We last cruised on Emerald six years ago from Singapore to Australia and New Zealand and had a wonderful time.
We booked a British Isles cruise with Princess in 2020 for 2021 but due to operational changes were moved four times, finally agreeing to take the trip in July 2022 on Emerald Princess.
She was still the same very pleasant ship and the crew were wonderful although in many external areas, the refit announced by the Captain in October will not come soon enough.
Our main reason for taking any cruise is to visit the places we call at and enjoy a good meal and entertainment on our return to the ship.
We are happy to pay for ship excursions and the odd drink in the evening but found the prices for day trips to be extremely expensive.
Even the bus shuttle from the dockside in Belfast for a few minutes transfer to the city centre was $15.95 per person which we felt was totally unreasonable.
The call at Le Havre, billed by Princess as ‘Paris’ for the large number of passengers from North America took over three hours in each direction with a couple of hours in the city and cost in excess of $250 per person.
We took three of the shorter excursions in ports which we were unfamiliar with and the guides, with the exception of one in Scotland, were very poor.
Evening entertainment was generally good, the resident dancers and musicians performing a good variety of options to suit most tastes.
However one of the ‘comedians’ who hailed from California had trouble raising a chuckle even from his own countrymen and left the rest of us in an embarrassing silence.
By half way through the 12 day trip, we were looking forward to returning home, something we have never previously experienced on a cruise.
Incidentally, this was our fourth cruise in 2022 (catching up with cancellations following the pandemic) and we’ve enjoyed the others very much, all of them being with P&O Cruises.
Guess who we will avoid in future!
