas--probably because you have to carry your own plate and there is a fair amount dropped. The restrooms were cleaned about an hour after schedule, but the staff recorded the earlier time. The lack of cleanliness was the worst part of the cruise, particularly because Holland America's ships are sparkling clean, and their cruises are comparably priced. Bottom line: This is Carnival by another name. Forget Prince$$ and take your business to Holland America.

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