My wife and I chose this cruise for two reasons. We had never been to this part of the world, and we had never been on a Princess cruise. The ports that we were seeing seemed great, parts of the world like Singapore or Vietnam, that we may never go to if not for this cruise.
I had read the the ship had just been refurbished in February of 2019, but I would be hard pressed to see that. I found ...
Cruise embarkation is a bliss.
However they mess up the dining time. I book for 5:30pm, and everything is triple confirm with the princess cruise staff during bookings. I am travelling with 2 kids aged 7 and 2 lovely moms 70 years old. They put us at 7:45pm which is a so so no for Asian.
I went to the customer service to check on this, and I was given those ( get out of here face and ...
The cruise was chosen so we could see most of Japan with the convenience of a cruise...perhaps we would have been better off using the rail system itself. Getting to our hotel from Haneda easily accomplished by riding the airport bus....45 min door to door, ¥1,350/person...Yokohama was worth spending a few days exploring before boarding. We explored easily on our own and the rail/subway system ...
I chose this cruise because of the numerous ports around Japan during the fall when we were supposed to observe the leaves changing colors.
We were in Tokyo before 3 times and we were looking forward to see the small port cities were the ship was going to dock.
Embarkation and disembarkation went smoothly.
The ship is an old ship built in 2004, mainly for Japanese customers as per one of ...
You would think that a ship updated solely for the Japan market would do Japanese-related things (restaurants, food and menu, ports of call) well.
No such luck. Everything was poorly done - even the extra charge sushi restaurant was artificial. Very disappointing.
Also, we were shocked to see that there were very long lines to get into the buffet (Horizon Court). The pool side grill ...
Very nice ship. Service and food at restaurants below average. Full wine list was not available from day one. Ripped-off having to pay 18% service fee on all drinks etc. Cost of shuttle bus expensive. A number of crew members trying to gouge money by inviting to attend paid activities etc. Due to the late arrival of the ship there was total chaos and incompetency by staff at embarkation. Very ...
My parents and I chose this cruise because of the enticing marketing brochure we received in the mail. It was a disaster the first day -- at embarkation. While there was a looming storm, the embarkation staff and procedures were a nightmare. No one could give us any accurate information on when embarkation was to begin. We were advised early on that we had to be at the dock by noon to check ...
Poor guest services. Reported room with noises. Later a broken water pipe outside our door. Two days with noisy air dryer outside door with cords going past door entrance. Complained to guest services and they did nothing. Just smiled and said they would fix it. A few days later the hair dryer was smoking and sparking and killed the electric outlet to dryer. They brought in a handheld dryer until ...
My wife and I embarked on a 8 day Japanese cruise aboard the Diamond Princess, taking in Yokohama, Nagoya, Osaka, Okinawa and Taipei.
This was our first ever cruise during which time my wife's birthday fell.
We were told beforehand by other cruise passengers that we would have a fantastic experience - but sadly that did not come pass, as you will see detailed below.
At each destination ...
Interesting ports.
Ship seemed overbooked but Princess managed to pack everyone in somewhere.
Shore excursions were barely organized mob scenes. Interesting places visited but the best had no crowd control (not the fault of Princess) and prevented a good experience.
Buses seemed smaller than experienced on other cruise shore excursions. Many struggled to get on and off. Surprised some ...