Never again? Very sadly, this whole experience has been very bad from the beginning to the end.
The key failures have been: 1.The booking process with Bolsover was a nightmare because the agents were giving very conflicting messages about whether our passports would be valid to the point where I was told we would definitely not be allowed to board the ship.
It took many emails back and forth to resolve this and we were obliged to insist on having written assurance from Bolsover that our passports were valid.
Your documentation is ambiguous and needs to be rewritten with specific date and deadline examples to help the customer AND the Bolsover agents.
It was a case of the agents singing from different song sheets.
2.
Princess’s Medallion was a second nightmare and the app and software to set up one’s “profile” was dreadful.
Our party of four are all “techno savvy” and not stupid and yet it took many hours to get anywhere near what was asked of us to be cruise ready.
And when we eventually got to the port, ready for the seamless boarding we had been promised, the whole system had failed*, passengers had to be checked in manually, medallions set up and issued etc etc.
We had to queue for well over 90 minutes before we even got into the Terminal building only to be faced with….more queues.
Most of the people we talked to in the queue shared our opinion of the Medallion – total waste of time.
(* There is a theory that the ship was being deep cleaned because of a Covid outbreak on the previous week’s cruise.) Using the medallion to get on and off the ship was no faster than any other system on other cruise company ships.
Useful for opening the cabin door, but so is a swipe card.
Final comment, it wasn’t working properly on the ship neither for the passengers nor the staff! 3.
The lack of quiet lounges was a great disappointment and aggravation.
One of my great pleasures when cruising is to find somewhere quiet to sit and look out over the sea or read a book.
I could not find such a place, and had no wish to sit out on deck.
It seems that a great deal of space was given over to the photography and Medallion teams (deck 7) rather than to providing that quiet space for passengers, for example.
4.
The Library was tiny but I would not touch any of the books in the cabinets.
They all looked very well thumbed and as though they had been left by previous passengers over the years.
Totally inappropriate in times of Covid.
It also appeared that no one was managing the Library as the books were not in any order and were very untidy for the whole week.
5.
The on board crew – good in parts but wanting in others.
The cabin steward, Joao, Caribe Deck, was very pleasant and helpful.
The restaurant waiters (Botticelli) were also pleasant and friendly.
The main guest reception desk staff were helpful.
However, a BIG difference between other crews on other ships is that we did not see the Captain walking around engaging with the guests; nor did we see any of his team apart from later in the evening when they came down to get their dinner from the buffets on Deck15.
Very unusual.
The one time I did see three of the “in white” team was when I was walking around the promenade deck one evening and a group of them were huddled at the back of the ship smoking!! Nor were we aware of the continuous cleaning of handrails and public spaces that had been so evident on other cruises and that is still needed now, when we all know that Covid is on the rampage again.
The stairs in the centre of the boat were always dirty with crumbs and dust.
6.
Saving the worst for last – The food was at best just about edible but generally was not good at all.
In the Botticelli restaurant, we had to exchange a couple of meals because they were not well cooked and generally speaking the food was dried and luke-warm.
There seemed to long delays in the food arriving in the restaurant and it was all pre-plated rather than served individually.
We had afternoon tea in the Da Vinci on a couple of occasions but felt very rushed with a swarm of waiters pressing savoury and sweet items on to our plates at the same time.
It was all very rushed and not in keeping with a traditional British afternoon tea.
However, the scones were warm and good.
Moving on to the Market Place buffet restaurant on Deck 15.
I regret I have nothing good to say about it – other than the staff were doing their best but the organisation was not good.
Knowing that Covid is on the ship it was shocking to find that you had to serve yourself using the same spoon that everyone else had used before you.
What was also shocking was the size of the prepared portions of juices, so called smoothies (mashed up boiled carrots from the night before), hummus with one small tortilla chip, two diagonally cut halves of a 25mm x 2mm square of cheese etc.
I measured the amount of juice in the small, half-filled plastic glasses and they averaged 100ml to 150ml.
Try that out, dear reader.
The portion sizes were insulting and little wonder that many people took three or four items at a time, including some of the “men in white”.
So, a very, very disappointing and expensive 12 days.
Did I go and complain? No, I would have been down there every day and we were trying very hard to enjoy our first holiday together in three years.
Will I take another Princess Cruise? No? Will I take another cruise? Probably, but certainly not with a company that invests more in supposedly brilliant technology and gizmos than in focussing of delivering quality food and service to its customers – which is what most people want from a cruise.
