Nice Itinerary, Terrible On Board Experience

Looking for a relaxing two weeks to help hasten my wife's recovery following her recent major cancer surgery, we decided to spring for a suite, looking forward to a tub and a chaise, as promised to suite passengers by Princess. Not having been disappointed in the past (11 cruises) by Princess, we let them select our suite. Wow, what mistake!!

They put us in Pr727, one of the newly-created rooms, a wheelchair-accessible "suite." The room would be much more accurately classified as a "mini-suite with extra noise." There is no tub, due to the design of the accessible shower, nor is there anything resembling a chaise on the standard-sized balcony. There is no divider, simply a pedistal holding two TV sets, as with a mini-suite. Moreover, the sofa was filthy.

The officer to whom we complained about the noise before clearing Port Canaveral Harbor allowed as how he hears the same thing on nearly every cruise, that no, there was nothing he could do, as they were full, and that he hoped that we would notify management of the problem, as (he implied) he was weary of fielding this particular complaint.

We had some firm plans for Los Angeles, otherwise would have disembarked in Aruba and flown home. The Panama Canal crossing was fun, to be sure, but the overall experience was miserable, as we needed to leave the room for quiet during the day, and got very little sleep at night. The noise was a combination of a very low-frequency drone that is extremely disconcerting, and a two-per-second vibration that rattled the hangers in the closet and everything else.

The incessant noise, the fact that we paid for a suite and wound up with the same sized balcony we have had with a standard balcony room in the past, and Princess' lack of concern (they offered us a token credit when we complained, accompanied by no acknowledgement whatsoever that there is actually a problem either with the room or with its being advertised as a suite) have combined to make this our very last Princess cruise, ever.

NOTE: I rated 'Entertainment' and 'Fitness and Recreation' both terrible, because the Island Princess 2015 makeover doubled the number of people that needed to be packed into Princess Theater (by increasing the number of guests and at the same time reducing the number of venues), and also eliminated my favorite onboard reaction activity, promenading on the Promenade Deck, since the aft portion of the latter is gone.

The cabin was terrible.