Caribbean Princess Review
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If this had been my first Princess Cruise I would never go on another Princess Cruise. But it was our 8th Princess Cruise and we have 3 more booked. At this time we are undecided whether we will go on our booked future Princess cruises...
It all started with a cancelled EZ Air flight out of MSP 8/18, the day before the cruise. Princess isn't responsible for the Airline cancelling the flight but, since we purchased EZ Air, Princess IS responsible for the negative experience I had with Princess' "In-Route Assistance." I was on hold over 25 minutes before Jill answered then she argued with me over whose responsibility it was to rebook our flights. Jill told me we bought our tickets from the Airline so the Airline had to rebook us. I responded that we bought our EZ Air tickets from Princess so it was Princess' responsibility. The Airline did try to rebook us but couldn't get us to NYC in time for the cruise so Jill FINALLY got us rebooked on a different airline at 6:50AM 8/19 with a 40 minute layover at Washington Reagan. At 5:30AM 8/19, after waiting in line 30 minutes, we were told that our flight was delayed 90 minutes. I responded that we would miss our 40 minute connection and needed to be on a cruise ship by 6:00 PM. That airline found us the last 2 seats on a nonstop flight to LaGuardia (LGA).
We arrived at LGA at 12:15 PM and purchased Princess Transfers at the baggage claim area but our luggage wasn't there. This was because our luggage had gone to LGA on an earlier flight than us and was at terminal D but we were at Terminal C. This is important because we missed a Princess transfer bus while going to retrieve our luggage from Terminal D and the next Princess Transfer bus didn't arrive at Terminal C until 3:15 PM (ALMOST THREE HOURS LATER)! We arrived at the Brooklyn port at about 4:00 and luggage was lying all over the port parking lot. Transfer busses just offloaded luggage and set it in the parking lot where it sat for hours. The cruise left at about 8:45 PM, instead of 7:00 PM, because they were still loading luggage. I later learned, from a high level crew member, that the company Princess contracted with in NYC sent the same people to load 16 days of food and beverages AND the luggage. Obviously the food & beverages were loaded first...
Cabin Review
Balcony
Our mid-aft balcony cabin was not quite as nice as our comparable room on the Star Princess last year. This cruise I took a fan with a USB plug and it helped the first and last 2 days of the cruise while we were in warmer climate and the air conditioning, on its lowest setting, didn't keep the room cool enough. The bed wasn't as comfortable as I remember from the Star Princess in 2018 but it wasn't bad, the mattress probably just needs replaced pretty soon. The bathroom had issues. The toilet was marginal from day 1 and lost its vacuum on day 14. That was fixed pretty quickly and, after the fix, the toilet functioned better than it had the first 14 days of the cruise. The sink overflow either had a hole in it or wasn't properly attached. It took 2 attempts, and water on the bathroom floor 3 times, before that was fixed. After that our cabin smelled like silicone for 3 days. The grout on the bathroom floor needs a good scrubbing, not something the cabin steward would have time to do considering his workload. There was also a black spot at the base of the mirror, in the center of the counter. I tried to remove it with my sanitizing wipes but it didn't go away. We also saw our cabin steward having to extract water from hall carpet the morning after the air conditioning went out for the Baja mid ship interior cabins; I don't know if the water in the carpet was related to the air conditioning issue but it could have been... The affected guests told us the air conditioning was repaired within a few hours.