Just back from Grand Cruise in Western Med - Some Observations

[Broughton]

why dont they have the hand wash arround the ship that hospitals have

 

There are. These are installed at all the restaurants and food outlets.

[Barry H]

We did the same cruise at the end of August. Best kept secret is Alfredo's Pizzeria in the Atrium on deck 5. Excellent thin crust pizza. You also must try British Pub Lunch in the Crown Grill during sea days.

CD Martyn was fairly useless. Only saw him on the morning wake up show and occasionally in the Princess Theatre. Rest of the CD staff were quite good, especially Hersch.

Entertainment was geared for the british contingent onboard so some of the jokes went over our heads. They ranged from good to downright awful (even the Brits agreed).

Loved the ports. In Gibraltar use the local taxis for tours. Cost is 25 euros includes entry fees. In Monaco you can walk or use the local bus system for 3 euros for the day, includes the water taxi. Buses run every 8-9 minutes on each of the lines. Hop on, hop off buses provide a good overview of many cities (Barcelona, Rome, Naples).

[cmitch9999]

thanks for the update on life aboard the Grand.

 

toilet issues, were they mainly in a certain area of the ship?? Where?? And do you believe it was related to the diapers being flushed or a more long term problem with the ship plumbing?

 

We sail in 3 weeks, looking forward to some sunshine and warmth! It's snowing crazy here in Southern PA which is not what I enjoy any time of year much less in OCTOBER

 

Chrissy

[lovevacadays]

Thanks for the nice review. This looks like it would be a fun cruise.

 

I did have to laugh - though at this:

 

our Stewart was called William:D

[GuiltFree]

DW and myself are just back from a 14 day cruise from Southampton to the Western Med and back to Southampton.

 

This was our sixth Princess Cruise and overall the cruise was excellent and certainly lived up to our expectations.

 

Embarkation was easy and very quick, there was no need to use the prefered boarding line. We were in our stateroom about 25 minutes after entering the building. Princess really has this down to a fine art.

 

First impressions of the ship were good, we were on the Grand in 2009 and the dry dock improvements have certainly in our view improved the ship.

 

It has been well documented that the ship had Novo Virus on board and that for about 7 - 8 days of the cruise we operated under code red. In addition, there were about 70 staterooms that had problems with their toilets. There were very few if any crew affected by the Novo Virus so it is extremely likely that the virus was brought onboard by an unsuspecting carrier at Southampton.

 

Apart from the people directly affected by the two issues above, the code red did not really impact upon the enjoyment of the cruise, certainly not for us anyway.

 

We were in Caribe 309 and our Stewart was called William. He was truely outstanding and the best that we have ever had. We tipped him over and above the autotip level.

 

William did point out that the balconies, at least on the Caribe deck, had not been finished. This led to extra work for him. The plastic flooring has been removed but the proposed smooth flooring has not been laid yet. This means that there is in effect a well that fills up everytime it rains. There was at least 3/4 inch of water sloshing around that made the balcony unusable until William mopped it up with a great deal of effort. Fortunatley, it never rained again but this would be a major inconvenience for those not so sunny destinations. We were encouraged to point this out to Princess.

 

Food - as always this is subjective but we found the food to range from good through to excellent. We were Anytime Dining and chose the Michaelangelo room on deck 5. There were no traditional diners using this room and in addition, the Maitre'd would not allow any reservations. This was wonderful in that it operated as Anytime Dining was supposed to work.

 

The dining room opened at 5:45pm and as we like early dinner, we could strole up at 6:00pm with no line and an empty dining room. We were seated straight away at a table for two. We used the same table for the whole cruise and the wait staff were simply outstanding. Nothing was too much trouble. When we had finished at say 7:00pm, there were still empty tables and diners were being seated straight away.

 

We found the Horizon court to be average to good in terms of food quality, but we could always find a table and the wait staff were very attentive with drinks etc. This venue was shutting at 11:00pm.

 

International Cafe was well used and everything about this was excellent.

 

The Trident Grill, Pizza takeaway and Scoops were all well used and their offerings were very good.

 

What we did notice was that Vines and Alfredos were hardly used and no matter what time we walked by, even at peak times, say 7:00pm - 10:00pm, there were literally only three to four people in these venues.

 

The entertainment was good but not as good as we have experienced on other Princess ships. We were only in the Princess Theatre maybe three to four times on an evening and on each occasion, as seems to be the norm now, we were there some 30 minutes before curtain down to get decent seats, 15 minutes later and apart from individual seats, the theatre was full.

 

The CD / ACD were Martyn / Stu. They were quite good but Martyn did not have a presence around the ship as other CD's that we have had. His staff however were very good.

 

The places that we visited were:

 

Malaga - Went on ship tour

Barcelona - Went on ship tour

Monte Carlo - Went on our own

Rome - Went on ship tour

Naples - Went on ship tour

Ajaccio - Went on own

Gibraltar - Went on own

 

We really enjoyed all the destinations although due to a poorly structured ships tour at Malaga, this destination was soured a little. I have fed this info back to Princess.

 

Everywhere else was fantastic, it is easy to grumble when you are sat in the Princess Theatre waiting for your tour number, but when you get to the dockside and see the number of people involved, I think that generally, Princess does this quite well.

 

We did have a minor issue with our onboard account and we were met by a surly and dismissive person at the "customer service" desk who did not resolve the issue to our satisfaction. Again, I have fed this back to Princess.

 

Overall, the ship is in good nick and all direct service staff that we came across seemed happy in their work and provided really excellent service.

 

Disembarkation at Southampton was quick and easy. The ship docked at jut before 7:00am and we were in the second group of self walk off with luggage. We were straight off at 7:20am with no wait and by 8:00 we were in our car ready to drive the 300 miles home.

 

If anyone has any questions, I will be happy to respond.

I am going on the trans Atlantic cruise on the Grand that leaves on Friday. My cabin is C317. I am wondering if you know if all the C deck balcony floors are as you described or just some of them. Do I start worrying now?

If you could email your response, I would really appreciate it as we leave for London this afternoon.

Thanks very much.

Linda Zimring

lzimring@earthlink.net

[Northeastal]

As far as I know, all Caribe balconies were in the same condition, ie blue matting had been taken up but the new screed had not been applied.

 

If it rained, the balcony was unusable until such time as the water was mopped up.

 

Not good.