Our first cruise post COVID restrictions and got a great deal round UK and across to France. Plus good deal on drinks/wifi/gratuities package - £30/day/person (note - limit 15 drinks per day). The big complaint was that Princess changed itinerary 4 times, removing Guernsey, Cork and finally adding France to make it first "international cruise" with including passengers from USA and Canada. The big issue with itinerary changes was that it affected UK government requirements for Passenger Locator Forms (PLFs) and COVID PCR tests on return and we had to change travel insurance to cover France (charged to do that), plus key change done less than a week before sailing! Cost us an extra £47pp. Big stress and chaos! We booked this cruise to avoid all these problems, as cruise was supposed to travel in Common Travel Area only avoiding all COVID travel issues. Big "own goal" Princess! Princess did recognise the problem they had caused and credited all each passenger with $50 compensation to cover costs.

The Medallion App initially drove me nuts setting it up on our phones. Still one or two bugs in app and still with odd error message popping up that I could not fathom out... but once we got it sussed it did speed up things at check-in and we did use on ship. No problems picking up medallion at port. Had one problem with phone set-up for hubby as hadn't confirmed his photo - but once done everything was fine. My 70 year old hubby would not have been able to set it up though! He did like the medallion for automatic door opening, easy presentation for drinks and the passenger locator functions on the phone app, but struggled to use anything else! I used it for booking tables in main dining room but struggled to find link to speciality dining rooms. Didn't use for room service or ordering food elsewhere around ship - used old fashioned methods of phone and paper on door at midnight for breakfast in bed! Sky did have a desk on board the ship to help with any issues with the App

Once we arrived to port, the COVID testing arrangements worked like clock work. Very impressed. Boarding was easy as we had sorted app and done PLFs in advance (rules changed day before and if cruising for 19 nights or less you can fill in UK PLF and submit in advance). We presented dock-side COVID test result, which had come back quickly via text to our phones. Marked down embarkation only because of pre-cruise issues stated above. Read more