Sun Princess Review
Rating by category
Additional details
After my most recent cruise with P&O Australia around 15 months ago I came to the conclusion that P&Os standards (in particular with the food options) have dropped too far and it was time to try another cruise line so when a good deal came up on the Sun Princess that suited us we did some research on the ship and booked.
I need to say early on that I have never been on a cruise that I didn't thoroughly enjoy so I went on this cruise knowing that not everything will be catered to my taste but I was ready to make the most of it. I will point out also that I will make mention of the bad things not to have a whinge, just to give a balanced review.
My wife and I are mid (to late) 40s with 2 children 13 and 11 so we don't really fit the demographic that is being catered for, the shows, the trivia questions and pretty much everything else is catered to much older passengers but with that said we go on cruises for a range of reasons and while some aspects may not be to our taste, other aspects would be.
Cabin Review
Oceanview
The cabin felt really small, especially for 4 people, my children are getting older and need (whether or not they need they take) more space and that may have added to the small feel of the cabin.
The bathroom is tiny and getting dressed in there is a real challenge, I hit my knee on the door handle early on trying to put my pants on so after that I put my underpants on in there and got dressed in the room.
The layout of the room with 2 bunks adds to the problems, we cant see the TV from the lower bunks without laying in a particular place on one of the beds, I learnt about half way through that If I put the bed frames together on one side of the cabin then lay the 2 lower mattresses across them and together it was more like a double bed at the bottom and both wife and I could watch TV comfortably so I had a daily ritual of rearranging the room
The state of repair in the room and general cleanliness wasn't good enough for a more upmarket line that I consider Princess to be, the door closer in the bathroom was hanging off with the metal rod hanging at eye level, I asked to have it removed or fixed because I was worried it could hurt somebody and it was fixed the first day. One of the bunk supports was bent making the upper bed hang even lower than usual on one side.
I understand its a really short turn around between cruises so a spotlessly clean cabin is very hard for them but there was medication in the room from the previous cruisers at the bottom of the wardrobe which would have been obvious had the room steward looked in there.
My kids make a lot of mess, its a small cabin and they used room service a lot which added considerably to the mess, crumbs, dishes and sauce on things so we definitely added to our stewards workload but he probably wasn't the best steward we have had, no towel animals (not that I particularly care but even P&O do that well), we ran out of tissues, he took the empty box and didn't replace them for 4 days when I asked him. He also forgot to replace our towels a couple of times.
Finally, with a couple of days to go the toilet blocked and I think it overflowed through the night because it stank really bad in there, looking under the toilet you could see a fresh dried up patch of sewer where the smell was coming from, the patch stayed there for the remainder of the cruise, I spayed with a disinfectant spray which helped but we had that smell with us for a few days
What I really liked about the cabin is the TV, especially after we worked out how to see it :). Unlike other cruises I have been on you select what movie or shows to watch and when, you can fast forward and pause or watch something else and when you came back you could pick up where you left off and the selection was very good.