My father died during the cruise and I needed to amend my travel arrangements. The front desk staff were terrible and it took over 3 days to sort new departure arrangements. I received conflicting information from onboard Front desk staff and onshore Princess staff. Princess gave no credit for existing return flight and I had to pay for a new full fare that was exchanged from Aust$ to US$ to NZ$. The air carrier advised my family that Princess as travel agent had full discretion in making no or little penalty charges to travel. No discretion was applied. I would not recommend Princess on this basis.

There was relentless onboard promotion for buying jewellery (Effy) and artworks which was tedious. Food was good and plentiful, entertainment was a bit ho hum - one comedian was absolutely dreadful and the second relied on old hack and tired women-as stupid content. There were two production shows which were excellent. Musicians played similar and in a lot of cases the same songs (how many times can you listen to Hey Jude?!)

Onboard activities were limited with the same things recycled through the cruise - movies (same movies returned too frequently); bingo; quizzes (I'm a quiz fan but the same format and type of questions were used across three quiz events, and the events were bumped in face of venue conflict); demonstrations such as cocktail making was view only. Cards as an activity was good (bridge; 500) as there were a fair number of people interested therefore plenty of opportunity to play. However this was organised by participants. I feel entertainment staff often opted out of organising activities, so it dependent on participants to get things going. Venues appeared to be mismanaged in that the act and or audience size wasn't appropriate to the particular venue used. Read more