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Good Stops,  Horrible Food and Program

Rome (Civitavecchia)

For her age, Island Princess is in great shape.  She was spotless and well maintained all through she is starting to show her age.   Loved the itinerary and the efforts made by crew to celebrate the holidays.  Being onboard for both Christmas and New Years was a lot of fun.  The Guest entertainers were very good and the ship's band was amazing.  The band and lead singer in the Explorer's lounge were top notch .  The big stage shows were ok, the first one was excellent, "Silk" was a disappointment and the final show was.... meh!  The Christmas show was wonderful and spontaneous.   We loved our Ocean View mini suite- super spacious and in excellent shape.  Bed and bedding were wonderful.  The food was good to excellent except for Bayou where my two meals there were disappointing.  Sabatini's was good.  The lunch buffet, and I loath buffets, were excellent! Amazing!  MDR food was generally very good and the special - off menu- Indian dishes were amazing.  Now, the one really difficult thing was the very apparent shortage of staff.  Restaurants, Bars, MDR, Sanctuary, coffee locations, were terribly understaffed.  I can only assume this is a cost savings measure but it has impacted the product adversely. MDR meals can no longer be considered dining - it is "feeding" not the fault of the employees but rather management - I must say that I saw every Maitr'd or assistant Maitr'd or hostess - pitching in to clean tables, get drinks, etc kudos to them but they really need to staff up.   Also, the shops onboard are really disappointing, nothing unique - boring - not special at all.  Loved the ports especially, Guadalupe, Grenada, and Trinidad.

Overall very pleasant holiday Cruise on a clean manageable ship

I decided to do this 14 day cruise with my family from Fort Lauderdale stopping at 8 ports. Ship was nice, Onboarding was great. Room service was ok. The restaurant dining was quite good. However, the buffet was absolutely horrendous. Almost every day, the menu was limited and boring.  Food looked recycled... dry or overcooked,  unappetizing,  bad smell. Fruits were sour or tasted rotten... melon was the worst. Ice cream ..which they called Gelato...was an awful sweet low quality frozen concoction that did not deserve to be called ice cream. You could find better prepared food at a college Cafe. 

At night the evening theater offerings were very low grade. Only one performance during the entire cruise was mildly enjoyable. 

I am shocked at the lack of quality control as I quite enjoyed a European cruise on Princess. If this is the post covid standard for Princess cruises,  well count me out as a willing customer.

I have been cruising for over thirty years, and have noticed that the cruise companies are using accountants to make decisions for them. CUT CUT CUT.  Christmas new year's cruises are normally one of the most expensive times of the year to go. I have done this many times In different parts of the world. This is the first time I have ever written a review. Here it goes.

Boarding the ship was fine. Finding the cabin ok but our bags arrived forty eight hours after we set sail. Not a good start , but for a two week , fourteen day cruise , we can live with it. 

But then we began to notice a lot less staff and a lot less cleaning on the ship. After the fourth day and with requests the sheets of my beds were changed. It seems that a lot has turned into requesting what you want rather than the staff anticipating what you might need. When we went to the buffet we noticed the food quality had deteriorated. The dining room whilst better had deteriorated also. The entertainment was by far the most disappointing. The sail away parties were non existent the first four days, most notable when there was a ship next to us sailing away and they were having a huge party on the top deck. The theater shows were boring and one was so bad that the passenger started booing. Not a good sign. I took the drinks package and every time I asked for a drink it took twenty to thirty minutes and became an issue after day three. I could continue but I will stop here.

Now to the most worrying part of the cruise. People started to begin to fall ill. 1 or 2 cabins that I know of were quarantined. Then my problems started, along with my family and co travellers started when we had health issues. We begin to have severe throat pains, headaches etc. We took covid tests which were negative. Subsequently we were all diagnosed with a bacterial infection. We took antibiotics, but they did not work as this particular bacteria was ammune to penicillin. This is where we became worried about our situation.  This continued all the way to the end of the cruise. FYI. Our group has ages from 12 years old to 60 years old.

We have been off to ship now for 7 or 8 weeks and we are still taking antibiotics to try and shift this bacteria we picked up on the ship. WOW.

The moral of this story is quite simple..... be very careful when you take ANY cruise,  pick your cruise line with care and attention. I am an experienced cruiser and got caught by very bad service, cleaning, honesty etc.

I have written to Princess directly about this issue and have received no response to date.

Shame on you Princess cruises......

Platinum member, most disappointing cruise ever.

We selected this cruise as an alternative to flying home from an expedition cruise to Antarctica.  

Cruising is a great way to see multiple countries, have a consistent place to eat, plus the opportunity to enjoy entertainment and other amenities.  

People should also know they are a captive audience, pay more for adult beverages, excursions, will likely experience nonstop marketing to buy items on board, pay 20 - 30 dollars a day for Internet, to frequent the paid-for restaurants, or purchase spa treatments.

In summary, after 15 cruises on Hurtigruten, Royal Caribbean, Celebrity, Norwegian, Holland America, Carnival, Princess, and smaller cruise / ferries, Princess was our worst value / experience of any cruise, with Hurtigruten being the best by orders of magnitude.

Positives - Matt O - the cruise director who lead the exercise classes, the outdoor movie theater screen, a nice birthday greeting for my wife, and our room attendant.

Now for the negatives...

1) We started the cruise with an excursion issue as we booked our cruise online to see Carnaval in Rio, when we got on ship, our excursion was not recorded and now there was no availability.  We were relayed to multiple desks, with over 2 hours of waiting, and was finally met by a customer relations manager who ultimately told us it was our issue, they had no way to contact Princess support, and they would only grant us one day internet to see if we could solve our own problem.  We told the CRM we needed multiple devices online and was told to just create the account and it would be later credited. Fast-forward a few days, and we see the charge on our bill.  We went and met with the same CRM who told us that we could only have the 1 device internet, and we had to pay the difference.  He stated that we were not listening like we didn't listen the previous day, and only after asking for his director, did he remove it from our bill.  

2) Health Management - We noticed numerous people on the ship who were openly coughing and some passengers jokingly referred to it as the cruise cough. Two specific examples of many include one observation was a woman who was in the Wheelhouse lounge continuously coughing without covering her mouth, with two employees within 10 feet of her, this woman was shivering, took her jacket and covered herself like a blanket, then laid down on the couch.  She was not asked to leave the public area and we left the lounge.  The second example was in the Horizon Court buffet area, referred to as the cough-eteria. A woman was within 10 feet of the opening at the end of the buffet, openly coughing without covering her mouth, spits up into her ship napkin, at which point I mentioned it to the cruise staff. I went to get coffee and returned to walk past the same woman at the same table, flossing her teeth at the table.  This was within 5 feet of the cruise staff and nothing was done while we were there. I submitted a note to the desk, but received no response. We observed no medical screening upon disembarkation the ship when exiting the ship or entering the port terminal and customs. It was astonishing in this global situation of the Corona outbreak, why did Princess not have health monitors asking people to leave the public areas or even have exit medical screening. We avoided many of the shows and other lounge events on this cruise due to our observations. Multiple passengers said they would only go to the doctor on board if they were near death as they realized it would result in isolation or other considerations (we saw multiple people removed from the ship in ambulances).  This is more of a human behavior study than a Princess issue, but know that this thinking was rampant on the cruise.

3) Carnaval excursion - This excursion was our main interest on this trip outside of getting home. This was a very busy excursion and when we were traveling to the Samba-school location for the event, we received many instructions on safety and where cruise staff would be so when we needed to return from the event, we could do it safely and without issue.  We left at the parade time they recommended, the same location we entered, and it was chaotic at best.  We saw no Princess staff present where we entered, and we had to exit into the bus area, luckily finding a Hamburg cruise staff member who told us where the Princess buses and representatives were located.  It was also interesting having the bus driver take us through a drunken block party, having people bang on the bus, with the driver subsequently running the remaining red light avoiding stopping on the return.

4) The remaining are grouped.  The food quality and selection was very disappointing and it felt like you were at common buffet in or near your hometown, after the lunch or dinner rush.  Non-stop pressure to spend more money was clearly the Princess focus - you should know what you're getting into when you get on a ship, so our fault - but it was to the level of a circus side show caller doing the come one, come all, this is the greatest, most rare, your only chance, yadda style of getting people to purchase more.  Worst of it was the Effy jewelry sales rep. The Princess Patter documentation for ports did not provide a relative distance for each port of key sights and it was clear their primary interest was to get you on their excursions and less on those who want to walk - again no surprise, and our fault. The port stops were very poor, although there were plenty of the Diamonds International and other cruise port supported shops in the main area, but step out from there and good luck.

Needless to say, we will never cruise Princess again and it will likely affect any ship under its holding company.

To end this on a positive note, if you want an other-worldly experience on a cruise, take a cruise on Hurtigruten.  It will change your life for the positive.

Observations of our Island Princess Cruise leavin Buenos Aires February 16, 2020

Selected this cruise due to Itinerary we had not visited including Carnival in Rio. and Princess had previously been our first cruise line choice

State Room was clean..only 1 chair for 2 people..fridge didn't work.

Dining room menu was short and you needed to pay extra to get lobster, steak, etc.

All staff were friendly and helpful. They tried to work around HQ dumb dictates

Ship was clean and well appointed

Excursions were generally well handled but we waited too long in lounges to get outside the ship and onto busses.

Entertainment was excellent.

We booked a princess selected pre-cruise hotel in Buenos Aires (Sofitel) which was excellent. Great food and excellent staff. Also a Princess rep that offered help for dining etc.. booked and booked an excursion.. Our boarding was seamless as bags were delivered directly to ship.

Princess needs to look after the little details if they're to remain my "go to Cruise Line".

Great staff...short list of dining room options.poorly furnished premium balcony

Circumvented South America with stops in Easter Island and Falkland Island sailed thru the Panama Canal and Went around the Horn. Rio during carnival. Avoided winter in Canada, what more can I say. Trip of a life time and it is now off my bucket list.

The cruise had it’s up and downs. We were stuck in San Antonio, Chile for and extra 2 nights, god only know why and the Corona virus followed us around like a bad dream, but the crew and staff were great and I don’t think I could of done 58 day cruise without the pleasure of their humour and hard work. 

 Would I do again, probably not. Most of the ports were great the weather was kind, thou I think I take a miss on Rio de Janeiro at Carnival, but that could be because of old age. All and all a very favourable cruise with a good Cruise Line, Princess.

S.America

Like to travel on Princess ships. This was a amazing  itinerary. Two things I really wanted to do was Easter Island and the Nazca lines. For me that was a over the top experience. There where many other things that I really enjoyed. Zumba in the morning, the shows at night. The Entertainment team was super. The whole crew, starting with the captain was concerned to show us a good time and to keep us safe. 

Embarkation was a little lengthy, but that will change once the Island Princess is a Medallion ship. The disembarkation went smoothly, considering there where 6 cruise ships docking at the same port on the same morning. Cabin B623 was nice and we enjoyed the balcony. On the days we had a excursion, we ordered breakfeast to Be delivered to the room. It came timely. The food was great, we had a choice of going to the buffet or eating in the dinning room. I belonged to the singles group, so there was no waiting in line since we had a table reserved for us. Then we had special lunches sometimes, that where announced in the Patter ( on board daily 4 page news ) at 3 pm we could have English tea. Then in the evening there where specialty restaurants or wine tasting. There was so much to do, also different areas to relax in, arts and crafts, anyway I never got all of it done. You just have to deceit what your priorities are. A wide variety of excursions where available or you could just go on land without a excursion, there was always something to see and do. Not many children where on board, it was mostly a older crowd. Some people in wheelchairs and walkers. Would love to do this cruise again.

Amazing things to see and do. 

I originally chose this cruise for the itinerary. It may have sounded wonderful  on paper but the experience couldn't have been further from the truth. Although some things were not Princess's fault I say 90% was. This is a very old ship that should have been in dry dock. It had problems you would expect like leaks everywhere and a musty smell throughout the ship. 3 in my room alone. The showers are extremely small. I felt continually cramped because there about 250 extra rooms were just added on recently. Because of this the Gym was relocated to very small room with no views. Also 2 of the water shuttles were removed leaving only 4. We often waited in line for 2-3 hours waiting for a shuttle to return to the ship. It also caused  our Princess tours to be cancelled at the Faulklands although we were told it was due to weather. In other ports tours were always delayed at least hour so our experiences in each were cut short. In Rio we were delayed 4 hours because they were checking medical records.Even though I was supposed to have a full day tour everything was shortened and I only got to spend 10 minutes at Christ the Redeemer. I was one of the lucky ones because it starting pouring and many did not get to see it all.  I understand the virus is a global issue but it was my understanding that people from Asian Countries had been let on our ship that maybe shouldn't have been. In Santiago Chile, we were held for 2 days again we were told that it was because of weather port authorities wouldn't let us out. But most people said it was because of a strike and the ship paid $250,000 to be let go. We missed Puerto Montt and the Amalia Glacier cruising. I am frustrated because I didn't feel like I got to experience South America the way I had hoped. I spent a lot of money and time. Now I question whether I ever want to cruise again but I know that this has not been my experience with Holland America. I always came back refreshed, grateful and excited about traveling more. I also saw a lot of other unhappy frustrated passengers, some elite members who said this was the worst Princess ship they had ever been on and will probably never cruise with them again. On a positive note their e-zcheck system for my luggage went very well and for that I am grateful. I also enjoyed being able to attend bible-study. Also when I brought my complaints to management they did listen and did not get defensive. However I feel that should have reimbursed more for all the aggravation I experienced. I do think now with this virus and the other challenges Princess is facing things are going to get worse before they get better. So I think that this was my first Princess cruise and my last.

Come Back Frustrated

The reason I chose this voyage was the amazing itinerary that was offered.  I had only cruised on Princess one time and I wasn’t happy.  I had many friends that praise the line so I was willing to try again.  Unfortunately, our experience was not a positive one.  

The itinerary was wonderful and we were able to get to most ports, except one due to a delay because of fueling, weather and ultimately a strike in the port of San Antonio.  

The Island Princess is a ship in need of an overall. Of course some things could be corrected by home office immediately.  I was appalled to find holes in tablecloths and sheets.  Towels were so thin they need to be discarded.  Dining room chairs with rips across the seats  – and there were many with rips and looked dirty.  Our room was a balcony room with a single desk chair, no chair or couch to sit on in the room so we had to bring a balcony chair inside if you did not want to sit on the bed!  A mini suite would have been a choice for more room and a couch, but BATHTUBS which are in mini suites, are ridiculous on a cruise ship.  Most of the passengers are 55+ and using a bathtub is not an alternative, definitely not for me.  Our room steward was fine and kept the room in as best shape as possible but could have used some lessons in vacuuming.  I have never been on a ship that painting rust areas was not taken care of when in port or windows that were not washed for 58 days! 

One of the most important things on a cruise ship is cleanliness.  The procedures that Princess has imposed are a nightmare waiting to happen!  Actually it was well on its way during this voyage.  Unfortunately, for many passengers they were impacted.  I have never been on a ship with so few hand sanitizers around the ship.  The dining room was the exception but really I did not see them anywhere, not in lounges, coffee bars, the theater and even right before security when returning to the ship.  A hand sanitizer at the bottom of the gangway is worthless when you have to hold the railings on the gangway to enter the ship. No one checked if people used it at the bottom of the gangway.  There should be someone with sanitizer as you enter the ship itself.  I feel that this was a reason why so many on the ship had coughs, sneezes and runny noses – the cruise cough!  It was well known that if you went to medical there would be a good 10-15 people waiting to see the doctor.  I heard at one point, the doctor said 25% of the ship had been to medical and that was within the first 30 days.  Luckily, we were not part of the Coronavirus scare that has affected 3 Princess ships I think they saving grace was the length of the cruise and that about 75% were on for the entire cruise. 

A hotbed for germs was the Horizon Court.  Yes, you serve drinks, but do the waiters CLEAN the tables when you are finished - No!  They may have gotten better once they tried to enforce hand washing and restricted flow, but too little too late! After we experienced this lack of cleanliness we stopped going there for anything. We watched passengers sneeze into food and touch things with hands while waiters and a head waiter, stood by and said nothing.  Steps should have been taken right away when they were told of the sneezing, touching food etc etc.

On a positive note the head staff, in the Bordeaux dining room, was excellent. Some waiters were well trained but several were mediocre at best.    

 We watched more than one waiter serve a table.  When the guests got up they cleared the plates then reset the table with clean dishes, never changing the table cloth. Of course we told the head waiters when we saw this happening.

The home office needs to review the menus and compare it to the provisions that are ordered.  For example a diver scallop is a large scallop, probably an inch and a half in to 2 inches in diameter.  A bay scallop, which was what was served as a diver scallop is a small scallop, about a 1/2 inch in diameter if that. Broccoli should be green, not yellow when served.  Yellow means it is going bad. The quality of the beef was disgusting.  The fish, although sometimes mislabeled, was good most nights and well prepared. Brown mangoes are rotten mangoes.    What a shame that a cruise line like Princess serves a hamburger as the “everyday” choice for beef.  We shouldn’t even mention serving a Monte Christo with cocktail sauce?  Running out of items like lettuce toward the end of the cruise or bananas can be acceptable but running out of items before we reached San Antonio, one third through the cruise and never replenished?

Entertainment, what a shame that a trip around South America and had virtually no local, Latin entertainers. The theater was such a hotbed for germs with people coughing and sneezing that many chose early on to stay clear of the theater. Tried once after Rio, same situation so we left before entertainment even started.  

The entertainment in the lounges was ok but to have the same entertainers for 58 days gets boring, a change every so often would have been nice.  

Guest services ran very well but you could tell that the staff members had their hands tied when it came to certain issues.    

The cruise director and his staff were excellent and there were many activities that could keep you busy during the many sea days on this cruise.

We took the cruise hoping that our opinion of Princess would change for the better but unfortunately this cruise reinforced our dislike for the line this will be the last Princess cruise we ever take.

The last Princess cruise for me!

We chose this cruise since it was 58 days and included sailing around South America. We had previously been to South America but never to all the places were we went to on this cruise. Some of the highlights for me was visiting Easter Island, Falkland Islands and Rio De Janeiro. Embarkation went smoothly, however disembarkation was delayed over one hour for our group versus the published schedule. Island Princess is a smaller ship that needs refurbishing. Dining was good but there was a bit of repetition for the menu. Excursion prices from the ship were high. The staff performed extremely well and always had a smile and positive attitude. I believe that senior management and middle management needs to be looked at by Princess on this ship. They have not been training/supervising their staff. They will not meet with guests when their are problems that need to be addressed. Too many times I heard that, "we do not do it that way on this ship." I would go again on this cruise and hope management will be improved.

Circling South America 

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