Princess Cruises
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Enchanted Princess
Princess Cruises were inundating us with things to do prior to sailing to give usspeedy access to the ship. Very often this was duplicated or triplicated. They failed toallocate us an embarkation time, which meant we ended up queuing with hundreds of other passengers. We were told that because we had completed our online requirements we would be fast tracked into the ‘green channel’ but as it turned out everyone queued for hours to embark. There was no direct notification regarding the Covid-19 testing requirements which we had already booked with our provider. A problem encountered by so many of the passengers on this trip. We were notified that the Enchanted Princess would not be departing from the original terminal where we booked our car parking with CPS and that we would be transferred by coach to the ship. This was fine, except when we arrived at the car park, total chaos ensued. The car parking attendants were totally overwhelmed and appeared to have insufficient staff to cope with the amount of cars to be parked. It took us an hour and a quarter from the time we arrived there to being transferred ship-side. CPS blamed Princess for insufficient time to allow for this. Once we arrived dockside, we asked where the ‘Green Line’ queue was and we were told that it had been abandoned. There were hundreds of passengers in the queue and we spent another two hours waiting to board. Having boarded there was no-one to ask the best way to our cabin, so we spent another 20 minutes, along with many others, waiting for a lift. We were very disappointed with our alleged ‘Superior Balcony’ cabin. It was impossible to sit facing the sea because of the lack of legroom. And as for the plastic shower curtain, I thought they went out in the 80s. We are at a loss as to why we paid the extra for a superior balcony cabin. We then went to the customer service desk to sort out wi-fi and internet access which was bad some of the time and awful most of it. The service was very inferior, considering a major selling point of this cruise. We asked why people were already queuing at one of the restaurants and were told they were booking their dining reservations. We joined this queue (another one), and waited another hour to get the one desk member taking reservations. We explained that we booked our dinner reservations prior to the cruise, but were told all reservations were lost. The crew member said we could book a time but in all probably it would make no difference as we would have to queue anyway.# As for the two formal nights they were totally underwhelming. It looked like the only effort was made by the passengers. There wasn’t anything special in the restaurants. In fact we had to queue for an hour for a non-event. All dressed up and nowhere to go springs to mind. The entertainment while passable was quite ordinary and anything we wanted to see you had to arrive an hour beforehand to obtain a seat. The only proper shows were School of Rock which we arrived at 30 minutes prior to start but could not find any seats. We then decided to go and see a show in the main theatre, which was only on the day before we arrived back at Southampton. We arrived at the theatre 45 minutes beforehand, glad we did, because 20 minutes later it was full. The show was superb. Disembarkation was also chaotic due to apparent ‘computer issues’ we were told. Another 45 minutes delay after our official time.