Caribbean Princess Review
My first cruise was not the "Ultimate Experience"
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I chose this cruise because it had sites I wanted to see and because my sister and her husband asked me to go with them. I was expecting a Princess cruise to be run smoothly and provide the ultimate cruising experience and this cruise provided neither. Boarding was very smooth; the rest of the cruise was not.
This cruise had two tender ports. I was a bit apprehensive about these because my sister said unlike Carnival, Princess uses its lifeboats as tender boats. Come on Princess! Those lifeboats are small! This is a big ship and there were lots of passengers. This led to huge lines getting off of the ship even when the tenders were not in use. I would think Princess would have a more efficient plan in place. After our short stop in our first port of Guernsey, we were forced to stand in line in the hot sun on dark asphalt pavement for over an hour. Princess did not provide any shade and only brought out water (which it ran out of ) after about 30 minutes. My sister and went to the front desk to complain and were treated rudely. After we complained about the horribly inefficient way the ports at Invergordon (not a tender port) and Edinburgh (tender port) were handled, we found out the original person who handled our Guernsey complaint never bothered to record our complaint. What kind of customer service is that?!?
Due to bad weather, our stop at the Orkney Islands was canceled. This caused us to stop at our next port, Invergordon a half day earlier than expected. According to the local bus drivers in Invergordon, Princess did not radio ahead and tell them we would be docking early. The local bus drivers refused to give the cruise passengers rides to Inverness on the public buses because of this. The locals needed to be assured transportation. Because of this all of the cruise passengers who went ashore (and there were many) were forced to ride a two car train into Inverness. There was not enough room on this train and the train had a very limited schedule. Was this the cruise director's first cruise? Did this person lack some critical ability to think ahead and plan for possible contingencies? I am beginning to think so because our tender port at Edinburgh was a disaster.
Cabin Review
Interior
The cabin was nice and actually had enough room for 3 adults to share. I did not like the metal bunk bed ladder. It hurt my bare feet and seemed to be on the slippery side. It also would have been nice for the guide button on the remote to work. On two or three nights we were awakened by noise on the floor above us. We thought maybe it was because our cabin may have been located below the pizza restaurant but I would have thought the crew would have been trained to be more considerate to the passengers below than to make tons of noise and wake sleeping passengers.