Princess Cruises
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Princess has lost my loyalty
We've cruised with Princess to several destinations without incident, including two repositioning cruises form FL to the UK. I've never had a problem with cleanliness of the rooms, food quality or variety, staff or entertainment. To be very clear -- Princess onboard staff has never been an issue for us; they have uniformly been great. The food was at worse, very good. The Italian specialty restaurant has always been an excellent experience, and the Steak House as well. The Thermal Suite experience has been great (soaking in the large thermal bath and internally heated lounge chairs does wonders for my chronic back pain). My wife has had uniformly great experiences with the hair care services in the Spa, also. The RFID medallions used by Princess are an excellent experience -- your room unlocks on you approach, they inform the cabin stewards when you are in your cabin or not, so they do not disturb you when your in your cabin. And, it used to charge costs for extra-cost food and drinks. That portion of Princess' push into passenger convenience through applied technology is working well. The onboard Princess app, however, needs work -- lots of work. It has some good points -- locating other guests in your group, for example -- and offers a unique service: food and drink delivery where you are anywhere on the ship, or schedule food/drink delivery to your cabin before you get there. The rest of the app is fairly useless and/or undeveloped. Take the Scheduling portion of the app ... please! It is woefully underdeveloped, showing only the ship's daily schedule ... period. This is better served with the traditional daily PRINTED schedule. Have an appointment in the spa, a restaurant reservation, or scheduled activity? Don';t count on that appearing in the Scheduling tab of the Princess app. Neither you nor the venue can post that appointment to the app's schedule. You have to post it to your phone's built-in Calendar app, not the Princess app. Not well thought out, Princess/Carnival. What I do have a complaint about is the new Princess+ and Princess Premier package pricing. Simply put, if you buy the Princess+ or Princess Premier package, be prepared to have your trip double (or more) in price. There's no escaping paying for alcohol in either of these packages. We are not big alcohol drinkers, but we do enjoy an occasional glass of wine, a drink and specialty coffees, along with the onboard internet. Try to find pricing for those individual services before you cruise -- not going to happen! Try to find pricing once you board -- difficult, because you have to get past all the reps pushing Princess+/Princess Premier in the central lobby, then find reps for the individual services -- if those individual services reps are available on boarding. And, don't expect the traditional in-cabin series of offers for these services in your cabin upon boarding. EXAMPLE: We were told the daily price for internet was almost as high (2/3 the cost) as the daily cost of the Princess+ package. Could we verify that? Nope! The internet rep "wasn't available," internet packages are offered only the first day of cruising (after that, there's a daily charge only), and when I asked on Day 2 of a 2-week cruise what the separate internet package was, I was told they could not reveal the price "because that offer has expired." I despise Carnival's various cruise lines with their money-extracting methods designed to make cruising costly with minor benefits to passengers. Princess, however, was always different -- owned by Carnival but did not engage in deceptive and exploitative practices. Post-COVID, it appears Carnival management has decided to extend its standard money extraction practices to Princess. Pity -- I really like cruising with Princess, but when I cruise again, Princess will not be at the top of my list of preferred cruise lines.