Princess Cruises
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Just got back from a cruise on Sky…
Just got back from a cruise on Sky Princess. We were told in May we had to pay the balance which we did. On joining the cruise we found that other people on the same drinks package as us had better benefits even if it was there first time with princess, whilst Princess cruisers with multiple cruises under their belt had less benefits. To top this at the start of the cruise bars were closing early 11:15pm. This meant that when you left the theatre any cruise passengers who wanted a drink at the bars were forced into two bar areas (one of which was the vista lounge where you could not hear each other for the music as it was a nightclub at that time) and the other bar was full so there was no seating available and you ended up finding random seating around the ship, To top this Princess had removed the ability to order drinks for delivery on the app (unless you paid them an extra $15 each) which meant you could not get the attention of a steward to get a drink. This was eventually sorted to a degree when several days into the cruise and lots of complaints from cruisers around us both first time cruisers and elite passengers and also (told this by customer services team member) other seating was sourced from various areas. The bars kept running out of various drinks, Fosters lager, Peroni larger, Grolsch lager (all at the same time), Baileys and various red and white wines. The Baileys was replenished when in port for a Baileys copy which was a poor substitute, This made it impossible for the bartenders to make certain cocktails like squashed frog etc. Eventually genuine Bailies was sourced enabling the bartenders to do their job correctly and to the satisfaction of the customers. We were told that the average age on the cruise was 75 and they underestimated how much drink they would need. We did not see many heavy drinkers so I fail to see how they kept running out of alcohol if they had ordered enough. Princess also refused to refund the port taxes which we had already paid for a missed port Princess used to be our cruise line of preference, No longer. We spoke to an officer at the customer services desk he said the loyalty scheme which princess has is “No more than bragging rites now” We also spoke to the future cruise manager and explained the problems. All he did was agree with what we said (obviously heard it all before multiple times), when we told him we are going to cancel two future cruises we had already booked with Princess and we were looking at MSC he started to put MSC down telling us how bad they are. Not a professional way to act and then said the cruises we had booked were all full. So we told him he will shortly have a free cabin to sell when we cancel. I also doubt our future booked cruises are fully booked.