We have done 67 cruises with Princess now and this one must be considered the most disappointing. First and foremost we disliked the layout of the ship especially the Retreat area with its 3 foot deep adult pool which does not have a walk in step feature and the equally shallow wallowing Wave pool situated on Lido deck making it feel very crowded with all the tables and chairs and the Wake bar. Everywhere there seems to be limited open deck space compared to other Princess ships. The only positive feature we thought was an improvement in this class of ship was the re design of Princess Live on Deck 7 but there are various steps in this area which are poorly illuminated and signed.

Dine my Way was chaotic in the first few days of our 20 day cruise, with little recognition of passengers with reservations unlike our experience on Regal in May. We only like the trivia on cruises but some of the staff presenting these were irritating as many of the questions were repeated several times by different presenters (10 out of 20)questions in one quiz.

The shopping areas take up far too much room for the amount of goods on sale. There was very little stock in the boutique shops, the Deck 5 one was predominately stocked with Tortuga rum cake. I believe Harding Brothers have now got a 3 year contract to supply the shops and some of the sales staff are none too happy about the lack of variety in stock being provided. There is no library on board but if you are lucky Guest Services have a shoe box with about 12 paperbacks to swap. On suggesting to the Entertainment Manager a book swap was needed, this was put on on the last 2 sea days when it would have been far better being on at the same time each day or better still having a book nook/shelves somewhere accessible e,g. In the Internet Cafe, which doubles as a sort of library on other Princess ships. Read more