Princess Cruises
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I won't book another Princess cruise
Just back from a cruise around the UK. The staff that interact with the passengers are lovely and helpful, it's a shame that the management can't be the same. The food was awful. The choices were very limited and the food in the buffet was not hot enough to satisfy UK hygiene standards. I thought at first that the choice was down to the fact that Princess were trying to satisfy US tastes but then the Americans were complaining about the food too. When visiting ports Princess frequently used water-shuttles to get people ashore. The capacity of these boats isn't enough to make a ride ashore comfortable and needs to be organised to make it work. On two occasions I was on shuttles that broke down. Once we were dragged along the side of the ship in an attempt to tie-up and disembark us. This gave us a very close up view of the rust and flaking paint on the side of the ship that the Captain constantly described as "the beautiful Emerald Princess". The water-shuttles also gave rise to long queues to disembark and to return to the ship. We waited over an hour in a queue to return to the ship in two ports. This is pure mismanagement. Either poor maintenance or poor organisation, or both. And to cap it all there was a covid outbreak on the ship amongst the passengers and crew. The crew were aware of it for 2 days prior to an announcement that passengers were required to wear masks (the crew wore face masks all of the time, even before the outbreak). The decor on the ship was dated, the ship needs a refit! In several areas carpets were being replaced due to the smell (stale water) and were immediately getting wet.