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Ship has seen better days

Riga

I wanted to go to Greenland and am an Elite with Princess. It started by Princess refusing to tell anyone where the ship was docking. It only said Manhattan or Brooklyn. You had to guess which one. On thenpast they sent emails to tell which one. It was not in the app either. The they have anytime dining which to me means get in line and get seated in order of arrival. No they give reservations and seat all those first then give the left overs to the real anytime diners. Not really anytime dining anymore,  it is in reality defacto set seating. Next went to afternoon tea.  As lare as May 23 it was a real tea, little sandwiches, cakes, cookies, scones with cream and tea, continually circulating. Now just little sandwich and one cup of tea one time. Totally horrible and not like Princess used to be it is now cheap and worthless for 75 % more money. I blame the president of princess and  those on his level and just below him. They are totally incompetent and should all be replaced immediately to return princess to luxury cruise line status vice its current status of scow.

Horrible Experience 

The staff were very friendly and willing to assist me and other guests lot during the trip. Especially the dinning hall staff (Pascaline, Kenya) was very friendly and assisted me when I needed directions. 

The entertainment on the ship was inclusive. 

The facilities were all very clean. 

The food onboard was very diverse and delicious. 

The shops carried a verity of different items. 

Everyone I interacted with from dinning staff, crew and housekeeping were very friendly. 

Everyone was amazing. 

Staff were amazing  

We chose this cruise because it visited the western part of Greenland which was new to us. We are Elite and took a veranda room on 10.  This was cruise number 110.  It was the worst cruise we’ve ever been on.  The ship was full to capacity which meant it was very crowded. Design of ship just is not meant for 3500 people.  It was difficult to simply find a place to sit and have a drink at anytime.  We were forced to spend too much time in our room.  Likewise the theatre could not handle the crowd.  Handicap seating was so limited people were camping out in the theatre 1 hr before shows. Crowding also meant forced sharing of tables in the dining room and long lines waiting to be seated. Service was slow and the food was nothing special. Necessary to return raw chicken and overcooked duck. Only ordered an appetizer and entrees and it took a consistent 2 hrs. Princess has a problem with COVID and norovirus yet there was no attempt to distance people.    We never ate in the dining room for breakfast or lunch because there was never a table for two, our request because one of us is disabled and really old. 

Husband uses a walker to get around. Our cabin was forward and to get to the Lido he needed to walk through the hall to the aft elevator.  It was cold and rainy most of the cruise so walking on the wet outside deck was not safe. Walking through the hall irritated the stewarts who told us we didn’t belong there. We needed to take the elevator down from 10 to 6 walk through the smoky casino to the aft elevator and take that up to 15. Accessible routes are given but not convenient. 

Princess has lost us. Faced none of these problems on Celebrity ships. In 2023 we were on 3 Celebrity cruises and 2 princess cruises. Celebrity wins.

Never Again!

Kelang (Kuala Lumpur)

Oh my so many things to say. I will start positive by saying that the staff in the coral dining room are amazing but the rest are quite inattentive and either not knowledgeable or not helpful. 

This cruise is not what I thought it would be. 

They have an app that you have to use constantly on board and it is super glitchy. It’s supposed to work do that you can order things and they find you by the app, but it doesn’t work: I’ve had to download it and reinstall it several times to no avail. (And I’m tech savvy-I’ve built several websites so this is not a user issue.) 

You have to wear a medallion around your neck the whole time and I am on the ship now and I am on my 3rd one a sits also glitchy and even  though I paid for the Premier package it keeps showing that I have either no file at all or no package at all. 

On the day we had to go through customs we had to go to the Theater and we were given seats (until the Theater filled up) and  5)343 was no communication that people with excursions would be going ahead of everyone else.. I had to wait with my child for 3.5 hours and there was no food, water, anything. It was SO disorganized. We basically missed getting to the port entirely because then after that wait we had to wait for tender boats. We missed the whole day. 

The rooms are really gross. I had an upgraded mini suite and it was so dingy. I’ll never cruise with princess again. Total gong show.

Old ship and downmarket and very disorganized 

We recently came back from a 10-day Canada/New England cruise from Quebec City to NYC aboard the Caribbean Princess.  While the ship-related aspects were quite good—at times excellent—the itinerary itself made it perhaps our favorite cruises thus far and should be on everyone’s cruise bucket list.  Plenty of details about both the ship and the ports in this long review.

Background:  My wife (42) and I (48) booked this cruise at the beginning of the year.  This is our fourth time on Princess (amazingly, all on Caribbean Princess).  We’ve also sailed seven times on Celebrity and once (our most recent cruise) on Viking.  Our prior cruises have either been to Alaska (2x) or the Caribbean (8x), all with lengthy reviews on Cruise Critic.  We had high expectations for this Canada/NE itinerary; we were not disappointed.

Pre-Cruise: The ship overnighted in Quebec City before sailing on Day 2, so we took the slightly risky option of flying out from Washington Dulles (IAD) to Quebec City (YQB) the day of the cruise.  Fortunately, flights on Air Canada, with a layover in Montreal (YUL), were generally uneventful. We had flown business class which helped with the somewhat lengthy process of Canadian immigration at YUL, as there are several hoops you must jump through.  FYI, we found a ATM at YUL fairly easily to get Canadian bills (Bank of Montreal, not one of those rip-off “exchange” ATMs).

We had no issues finding a taxi from YQB to the cruise terminal when we arrived around 230-300pm. We had an exceptionally nice driver with a clean, large car, who humored my very limited French while trying to improve his much better English. Meter fare was around 40-50 CAD, as I recall.  Since we arrived a little later than most, there was a very short check-in line (on the ship within 15 minutes of arrival) and the QC-based staff were very welcoming and helpful.  A theme throughout.  A possible tip: One of our three bags did not arrive until almost 11pm (other two delivered very quickly).  Guest Services couldn’t offer much of an explanation after dinner beyond that it should arrive by 10pm.  In hindsight, my best guess is that it was excessively delayed because the private QC port security company tagged it as having alcohol (it did—but it was the allowed bottle of wine), which may have caused it to be put aside, and later checked by Princess and thus delayed.  I’m not sure, but based on this, we will bring wine in carryon from now on whenever possible. 

I think it’s important for at least this itinerary to distinguish between the standard cruise items (dining, service, stateroom, entertainment, etc.) and the itinerary, so I will discuss them separately.  Both exceeded our expectations, but to different degrees and from different starting points.

Ship-Related Details:  I had some mild trepidation regarding the onboard cruise experience based on both some recent critical (but reasonable sounding) reviews of Caribbean Princess as well as some new Princess-specific and cruise line-general changes and cutbacks.  

In general, we were pleasantly surprised that our diminished expectations were always met and, in many cases, exceeded.  Our last cruise on the Caribbean Princess was in January 2022, shortly after cruises restarted, with a passenger load of 850 (and thus more crew than passengers) and no children.  While it was unreasonable to expect that level of service, attention, food, and quiet, we found this cruise more than adequate in all those regards. The crew, food, and service were generally very good.  

Package: we had the “Plus” package, which is the sweet spot for us, as the drink package covers our needs (and the one or two wines that exceeded it were charged only a $2 overage).  Given that it costs more than it did on our previous Princes cruise, it’s not quite the deal it used to be, but it makes sense.  Given that the additional perks with “Premium” aren’t ones we were using anyway (e.g., fitness classes, premium desserts), we see no need to upgrade further.  We had a modest 160 USD onboard credit ($100 from Princess and $60 from our TA) that combined with some returned port fees (~$25) took effort to use since everything was more or less included. We bought two bottles of Cointreau, perfume for my wife, and a ho-hum winetasting on the last sea day. Otherwise, we would have left money on the table: our final account balance was $31.

Dining: We ate in the MDR every night of the cruise, usually with a 7:30 reservation. We considered Sabatini’s, but it was booked.  For lunch, we ate in the MDR twice, and skipped it every other day as we were ashore.  We had tea once, and grabbed a slice of pizza for a late “lunch” a couple of shore days.  We ate in the MDR for breakfast a couple of times.  Most of the time, our breakfasts were from the International Café consisting of pastries, yogurt, and lattes. For dinner, in terms of food, I actually thought the food was still rather solid. The menu options are perhaps limited at the higher end, but what they do serve was usually quite good.  The second formal night was a bit of a disappointment with the small, dry lobster and mediocre beef wellington, but the final night’s surf ‘n turf was rock solid, as was the first formal night’s lamb and beef tournedos.  Things like duck and other dishes were quite good too.

Service: First night in dining was a bit of a miss.  Slow, unhappy section, but on day 2 we found a very good waiter (Sawad from Thailand and his assistant Emmanuel from the Philippines). His assistant seemed a bit new and a little nervous, but improved his efficiency and increased his confidence as the cruise went on.  Requesting the same waiter required a little effort from the staff (they seemed to think we wanted the same table, rather than just one in his section, perhaps adding to the effort).  But as the cruise went on, and they realized we were willing to wait a few minutes, it got smoother.  Having that regular experience and building a relationship with your waitstaff always increases the enjoyment, and I think makes it easier for both the waiters and the guests.  Of course, we tipped them extra at the end.  

Cabin: We were in Obstructed view.  This cruise was essentially the first time we went without a balcony.  At the time of booking, balconies were going for about $1800 ($900 person) more than the Obstructed view, and we thought it might be worth risking a lower end cabin to save that much.  Hindsight proved we were correct—at least in this case.  Balconies are nice, but we were perfectly happy with a window overlooking the ocean (we chose one in between two lifeboats, giving us a decent view). Inside, the cabin size is more or less or less the same.  Sadly, there was only one chair and no seating area.  Two chairs would have been much better, but I can sit at the edge of the bed when necessary for $1800. We had a very good cabin steward, Dalibor from Serbia.  Always kept the room on this older ship very clean.  He asked several times if we needed anything and how things were going when we’d cross him in the hallway.  We rarely needed anything, but it’s great when someone asks.  BTW, I have heard about the now once-a-day stateroom cleaning on some mass market cruise lines.  On ships where you can be very active ashore and space is tight, twice a day is really not just a luxury, but for us, almost a requirement.  To me, this is akin to hotels not cleaning your room for days at a time.  In both cases, this results in a significantly degraded experience from the prior normal.  A ship doing it once a day is one I would avoid.  I’m glad Princess is not—for now anyway—doing this.

Medallion:  Given this was a second time using it, the pre-cruise app was slightly less annoying than last time and worked a little better.  Still not my favorite way to check in for a cruise.  Onboard, I only used it to check my account.  WiFi was working well, relatively speaking, and reminds that it’s much better on Princess than it was on Viking during our last cruise. The medallion itself was good, but slightly less useful this time, because when it gets crowded, the waiters/bar staff can’t immediately identify you as easily as on an emptier ship.

Ship Condition and Atmosphere: she’s an older ship, but we really don’t mind if you come in with appropriate expectations.  While the décor is a little dated and there are a few nicks here and there, she’s kept clean and the focus is on the destinations, not the ship, which is definitely warranted on this absolutely terrific itinerary.  Moreover, fewer bells and whistles mean a more relaxing vibe on board.  Waiting for lattes at International Café was never more than 5 minutes in line and maybe 5-10 to be served.  Some nights at dinner the wait for getting seated approached 10-15 minutes, but we had that experience on Viking too (admittedly, that’s because they don’t do reservations and Princess does). Also, Princess wasn’t too pushy with the hardsells of things this time around, which after our last cruise on Viking where it was nonexistent, was very welcome.  Photographers were not “in your face” too often, though they did ask a fair amount.  We pose when appropriate (e.g., formal night) and refuse when not (e.g., getting off the ship dressed for a long hike).

Fellow passengers: About 1500 (almost half) were non-US citizens (mentioned during immigration check at Bar Harbor, which apparently was lengthy for the non-US passport holders). Obviously, a lot more Canadians on this than cruises departing from the US, along with considerable numbers of British, Spanish speakers, a few Germans, and some other Europeans.  More children than I would have liked, but in general, not a terrible nuisance.  They were there in big enough numbers that you noticed them, especially around the pool deck and occasionally waiting in line, but not so big that they significantly detracted from the experience.  In general, they were usually well behaved. I never heard a number, but I would guess around 300-500 of the 3200 passengers were under 18. 

Entertainment and Enrichment: We certainly didn’t see everything, but what we did see, we liked quite a bit.  Headliner Ce Ce Teneal has an exceptional voice.  The dancers and singers worked hard, played plenty of good stuff and their final night guest singer was phenomenal and worthy of the standing ovation she got.  David Juneau in the Wheelhouse Bar (a favorite, low-key hangout for us each evening for aperitifs) was a treat, playing requests with a sense of humor and amazing repertoire considering he had no sheet music. Cruise director Jody Miles from South Africa was warm, funny, and endearing, without a hint of smarminess.  An unexpected treat was Vicki Bowne, the port talk enrichment speaker.  She gave perfectly good overviews of the ports in terms of history, but where she shined was her advice on what to do in each port, aimed at a sophisticated travel (museums, parks, etc.) as well as tips and tricks for navigating transit, taxis, etc.  And she didn’t center her talks around Princess-backed excursions.  Truly refreshing.  

Itinerary:  This itinerary offers the combination of fantastic scenery, sophisticated urban centers, quick access to nature, and the feeling that when you are in port, you are immersed in the location—not just “on a cruise.” With the (debatable) exception of Bar Harbor, the presence of the ship had no impact on how you experience these locations, both big and small.  This is a very different experience from most stops in Alaska and many in the Caribbean. We booked no shore excursions with Princess as the options were limited and what did look appealing was sold out.  This is not an issue, however, as there is a ton to do in each port, but this requires some planning.

Quebec City:  We were too tired after long day of traveling and a welcome aboard drink to go back out for the evening.  A city that definitely deserves both days, so if you can arrive the day before to give yourself that time, do so. We explored on our own in QC: Citadel, lower city, upper city, promenade, and its many stairs up and down.  Great self-guided tours are available online.  We also did the Croisieres AML tour of the St. Lawrence to Montmorency Falls, which was about 100 CAD for two—well worth it. It was a Saturday in August during a festival and the weather was great, so QC was very crowded with tourists, especially as the day went on.  Recommend an early start if that’s the case. A fabulous city regardless.

Saguenay is terrific too, but you need a plan.  The ship docks outside of town in La Baie, but even the town itself isn’t very large.  Like all of the Canadian stops, it has exceptionally friendly people, and at least greeting in French before asking to switch to English I think goes a long way.  Rented a car from National rental car that is in the cruise terminal (just a table as this is obviously only on a temporary basis). Very friendly man at the rental car lot gave us directions.  Went and hiked in Monts-Valin National Park (the Fjord du Saguenay National Park appeared to be sold out when we checked online), specifically the Pic de la Tete de Chien (Dog’s Head Peak).  A semi-strenuous hike that was muddy, but fun with good views at the top even though there was off-and-on rain.  Few if any cruise passengers there.  The trail had (mostly local Quebecois) people but not crowded.  While not as spectacular as some U.S. national parks in terms of what it offers, definitely a nice place to go hiking and spend a day. Afterwards, we briefly saw some of the ruins from the 1996 flood and La Petite Maison Blanche that survived in Saguenay itself.  As with leaving Quebec, the evening sailing down the Saguenay River on the Lido deck was an extraordinary treat, helped by fantastic weather. Beautiful, untouched fjords that has some of the characteristics of Alaska, but somehow much more unique and genuine an experience that’s difficult to articulate.

PEI: also rented a car from PEI Car Rental located at the Delta hotel, walking distance from the pier.  Good, family-owned business that clearly gets busy on days a ship is in town, but they do their best.  Drove to the Anne of Green Gables stuff, of which my wife is a modest fan. The museum and grounds were pretty good, but the national park nearby in Cavendish offers relatively little in terms of scenery/woods, and was very crowded—too crowded to view the house. I would recommend skipping that and finding some island scenery elsewhere. After returning to Charlottetown and returning the car, we walked around the city, which was modestly interesting (but not on the level of Quebec City) and had Cow’s ice cream.

Sydney was unfortunately cancelled due to high winds and rough seas. The ship was rocking and the weather was stormy, but we had an acceptably relaxing sea day, helped by taking an early afternoon nap during the roughest seas.  On the bright side, we had the least planned in Sydney, so we felt the loss less. We also appreciated that Princess opened the restaurant for lunch and afternoon tea and added many extra activities which would not have happened if we docked in Sydney.  

Halifax was great and the terrific weather returned.  Again, we met helpful and friendly volunteer greeters.  Walked around the city: Public Gardens, had an Alexander Keith’s (mild) IPA at a pub (tour sold out), took the public ferry across the harbor to Dartmouth and back as a cheap “harbor cruise”.  Bought some postcards and souvenirs at some less touristy shops.  It’s a larger, posher, and more sophisticated-looking city than I had imagined.

Bar Harbor:  Weather was good again, and we did a strenuous hike to the peak of Sargent Mountain starting at the Parkman trailhead and then down to Jordan Pond.  We used the free Acadia bus system, which was good, but be sure to check the schedules in advance and plan your route and times accordingly.  We are sad that this port will apparently not allow ships with more than 1000 passengers to anchor after this season pending the court challenge.  We overheard hikers on Mount Sargent bemoaning the distant sight of the Caribbean Princess anchored out in the harbor.  While I am somewhat sympathetic to the concern of the impact of cruise ships, I believe that the ship crowd is more likely to use the busses or stays around Bar Harbor and actually reduces the large amount of car traffic compared to a comparable number of visitors by land.  It was pretty clear that Acadia’s biggest problem is parking and car traffic on the roads, not the number of hikers or people walking in Bar Harbor.

Boston:  again, great weather.  Did most of the Freedom Trail (which was crowded since it was pleasantly sunny Saturday in August), ate lunch in Little Italy, and then went to Fenway for an afternoon Red Sox game, before returning to the ship for a quick shower and a late dinner.  Other than the Red Sox losing and the T breaking down en route to the game (and thus some exorbitant Uber fares), you could have not asked for a more perfect visit.  

Debarking in NYC: I would recommend not making any independent travel plans before noon, and maybe 1pm if you are flying. We had an 1135am Amtrak train back to DC thinking that the 7am arrival would offer enough time.  However, first, Princess gave us a relatively late 930 disembarking time, which wound up being around 1010 before they called us.  By the time we made it through the line to pick up our luggage and walk through the terminal (customs took no time), it was 1030.  The line for taxis was a few hundred people long.  Not wanting to risk the wait, we walked several blocks through Brooklyn hoping to find an option, with the emergency plan of a 1.2 mile walk to the subway as a backup.  Fortunately, we found a taxi on the street and made it to the new (and nice) Moynihan train terminal with 20-30 minutes to spare.  Fare was about $55 with a nice tip, including tolls, etc.

Final Thoughts: this cruise was possibly our favorite of the 12 we have been on, but that would be mostly due to the itinerary.  The ship itself though exceeded our expectations and represents to us a very good value.  I recommend people consider Princess for this itinerary very strongly.

A solid cruise on a fantastic itinerary

Never again will my wife and i sail on princess cruises. I am age 51, this is my 20th cruise (4 princess,  5 ncl, 4 holland america, 3 carnival, 3 royal caribbean, and 1 celebrity) and this by far was my wife and i's worst cruise experience ever! It did not come close to meeting our expectations. The experience was so poor that while on this cruise we canceled an upcoming 7 day mexican riviera cruise in february 2024 on the discovery princess with a deluxe balcony and booked a 7 day western caribbean on the new carnival jubilee in its place  in a havana cabana balcony which gets us an exclusive private pool and sun loungers. As we have been on the new mardi gras, we know we will get excellent entertainment and a vast multitude of food options onboard.

Don't get me wrong we loved our itinerary (atlantic canada and new england), cruise length 10 days, and ports and this is why we picked this cruise. We certainly didn't pick it for the cruise line or ship. We immensely enjoyed our excursions and time in each of the amazing ports of call (quebec city, saguenay, charlottetown pei, halifax ns, bar harbor maine, boston and new york!) but unfortunately most of our experience onboard was very disappointing. The food in the main dining room and buffet was bland, tasteless, of poor quality, and lacked creativity. The entertainment was absolutely dreadful. The words cheap, boring, lacklustre, and talentless come to mind.  service on the ship was uninspired and generally lacking.

My wife and i first sailed on princess in 2011. It was the relatively new ruby princess at the time on a 7 day eastern caribbean. We immensely enjoyed the experience and thought the product quality was excellent at the time and was very competitive with other north american based cruise lines. We had zero complaints.  we sailed princess twice again in 2016 and 2018 and noticed a drop in quality and guest experience, especially with the food and service. Princess has continued to go downhill as per our current bad experience.

I have a marketing degree from a canadian university and have a sales and marketing background.  i can tell you this management/leadership team with princess cruises should be fired. The company is rudderless; lacking direction. It doesn't know what it wants to be or what segment of the cruise market it wants to target. To me, it appears it wants to focus on the age 65 plus senior citizen crowd who can't afford celebrity cruises. It wants to be a price and cost  leader however its fares are not any cheaper than holland america and hal offers far superior food quality, customer service, onboard processes, and the best music entertainment at sea on it's newer pinnacle class ships. Princess also appears to believe its clients do not value quality entertainment. Princess does very few things well or great. From my current experience, the only things it did well at were the princess luxury bed, ease of making main dining room reservations, the very reasonable price of alcoholic drinks, desert quality, good internet speed, and gluten free food options and buffet food labeling for my wife who has celiac disease. It absolutely sucked at the all the most important areas. Princess is like what carnival used to be without the fun factor. A couple of recent publications have ranked princess at the very bottom of 23 ocean cruise lines next to costa cruises and msc and my experience on this cruise backs up that dismal ranking. Princess is obviously going full forward with continued cost cutting and i'm not sure if this is in part because it wrongly spent a lot of capital on the ocean medallion and app.  I will provide you a review on the different on-board experiences below:

Embarkation: terrible. Myself and the 1350 other non american passengers all felt like 2nd class citizens as we were all put in the slow blue lane since princess does not and will not ship the ocean medallion to non us addresses. What most infuriated me (my wife had to calm me down) and which makes zero sense at all process wise is the green lane american citizens got to go through a short and fast security line ie 2 minutes duration in quebec city while the hoards of the rest of us got the pleasure of standing in line for 45 minutes just to go through the same security process. Then as they, the green lane, stood in a very short line to get onto the ship, the rest of us peasants had to wait in another line for 20 minutes to pick up our medallion. The us resident green lane took 10 to 15 minutes from arrival to get onto the ship in quebec city, the blue lane for us second class citizens took well over an hour. Shame on you princess!

Food/dining: as i said the overall food experience was poor. Out of 10 dinners in the main dining room, buffet and specialty restaurants combined, my wife and i only enjoyed 4 of them. Two were formal nights, the 3rd was another night in the main dining room, and the last was dinner in the crown grill. In the 3 nights in the main dining we enjoyed, the likes of duck, lobster tail, filet mignon and beef tenderloin were served. Otherwise on most non formal nights, the experience in the main dining room was not one to get excited about or look forward to. The food was generally bland and tasteless, lacked in presentation and creativity and lacked in quality and options. The same was true of the buffet. The service in the main dining room was slow and it appeared the waiters were understaffed and overworked. At the beginning of the cruise, long 2 hour dinners just for the 2 of us were the norm until we advised our waiters we wanted a faster dinner or had a show to get to. At that point, the dinner sped up to an hour 20 to an hour and a half. The main dining room acted like all the waiters were new and had never done this act before. We noticed the system and process for ordering drinks from the assistant waiters was subpar to other cruise lines. The consistent theme with the assistant waiters taking drink orders was they were new to princess, not knowledgeable, and lacked ability to communicate in english. They often appeared confused.

As for breakfast in the main dining room, this was the worst and most limited menu i have come across. Again more cost cutting by princess. I only went twice just to avoid the buffet crowd.

Crown grill: we enjoyed our dinner in this specialty restaurant but noticed the staff were not to the higher end professional standards you tend to find in the specialty restaurants on other lines like holland, royal, celebrity and ncl.

Sabatinis italian: well this was a waste of $70 usd between the two of us. Avoid this restaurant.  dinner took 2 hours and 20 minutes and we missed the 7:30 show even though we got to the restaurant at 5 pm. One dish i had was ok which was the seafood linguini however it was tiny and only had 2 prawns and one clam in it in terms of seafood. The waiter gave me 3 recommendations for the main. I ordered the veal scallopini and it had no taste to it. I told the waiter when he asked me and i then ordered another of his 3 picks which was the oso buco. It came and was again tasteless. I said it was fine as i didn't have the heart to send it back. There were no pasta options to order for the main except lasagna.

Buffet: there was plenty of food to choose from as per the usual experience on most cruise lines, however there was nothing to get excited about in terms of what the options were or the food quality. The food was uninspiring, bland and tasteless. The experience was merely to put food in one's stomach and nothing more. The deserts were cheap and tasteless also. What was noticeably lacking were asian and indian options during lunch and dinners as one would find on ncl for example. What was very frustrating was princess continued to close down one side of the buffet at lunch and dinner, forcing unnecessary overcrowding in the buffet on the one side. There were a number of times it was hard for my wife and i to find a seat in the world marketplace buffet.

Planks bbq and steamers specialty restaurants: well my wife and i were looking forward to eating at planks for dinner one night but found out both of these restaurants were not operating at all. They are located as extensions to the buffet however i subsequently found out princess has not been operating these restaurants since the pandemic started. Of course in princess style, all of its advertising and gaslighting lol give the impression these restaurants are indeed open, available and operating on its ships. Shame on you princess for the false advertising!

Entertainment: what entertainment??? I don't think princess feels that entertainment is important to its guests, in this case 3200 guests. The words cheap, low budget, boring, and lacklustre come to mind. All of its entertainers on board were d level,  low bid quality. In general the music onboard was so subdued it was geared towards the nearly dead not the newlywed.....ie those of nursing home age who are very tired and in their last years of life. There were no comedians in the classic stand up sense offered over the 10 day cruise. Only a silly magic comedy guy was offered along with a guy called don funk one night who was so bad he told a long,  drawn out stupid made up story and then brought up a dad and then a child on stage to do improv with.  i hate improv. A stupid lame ventriloquist was offered another night.  another 2 nights were filled with a talented black female singer who sang aretha frankilin type music. However talented that she was at singing, this genre of music is not for a lot of people's tastes. The production shows, in which there were 3, were generally of poor talent, script and production quality. Nothing like you would see on ncl or royal caribbean. My wife made the comment that our  15 year old daughters senior dance team at her studio could do a better job at dancing and singing than the princess crew. To be fair and honest, a new production show was offered towards the end of the cruise which was fairly entertaining. 3 segments of it were novel and well done. After this show, we watched the truth or lie game show in the explorers lounge and i was laughing hard. This was the only night and two entertainment pieces offered onboard where i can say i was truly entertained and enjoyed myself. Overall my wife and i were bored out of our minds while on this ship  and we ended up spending 3 of the 10 nights in our cabin, 2 of which we watched movies. We are aged 51 and 46 respectively. We work hard, have kids at home, and seldom get out at home for entertainment purposes. We want to have fun and be entertained on our vacations!!!

Ship: the ship first sailed in 2004. It is looking very old and tired. Very few refurbishments/remodeling has been done along the way. The major upgrade is to the buffet. Very few and modest alterations made elsewhere in the ship. The ships a/c is old and can't keep up. Even though the outside temperature did not get above 23 c mostly, the temperature on the ship was most often on the warm side. Where people crowded in the restaurants (palm) and main theatre, the temperatures became almost unbearable for my wife and i. Because of the heat onboard. We eventually choose to dress down at dinner ie shorts for myself because the theater at night and restaurant at dinner were so warm. I have read previous reviews of this ship, and people often complained on how hot the ship is especially during the caribbean sailings.

Cabin: we were in a caribe deck 10 mid aft inside cabin in order to save money because the balcony cabin fares were well over double the price of the insides.  a few points to list here. Nothing unusual or out if the ordinary for this cabin with the exception that the cabin temperature was always too warm for us even though we had it at the lowest point on the dial. Every night my wife and i would go to sleep with only a sheet over us. This is after we had a cool shower. I would eventually wake up later in the morning and bring the duvet up to my my waist or low chest as the room cooled down a bit during the night. If the room and ship had better a/c like a proper hotel, my wife and i would have enjoyed better, more restful sleeps. Luckily the bed was comfy. In addition, the shower was pretty much the smallest we have had on a cruise ship. The shower also had the dreaded vinyl curtain. The shower experience was very inefficient since one could not stretch or bend down to wash oneself.

Service: 2 stars out of 5. You will find better, more genuine and graceful service on holland america, celebrity, ncl, and royal caribbean. Generally we found the staff did not smile and did not wish to or try to engage in conversation. They did perform their duties efficiently and professionally however they appeared to be more robotic and less happy than staff on some other cruise lines like the above mentioned. Our cabin steward did a good job in servicing our cabin however he did not use our names and did not wish to engage in conversation. We did tip him well at the beginning of our cruise. He would say hello in the hallway but seldom nothing more. He also did not make any towel animals at all for the 10 nights.  now this is not a big deal at all for me don't get me wrong, but typically one would receive towel animals atleast twice on a 7 night cruise.

Ocean medallion and app: positive - i found the internet speed onboard to be excellent. Many functions on the app are unnecessary, useless and irrelevant.  the app is not very intuitive or user friendly. The layout is not good and there are too many useless things on it. Ok it is neat at first having your pictures appear at your cabin and your door opening automatically, and it is  good concept to be able to order drinks or food and have it be brought to you. Everything else on the app is really not necessary other than the entertainment timeline and lineup and to view your account portfolio. Most people onboard like us  did not use the app at all to order drinks or food as staff are nearby serving people in all the bars. One would only really need to use the order function when at the pool area. This was my first experience with the medallion and app and i can confirm with you it did not improve my guest experience onboard one iota. Princess has spent a lot of unnecessary and foolish money on this medallion project gimmick at the expense of the food, service and entertainment budgets and in the end it will see its most loyal guests go elsewhere.

Problems we encountered (2) and princess' response to them: the first problem was noise in our cabin. We were located apparently near a pantry and at night between 11 pm  and 2:30 am we heard loud banging noises periodically coming into our room. This was from the staff cleaning the pantry items/units.  we even  heard this over and above a white noise machine we had  going in the cabin. It awoke me during the night. We gave it two nights then complained after we got back from our excursion. To the ships credit, it took them a couple of hours to respond then offered to move us to another inside cabin on deck 14. We pondered moving however my wife did not wish to pack up our cabin so late in the day/evening. We gave it one more nights try. We turned up the volume on the white noise machine and i took a sleep aid. It worked and eventually we got used to the noise and did not wake up to it the rest of the cruise. 2 points to make here. 1) they should not be selling this cabin as this noise happens every night. 2) on day 9 of the cruise, i was given a note in the cabin to go to customer service to which i did attend. My wife and i were offered a $150 future cruise credit each to which i basically rolled my eyes at. I accepted it as i was done with princess and not in the mood to complain further. The proper and not cheap thing to do would have been to have provided us with that same amount minimum as a current onboard credit to use for our current sailing. As i will not sail on princess again, a future cruise credit is useless to me.

Usa mmigration clearance pre bar harbor maine: 2nd problem we encountered. We had done this once before on a holland america cruise and it took us 50 minutes to clear us immigration on the ship as a canadian citizen.  this cruise it took us and all the other 1350 non american citizens 2 hours and 10 minutes!!! So many people complained during the day about the process and length of time for this process that the captain made an announcement around 5 pm when everyone was back on the ship from bar harbor to apologize to the guests affected. The lack of cbp agents provided to the ship was out of princess' control. There were only 3 agents to process 1350 non us citizens and so do the math...over 2 hours wait. Princess told us they requested more agents from the us government. I understand they can't control that but what i complained to the customer service counter was that the ship can control the communication and expectations it provides to us to which there was very little. Princess did not inform us of a specific time to attend nor of the expected range of time to expect typically to clear us immigration with 1350 non us citizens onboard. Expecting a similar 50 minute wait time, my wife and i got up straight from bed and got to the theatre queue for 9:15 am. We did not shower/wash up or have coffee or breakfast. Many people did not get coffee or breakfast prior to attending. As time elapsed, i started to feel ill as i am a diabetic. If i had known it would take so long, i would have made the informed decision to get coffee and breakfast from the buffet before getting in the queue so as to avoid feeling irritable and sick. This experience and poorly communicated process infuriated many and ruined the start of my vacation day and many others. I felt so compelled to complain about the utter lack of communication that  i attended guest services that evening and asked to speak to a manager so that my message would get through to the proper decision making authorities. The agent would not provide a manager for me to speak to.  even though the agent made me feel in the end like i was heard and my points were valid, i am doubtful the information was passed on to the proper people in charge as was promised by the agent.

Debarkation: very  poor. We had a combined 6 hour new york city bus tour and jfk airport transfer booked through princess. We were told to meet at 7:20 am in the explorers lounge. We waited a long 30 minutes before we were called to depart the ship. When we got to the baggage hall, our bags for our early bus excursion were not in the hall. We had to wait about 10 minutes in the hall for our bags to come. Many others waited much longer. Poor process and communication by princess. Why send us to depart the ship when our bags haven't been unloaded in the hall yet?  utter incompetence by princess. We were on the bus at 8:15 however it did not leave until 8:50 am. A hour and a half for us to get from meeting time to the bus departing. Waste of time and poor process.

All in all,  princess is so bad that they haven't even been able to send my wife and i the post cruise survey 3 days after the cruise even though they have our correct email addresses on file. 

Princess....never again!

Never Again Princess 

Embarkation was a breeze in Quebec city with the princess medallion. However,  navigating the app was very frustrating. Ship was very clean and most of the  staff was terrific. Bartenders were outstanding,  but dining venues needed more staff and better organization. They have gone completely to  anytime dining and you make reservations through the app, IF you're  lucky enough to get the time you prefer.  Long waits, for tables and service.  The food in all the dining areas was good. It seemed that they were very understaffed. I felt sorry for the staff, missing out on the personableness and extra tips at the end. Our steward was exceptional.  Always on the ball. Ports of call - we missed one due to bad weather.  No problems  tendering into Bar Harbor. Saguenay was a surprise.  Kind of small, not much there. Debarkation in Brooklyn was slow, slow. We weren't givien a. reason for it. The staff stayed chipper through it all.

Some good, some not so good

Caribbean Princess 13-Day Canada & Colonial America

Ft. Lauderdale, Florida to Quebec City, Canada

7-22-23 --> 8-4-23

Caribe deck Balcony Stateroom, Category BD

Boarding was quick and easy with my Medallion. 

Bought wi-fi on ship, was decent and easy to switch between devices.

DID the Cruise Critic Meet & Mingle, Cruise director an a lot of the officers were there. Thanks Barb and Christina.

The Card and board game meet ups were a bust as just a couple people showed up and they knew each other and wanted to play dominoes. VERY POOR selection of games onboard also a very poor library.

I used the Platinum and Elite lounge only a couple times. No special drink prices but they had a long table of fancy snacks but none that I really wanted.

Ship was kept very cold in the common areas.

Jody the cruise director and Kaz the destination expert were excellent!

Cabin

Very nice double balcony, quiet, good sized tv and huge selection of movies some pretty new.

Excellent cabin steward BRICCIO.

Got ice everyday.

Only problem was there was a throbbing vibration from the engines/propellers thru-out the ship that made it hard to sleep.

Dining

I had some issues with the Open Dining getting the early times I wanted, but checking back closer to the date often worked.

All three of the dining rooms are pretty much the same. Mary Anna (from Serbia?) in the Palm Dining room was excellent.

Food was OK in the main dining rooms, Most dishes were too fancy for me and the everyday choices are getting slimmer each cruise :-( The World Fresh Marketplace (buffet) was consistently good but often crowded.

Entertainment 

Trivia most times was ok but crowded. The musicians around the ship were good. The main theater was WAY CROWDED with people standing for almost every nights show. You had to get there at least a half hour before the show to get any seat at all. They also had some sound issues for some shows and seems to think that louder was better ;-(

The guest entertains I saw were Dan Middleditch who was excellent as a Elvis impersonator, his second show in the Explorers Lounge was so full you could not even find a place to stand to watch so we gave up.

I did not care for the comedians and left after just a few minutes each time.

The Rhythms in Harmony show while we were at Norfolk was not very good, we left after the 3rd number.

Kaz's talks were excellent.

Tom Franek the Piano Headliner was excellent.

Amy Jo Slater did an excellent Adel Tribute show and we liked it so much we went 45 minutes early to her show in the Explorers Lounge so we could get a seat.

OMG the comedy Variety show with Michael Minor was so funny, he is also a great singer and one talented guy!

Ports

Norfolk - very HOT but I went to the Nauticus and toured the Battleship Wisconsin which I can recommend.

New York - well this was a bit of a disaster from the start. We were delayed getting on our tour "New York by Land and Sea". There were supposed to be 3 buses but only 2 showed up so we were put on a bus with another group heading to the Brooklyn Bridge over to the Harbor tour dock. The Harbor tour was good but when we got off the other two buses were waiting but NOT our 3rd bus. We waited in the heat with little seating or shade for an hour and 10 minutes for another bus to come that took us back to the ship. BAD FORM Princess!

New Port - we were told the night before we were skipping the port due to safety conditions. Too bad as the high winds did not materialize the next day according to my weather app. :-(

Bar Harbor - Another planning disaster by Princess half the ship did not get to go ashore. The crew acted like they had never done a tender port before!

Halifax - Did the Harbor Hopper tour, Fun!

Sydney - Just walked along the boardwalk, very nice.

Quebec City - Gee they announced that since we were at a dock away from downtown they were running a shuttle for us, WELL the shuttle did not get to downtown at all and left all of us with a very long and uninteresting walk. Poor planning Princess!!!

One last note we did a flight from Quebec City to Montreal was a mistake! We should have done the train or the Princess shuttle to Montreal then flown on home. Montreal airport was a nightmare for the "layover". We had no time and had to go thru security AGAIN and customs. We were the very last people to get on our connecting flight, but our luggage did not make it.

Good cruise but there were some problems

We booked this cruise to pick up a couple of ports we had not previously visited, including Norfolk, Virginia, and Newport, Rhode Island.

The cruise was smooth, although there was a slight vibration in some parts of the ship, including in our cabin.  Not enough of a vibration to bother us.  

Issues:

1.  The ship was late in arriving at Ft. Lauderdale (high winds in the DR, the previous port, we understand) for our embarkation.  The delay in the ship arriving delayed our embarkation.  While notifying us might not have been feasible (and we had a noon check-out at our hotel which was not granting late check-outs ), when we arrived at the pier there were long lines to board.  No one was giving information as to which line to get into once it became clear there were two lines.  Upon asking several people, we finally were advised that one line was for folks, like us, who had pre-registered and had their token.  Upon getting to the actual check-in, not all positions were staffed; that was true for the folks who had not pre-registered as well.  The ship sailed late.

2.  Upon boarding, we asked for directions to the dining room where lunch was served.  We, and many others, were directed to the entrance for folks with sufficient status.  The actual line  to get into the dining room was over 100 people.  A peek into the dining room revealed loads of empty tables, all set and ready for diners.  We gave up.

3.  Dinner on at least three nights had excessive lines for dining.  That's despite signage about the ship urging us to make dining reservations to avoid lines. (We had a late reservation.)  Other dining rooms with no lines refused us entry; one dining room refused us entry even after Guest Services requested that they seat us.  The delay on the first night was directly related to the late arrival of the ship that morning, but no effort was made to rejigger the schedule to avoid crowding.  On one night the official excuse was that folks with later reservations than us had shown up and were being seated way ahead of their reserved times.  If Princess wants to switch to anytime dining, it ought to do so instead of pretending that reservations are useful.  (Our problems with dinner were solved by our headwaiter, and we had excellent staff taking care of us.  Nevertheless, if the ship takes reservations for, say, 7:45 p.m., and there are tables available, we should not be confronted with a line that runs up the stairs for deck 6 to deck 7, and then across deck 7.  My guess, and this is only a guess, is that the bottleneck is in the kitchen at the point the runners line up to pick up orders.)

4.  Our steward left our balcony door unlatched three times.  He was otherwise merely OK.

5.  The stop in Newport, Rhode Island, was cancelled due to high winds.

6.  The tender stop in Bar Harbor was a disaster. As usual for tender stops, we booked a ship tour so we would have priority in tendering.  Even so, we were an hour delayed.  The story was that the first tender scheduled to depart was unusable; and the second went 100 yards and returned because of issues, etc.  While we eventually got off and our tour proceeded, the ship ultimately cancelled tendering and some folks were not allowed off the ship.  Princess gave everyone on board a $50 credit.  Let's see, $50 times 3,000 passengers... wait, I was told there would be no math.  And we got the credit solely for a delay, while others who could not go ashore at all got the same credit.  I appreciate Princess' trying to make it right, but my goal is to pay a retail price for an experience, not to sit around in the theater for an extra hour.  And the tenders, in case anyone forgot, double as lifeboats, so the failure of two is concerning.

7.  We overnighted in Quebec.  We had a ship tour in Quebec, which necessitated taking a shuttle from the ship to the port gate.  You could walk, but not the short route taken by the shuttle.  So we checked in and turned in our tickets.  Four people on our tour checked in (i.e., they had paid for a tour, walked off the ship, found the line for ship tours, and turned in their tickets) and disappeared.  Nobody knew where they were.  That led the Princess staff on site to hold us back 45 minutes trying to figure out what had happened to these four, who should have been lined up with us.  After 45 minutes, we boarded the shuttle, and sat on the shuttle for another ten minutes before we were driven about a quarter-mile.  Once again, a giant waste of our time.

8.  On return in Quebec, there were long lines for the shuttle, based largely on lots of tour ending at the same time.  Security prevented some from walking a direct path to the ship.

9.  When we were on the Caribbean Princess in 2006, we first discovered the thermal suite, and we have booked a thermal suite (or had a cabin that included the thermal suite) on every cruise after that where a thermal suite was available.  Once before, on the Island Princess, the thermal suite was not working correctly, and by the end of the cruise the spa director gave us a full refund.  (As noted above, I'd rather pay and get what I want than a refund.)  We signed up for the thermal suite on this cruise.  We were the first guests to do so.  It was not working correctly.  Engineers were working at fixing the heated beds and one of the saunas.  Early in this process the spa personnel agreed that the problems could not be solved, and provided a full refund.  

Leaving the next morning went smoothly, and we were able to get a cab in no time.

Good cruise with some exceptions

This was a spur of the moment decision to take this So. Fl to Quebec Cruise up the entire Eastern US Coast and over all our experience was very, very positive.  I was very surprised when I learned that the ship had over 3,000 passengers because it certainly rarely felt that way.  We decided to eat all 3 of our meals at the Buffet which enabled me and the wife to get exactly what we wanted since we are very, very different eaters, so this was just perfect for us.  Overall the variety and choices for each meal was vast, but I do honestly believe that toward the end of the 12 day cruise some of the same entree's were being served over and over again.  I heard that the 3 "reservation" required dining rooms served up a better quality of food, even lobster and beef wellington one evening, but many travellers told us that the service was slow and even at the 6 pm serving time it caused a few to miss the start time of one of the evenings shows or entertainment.  So, this is why we decided to just stay with the buffet and we both certainly didn't go back home feeling hungry at any time. 

We were very pleasantly surprised by the entertainment, with three different comedians, each of whom had a notable pedigree and their shows were very worthy of comparable shows in Las Vegas, albeit only an hour long so that there could be two shows in any given evening.  For those older travelers such as ourselves, sure there were about 100 or so young kids on the ship but they never ever made so much noise or commotion to be a bother, and we would very happily take another cruise with the same mix of young and old.  Lots of pools and bars throughout the ship to enjoy your pleasures, and overall a staff from the crew to the waiters to the cabin people who always seemed to have a smile on their faces and were so very friendly.  The ports of call ranged from large cities where we were able to see and do more during the usual "afternoon" long stay, to smaller ports which each had their own unique feel, and in the end we were very happy to have been able to experience most of them, even if for a short few hours.  We wouldn't hesitate one bit to recommend this specific cruise to anyone of similar age to us, and in fact have already started looking for our next Princess cruise vacation in 2024.

A Bit of Something for Most Everyone

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