Name: Ira Miller
Email: imiller@scsn.net
Age: 53
Occupation: Real Estate Broker/developer
NumberOfCruises: 6
TravelAgent: No
Ship: Princess-Crown
SailingDate: 8/31/98
Itinerary: Alaska Inside Passage/northbound
FoodDiningRoom: 89
CruiseDirector:
CabinComfort: 85
FoodRoomService: 80
CruiseStaff: 70
CabinAmenities: 85
FoodLidoDeck: 75
DiningRoomService: 90
CabinQuietness: 92
FoodMidnightBuffets:
CabinSteward: 90
ShoreExcVariety: 93
FoodVariety: 88
DeckService: 80
ShoreExcValue: 88
GoodForHoneymoon:
CasinoStaff: 80
PrivateIsland:
GoodForFamilies:
LoungeService: 80
TenderService:
GoodForSeniors:
BeautySalonStaff: 90
EntertainmentLounges: 85
WheelchairAccess:
ExerciseFacilities:
EntertShowLounge: 85
OverallPortsofCall: 90
BeautySalon: 90
EntertainmentPoolside:
CruiseActivities: 85
Casino: 85
AirSeaProgram: 85
MedicalFacilities:
ShipCleanliness: 75
EmbarkDisembark: 70
DiscoNightclubs:
DeckSpace: 85
Stabilization: 90
ShopsOnBoard: 91
SpaceRatio: 87
OverallCruiseValue: 82
Submit: Submit Review
Date: 14 Sep 1998
Time: 23:29:29
Remote Name: 208.133.153.167
Remote User:

Comments

I'm sure that The Crown Princess was a fine ship when she was built in 1990... but she seems to have been ridden hard for eight years and is
starting to show her age long before her time. Sadly, Princess Lines seem to be more interested in producing profits by cutting corners rather than
maintaining special care of its ships or by providing top-of-the-line service for its passengers.

Having said that, the Crown Princess was not a bad ship, nor was our cruise on her a totally bad experience, although we did have higher
expectations than were met. However, there were some situations with this ship in particular and Princess Line personnel in general that were
unacceptable to us. Here are some of the highlights of both the good and the bad, in no particular order:

1. Unacceptable. The passageway from the elevators to our stateroom (D-151) reeked of garbage! We had an outside cabin on D Deck ..... while
maybe not the penthouse, it was not exactly an inexpensive room in the bowels of the ship. About 10 feet from our door was a storage room for
the ship's garbage, to which the door was NEVER shut. When we embarked and initially went to our cabin, the stench of garbage in the hallway
was unbelievable. When we asked the attending steward to remove the garbage and to close the door to that room, he replied that they had been
too busy loading our luggage on the ship to worry about garbage, but he would try to have it removed within 24 hours. That was NOT the right
answer! Suffice to say, they NEVER closed the door to the garbage room, even after repeated requests, and it always smelled in the hallway. To
add to the problem, the stewards' cleaning carts were left unattended in the hallways for unreasonably long periods of time during the cruise.

Overall, we never felt that the ship was really clean. The public rest rooms went from pretty nice to downright bad. The teak decks are so weather
worn I question if they have EVER been refinished. The ship wasn't bad; it just was not up to our expectations, nor to the standards that we
experienced on Holland-American's MS Maasdam, for example, which is reasonably cost-competitive and similarly ‘rated.'

2. Princess personnel, both on land and at sea (with some notable exceptions), were often slack and lackadaisical. In the main dining room, our
waiter and busboy did a credible job, but it was only after we moved to a second dining table; at our first assigned table the waiter and busboy
continually jostled me and my wife while we were trying to eat dinner. (It was not totally their fault, as Princess had affixed a dining table alongside
a support pier in the dining room so that it was virtually impossible for anyone to walk around the pier without crashing into something, apparently
attempting to see how many tables could be crammed into a limited space.) To the ship's credit, the Maitre d' and head waiters in the main dining
room were exceptionally helpful and quite festive, and we did get another table!

The Cabin stewardess was a nice, friendly Romanian woman, and although she spoke very little English, she generally did a good job though no
special demands were made of her. She did manage to inform us when we first came on board that the shower tended to back up through the
drain in this particular room, so she would spray extra perfume in the bathroom each day for us! Nothing like instilling confidence before the ship
even sailed..... (Fortunately the shower didn't back up, though it occasionally gurgled, and only once did the toilet not operate, and then only for a
few minutes!) What she didn't tell us, however, was that taking a shower was to become an adventure..... because the water temperature was
never constant for 10 consecutive seconds! If you like surprises, this is the ship for you!

The rest of the ship's personnel bordered from awful to good. The women in most of the ship's retail shops were often downright surly, and clearly
acted like they didn't want to be there, and that your presence in the shops was an imposition on their time. On the other hand, my wife enjoyed
the attendants in the beauty salon. Casino personnel was fair, at best. Getting drinks, which by the way were very expensive, could be anywhere
from pleasant to simply impossible, depending on where you were and when you wanted service, and if Jupiter was aligned with Mars, etc.........
The Purser's Office could be pleasant or not, depending on who you happened to get to attend to you, and when.

The Princess Line land personnel we encountered all could take lessons in service and how to treat customers properly. They always made me feel
like I was just another number to process, rather than giving the special attention necessary to rectify the various problems that inevitably come
up, and they certainly did with Princess. It wasn't all that bad...it just wasn't very good; nothing ever seemed to go smoothly, and they just didn't
seem to care.

3. The food was good, but not great, in the main dining room after the first day. (The first day the ship seemed in total disarray, and the food the
first night was poor.) At least the food seemed to improve as the cruise went along (or maybe my memory of the real world started to fade!!!).
Food in the Lido deck was very average..... no better than at a $6 all-you-can-eat buffet restaurant in Home Town USA. We had a pizza and
calzone in the onboard pizzeria for lunch one day and it was good, but again not anything great. Same for the hot dog/ hamburger grill.

4. I found the ship's usage of the PA system for its own purposes quite annoying. They would call their personnel on it.... ‘Dishwasher Gonzalez
please report to .....' More disturbingly, they seem to be totally focused on extracting more money from their fare-paying passengers in any way
possible, including constantly hawking their numerous ‘art auctions' on board. In front of the dining areas, bars, passenger areas, etc., were
zillions of easels with primarily reproduction art that they attempt to sell to unsuspecting passengers every day at sea, and they would interrupt
anything else, including the naturalist who was speaking about the beauty and tranquility of Glacier Bay while we were there, to bombard us with
crass announcements about their ‘fabulous' auctions. I am an art collector and have attended well over 500 auctions in my lifetime, yet I found
those announcements and constant other advertisements for their sales an immense intrusion on what should have been a tranquil vacation that I
had paid good money for!

And speaking of money, be forewarned, too. A dark beer was $4.75. A Coke $1.50. Hot chocolate $1.25. A small bottle of water left in your
stateroom is $2.95 if you open it!

5. The naturalist on board was outstanding!!!!! Along with the natural beauty and majesty of Alaska, he was the highlight of the cruise. If you ever
have the opportunity to hear a man named Brent Nixon speak on whales or any other facet of nature, don't miss him. He is very knowledgeable,
bright, committed, and unbelievably entertaining. His lectures became SRO and the talk of the ship. Five stars!!!!!

6. ‘Formal' nights were somewhat of a joke. While we and about a third of the passengers wore proper formal attire and about 50-60% wore at
least nice semi-formal attire, some passengers didn't bother to put on a tie or properly dress at all! Why Princess would seat improperly attired
people at a formal dinner is beyond explanation; they would never have been admitted to an equivalent restaurant on land. (An older man seated
at the table next to us wore his college sweater!) They should have requested that these people either be properly attired or eat in another of the
ship's dining rooms or partake of room service.

7. Embarkation and disembarkation was a horror! We had booked a two day pre-cruise stay in Vancouver/Victoria through Princess. (The Bouchart
Gardens are absolutely outstanding, worth the effort and expense, and truly a MUST to see!!!) We stayed at the Four Seasons Hotel, which was
exceptionally nice with truly outstanding service. However, Princess transported us like cattle from hotel to hotel on buses to and from our hotel,
and apparently planned our arrival at the embarkation pier so we could stand in a incredibly long line for at least 45 minutes ....like they didn't
know (or care!) when THEY had scheduled THEIR other passenger buses to arrive. Disembarkation was equally as bad. We docked in Seward in
the middle of the night, and it is about a two hour bus ride to the airport in Anchorage. Princess scheduled us to leave on a 7:00 am bus for a 3:00
pm flight... I guess they figured we would enjoy a 6 hour wait in the lovely Anchorage airport before a 16 hour red-eye flight home! We balked, and
finally got assigned to an 8:15 am bus, which we proceeded to sit on until 9:05 (50 minutes!) at the dock before it bothered to leave, provoking
considerable hostility from other complaining passengers. Not very well organized. Furthermore, both on the Princess Tour Bus in
Vancouver/Victoria AND on the bus from Seward to the Anchorage airport, the air conditioning systems did not work. In Vancouver/Victoria, it was
in the 80's, and the driver said that she had reported the a/c problem on this particular bus to Princess 15 (!) times and they had still not fixed it.
We were in the bus all day and it got damned hot! On the bus to the airport, while it wasn't hot, it simply got so foggy inside that it was impossible to
see out, so the driver continually dispensed paper towels to all the passengers.

Lastly, Princess required us to have all luggage outside our staterooms by 8:00 pm the night before disembarkation..... even before our second
seating in the dining room commenced! Other cruise lines that I have been on picked up luggage between 10:00 pm and after midnight..... Just
another indication that Princess doesn't feel much of an obligation to put the convenience or comfort of its passengers at a very high priority.

8. Two additional second-hand stories, for what they are worth. First, a woman told us on the first full day of the cruise that she and her husband
had gone up to eat breakfast, and upon their return to their room they found a crew repainting their stateroom with oil-based paint. The husband
got sick from the fumes, and they had to fight to get assigned to another room after going to the ship's doctor. I will add that during that exact
same time frame, one of the ship's crew came to our stateroom to see what color the carpet was in our room, and when I told him, he said that he
was not looking for that color and left. Strange. Second, a couple that we talked to at lunch one day told us that at breakfast that morning, when
the husband asked the waiter to bring his wife another cup of coffee as hers had gotten cold, the waiter told her that the coffee would not have
gotten cold if ‘she had drank it when he had brought it to her.' Both of these stories were told to us by passengers who were obviously not
overjoyed with the service that they were receiving, and I had no reason to disbelieve either of them.

9. Alaska itself is spectacular. Its beauty and grandeur made the inconveniences aboard more tolerable. It apparently rains there a lot..... all those
tourist photos of mountains and glaciers on sunny days are beautiful, but don't expect that weather every day - or maybe ANY day. Also, we went
from August 31 to September 7, and it was rather cold at times. Bring warm clothing, and rain gear! Also, bring binoculars! They will enhance your
trip immensely. By the way, a definite positive was that the Captain of the Crown Princess seemed to try to allow adequate time at special sights -
College Fjord, for example - where we spent approximately an hour. The scenery was magnificent throughout the entire Inside Passage, and while
the scenery is certainly not the exclusive domain of the Princess Line, he seemed to make an special effort to point out interesting things and keep
us reasonably informed.

Having said all the above, we DID enjoy our Alaska cruise very much. I would definitely recommend an Inside Passage cruise to anyone who has
not taken one. If you are looking for real elegance and great service, this certainly is not the ship to take. As noted earlier, we did not like the ship
nor the service as much as the Holland-American MS Maasdam, and the Crown Princess will not compete with the newer or more expensive ships
afloat. Overall, I would say that the Crown Princess is a nice ship whose owners have committed themselves to mass marketing in the no-frills
middle American sector, omitting special extras and cutting prices to maintain a high passenger volume. It's somewhat equivalent to a floating
Holiday Inn- better than a Day's Inn, but certainly no Five-Star Hotel. Personally, I'd rather pay a little more for better food, better service and a
nicer environment, but those are our standards and our choices.

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