Princess is the absolute WORST!

[Loonbeam]

Any statement made here becomes part of Princess' official communication which opens up liability issues, etc. It's why all large companies have social media policies now, and almost always, one of the key points is 'Stick to a main channel or 2'. CC is not a main channel.

 

Same reason the 'chats' with higher management are all vetted.

 

If they read CC why not make a general statement regarding this cruise on this thread? Instead of letting this issue fester?

[azcruiser64]

The OP should consider himself very fortunate that in his 40 cruises this appears to be his first delay.:D

[Loonbeam]

By the way, to the main point of the post..

 

Princess has internal policies that say what cleaning must be done and when. These policies are (like most lines) triggered far below what the CDC defines an outbreak, because the whole intention is never to get to that point in the first place.

 

I am not sure what the exact number is, but apparently Princess has hit that number of cases on the prior trip, and thus a cleaning is scheduled.

 

Yes, it stinks that your cruise will be delayed. But its also the nature of the industry and should be allowed for.

 

In all honesty, blame your fellow passengers not Princess. In the vast majority of noro cases, its failure of passengers to follow procedures that cause the increased spread.

[jrzebird]

IMHO, the title of this thread is totally over the top and uncalled for. Is the delay unfortunate? Absolutely, but it is not directed at you personally and is actually in your best interest. I wouldn't be happy, but I sure wouldn't be blasting Princess. Not cool.

 

Maureen

[A&L_Ont]

The OP should consider himself very fortunate that in his 40 cruises this appears to be his first delay.:D

 

I agree.

[dclark]

IMHO, the title of this thread is totally over the top and uncalled for. Is the delay unfortunate? Absolutely, but it is not directed at you personally and is actually in your best interest. I wouldn't be happy, but I sure wouldn't be blasting Princess. Not cool.

 

Maureen

 

How is it in the cruiser's best interest for Princess to wait 6 WEEKS after a major noro to do a major cleaning?

Really, can you explain that? Perhaps the people on the Crown xmas noro cruise would have appreciated that.

[Loonbeam]

Becuase they are making a non proven assumption. There is nothing to indicate that THIS cleaning is related to the prior incident.

 

If there were more than X cases on the arriving cruise, regardless of whether reported to Cruise Critic or not, they clean. Since X < CDC report, there is no way to know how many people may have gotten sick. Could be a crew breakout as well, so pax might not even be aware.

 

 

How is it in the cruiser's best interest for Princess to wait 6 WEEKS after a major noro to do a major cleaning?

Really, can you explain that? Perhaps the people on the Crown xmas noro cruise would have appreciated that.

[DebJ14]

Wow, if you are this upset about the cleaning delay you should definitely try booking a cruise out of Texas. The fog can hold you up for hours or even days.

 

I for one would be furious with Princess if they had Noro and did not disinfect the ship. Those of us who have had it would opt for a few hour delay over the days of misery anytime.

 

I certainly hope you purchased cancel for any reason insurance and can cancel. With the current attitude you will have a miserable cruise.

[shredie]

This stinks, I agree. I have gotten to the point where I am shocked if a ship sails on time out of San Pedro. If I were on this sailing I would be miffed but not surprised.

 

Out of 9 cruises out of San Pedro, we sailed on time 9 times!

 

 

Lucky you. Just because it hasn't happened to you doesn't mean it didn't happen to me. I had delays on the Golden as part of the attack of the killer mussels. That was another Princess PR brouhaha, lasting a few weeks, until the Golden moved on. There are problems at San Pedro. I don't know if it's Princess or the port or Mother Nature, but OP is right when pointing out that Princess isn't doing PR very effectively. (Now those of you who feel the need to point out the virtues of the port and Princess can flame me all you want. I'm on the Golden in two days for a two-week cruise, so I might not be around to learn my lesson. :p I hear the mussels have gone.)

[Colo Cruiser]

Becuase they are making a non proven assumption. There is nothing to indicate that THIS cleaning is related to the prior incident.

 

If there were more than X cases on the arriving cruise, regardless of whether reported to Cruise Critic or not, they clean. Since X < CDC report, there is no way to know how many people may have gotten sick. Could be a crew breakout as well, so pax might not even be aware.

 

 

Its ALL speculation and hearsay, we have a few experts who think they know whats going on within the Princess organization and at the pier in San Pedro.

[kruisey]

That it is not worth Princesses reputation to pull a fast one on its paying customers.

Princess had a very good reason and their customers at heart to delay this sailing.

No I do not always agree with Princess.Those that know me from previous posts.

This time I do.Good on you Princess.:)

[CantanaLobo]

My $0.02

 

I can believe Princess has an internal threshold for initiating a deep cleaning. That number would be less than that required to report to the CDC so they can head off making some official report.

 

They need to deep clean between cruises. If they do it with passengers onboard, the passengers will just contaminate the cleaned area. So the deep clean will introduce a delay.

 

Can they use contractors to reduce that delay even if they felt the cost was justified? They may need to get cleared by the port, TSA, or who knows. They generally don't let just anyone on the ship. I don't know.

 

If the cruise was 72 hours, and was shortened by 4 hours due to deep cleaning, would it be fair to refund 5.6% (4/72) of the fare? (fair being different than required. Of course they are not required to). So a $300 fare (no idea what OP paid) would get back $16. Hardly seems worth the trouble.

[eandj]

We were delayed boarding a HAL ship. After moaning and grumbling, we rolled with it. Sure it made the first day a little "different". But we didn't even remember the delay when telling others how we enjoyed the cruise. Granted it was over 3 or 4 nights.

But hanging on to something you had no control over seems like a lot of wasted time. ;)

[LoveThisCruisingThing]

We have a three night cruise scheduled for THIS Saturday on the Crown Princess.

We had planned to get there early, eat lunch on board, relax a little, hit the muster drill, then do a Meet & Mingle with our Roll Call group, return to the room dress for dinner, get to dinner early to avoid the typical lines and crowds in Anytime...then go to the 8:15 show...and then on to one of the later night activities before retiring to bed...

 

Today, less than 72 hours from sailing, Princess sent us an e-mail telling us that boarding has been delayed until 5:30 pm with some decks being told to show up to board AFTER 8:00 pm!

 

The excuse was that the ship needs to be disinfected due to an outbreak of Norovirus.

 

Problem is that, since I regularly read Cruise Critic, I know that there is NO CURRENT outbreak of Norovirus. The last Norovirus outbreak reported on the Crown Princess was back in MID-NOVEMBER...

 

So, I called Princess for an explanation. The agent I spoke with had no clue and was unaware of the delay. She put me on hold to go find the "official" word, then came back with, basically, the same explanation as on the e-mail. I told her that there was NO current outbreak and she admitted that I was correct...but there had been an outbreak recently. I told her that it was over a month and a half ago...and she admitted that I was correct, but that Princess decided to do this cleaning NOW in response to that...

 

So, what Princess has decided to do, in response to a situation that passed several cruises ago, is to arbitrarily ruin OUR cruise experience on less than three days notice.

 

The cruise is already a very short one as it is. This delay basically makes it that much shorter. They expect us to forego the first afternoon...arrive at the pier at 8:00 pm...rush to the likely overcrowded Anytime dining room for what will be for us a very late dinner...sneak in a muster drill (still required, of course, as our evening's entertainment...and go to bed, hopefully with our luggage showing up to our cabin sometime or another...

 

For those flying in and with transportation and flight arranged, I suppose they are expected to wait for several hours standing in the San Pedro parking lot...

 

A wonderful first day of only three...Thank you, Princess Cruise Lines!

 

The 12/20 cruise had an outbreak of Noro....37/4500 people affected. I was on this cruise. The captain kept us informed and no passenger was allowed to serve themselves.

[LoveThisCruisingThing]

Gee...

Thank you to everyone with the kind advice for me to just cancel this one and pick another cruise another time...

Let me fill you in as to why that cannot be the case:

First of all, Princess is not offering that cancellation option to anyone. Cancel at this time and you lose your full payment.

Furthermore, there is a particular reason why we are on this cruise, this time:

1) My wife works for the school didtrict and this cruise falls into her Winter Break. She cannot and will not take off time during the school year. She is a school psychologist and covering two LAUSD schools and, with all of the recent budget cuts, she is overworked and overstressed. These are the only dates this time of year we had open and without other conflicts.

2) We had different options for this week back when we booked. Unfortunately, those other options require a flight out of LA to somewhere else in the world during the holiday season. Expensive earlier, now near impossible. Far too late to just pick another cruise for this week. In fact, even Princess wasn't allowing new bookings on this cruise by the time they informed us of their plans.

 

So, our "options" are to lose our money and stay home or to go on the cruise, however inconvenient and shortened.

So we will "make the most of it"...but that doesn't mean we have to be accepting and happy about the treatment, decisions and lack of caring for the customer on the part of Princess.

 

And, maybe I should clarify what it is that Princess is the "worst " at...It's customer care. Sure Carnival's sewage issue is worse. So was Costa's running a ship into a reef for that matter. IMHO, Carnival is the worst cruise line overall. But those "accidental matters" are clearly accidents. And the overall performance of a cruise line is really just the course of ordinary business and you know that when you book with them. Princess, OTOH, is the worst we have experienced in dealing with its customers...in communications, in customer concern, customer relations, etc.

 

Princess' attitude is that they can do whatever they want and, if you don't like it, it's your problem.

 

And, in the past, we've caught them at complete fabrications. We were on the old Crown Princess--one of its last voyages for Princess...and they were three hours late chugging into St. Petersburg. We all knew what the issue was. The ship was having mechanical issues and, being that they were getting rid of it shortly after that cruise, they elected to delay the needed maintenance. The delays and inability to reach top speed were written about quite a bit on the internet during the weeks leading up to our cruise. At the time we should have been docked, we were clearly nowhere near the port. It was fairly clear the ship was having these speed issues...It was also late into Copenhagen on Embarkation Day, but then, sailway was moved UP in order to pick up the extra time to get to our first port. Unfortunately, they did not inform anyone about the change in departure time until the day before the cruise. And that only by telephone to the house phone back home. We, of course, were already in Copenhagen...luckily, we got to the ship what we thought was early--and just made it. The excuse they gave in St. Petersburg was that they were docking late because of a "port labor action". Absolute BS--We checked with several sources, there was no current port labor action. Other ships had been docked since early morning.

 

In those days, we purchased our shore excursions through the ship. We had a morning "City Tour", an afternoon trip to Peterhof and and evening trip to the Ballet...Those first two tours were both "abridged"...several stops were deleted and the timing was such that we had no time between any of the three shorexes to allow for lunch or dinner...We had to run up to the buffet between tours and grab rolls, cheese and apples to gulp down while waiting to load the next bus. Princess didn't even adjust our tour prices for the shortened tours...

 

The excuse by Princess was completely fabricated in order to absolve them of any responsibility when clearly the delays were due to Princess' decision to defer maintenance. That was August 2001. So, you wonder why we don't just take Princess at their word?

 

So, this is what Princess IS the "worst" at: Truthfulness, candor, communications, attitude. I see a pattern with Princess. Delay communications until the last minute, then pull it as a surprise. Come up with some plausible sounding excuse to make it appear as though any issues are out of your control, not your fault. In THIS case, Princess is responding to an issue that arose seven weeks earlier. It didn't occur last minute. It wasn't mandated by the CDC or any governmental power. Princess scheduled this on their own volition and knew well before sharing it with all of us. That is the manner in which Princess operates.

 

So, knowing this, why did I choose to cruise with Princess? Because, Frankly, any cruise IS better than staying home. I will find enough to enjoy. But, if I want to do a quick cruise out of LA, I really don't have a lot of choices at this time...it is pretty much Princess or Carnival...Terrible customer service and issues like this versus an even more crowded ship with more corners cut...Between Carnival and Princess, Princess wins...But it would be nice to have more competition in this market.

 

BTW, after my cruise back at Thanksgiving, I had a couple of issues and a few comments for Princess...I wasn't asking for anything, I just had some suggestions as to how they could improve certain things--mostly regarding their management of Anytime Dining...largely noted from a comparison of the management of the system on other lines with which we've sailed. I wrote to Princess immediately after the cruise. I received a call back from a person from Princess' customer service...telling me they would call me back within two weeks to discuss my issues...Great...Of course, that was now over a month ago. I brough that up with the Customer Service person I spoke with yesterday. She noted that she saw that in the file...but, that wasn't HER job--she was in "pre-cruise" issues and someone in "post-cruise" needed to get back to me...and they were just overworked and running way behind. Gee, I am sure they are...

 

If you are so unhappy with princess and can find fault with just about anything with them, I would suggest finding another line. It really isn't worth it to get so wound up about stuff.

[RDC1]

How is it in the cruiser's best interest for Princess to wait 6 WEEKS after a major noro to do a major cleaning?

Really, can you explain that? Perhaps the people on the Crown xmas noro cruise would have appreciated that.

 

They did a cleaning 6 weeks ago. They had some cases of noro on the last two cruises and they are doing another cleaning now.

 

How is that for an explaination. They do not only clean during major events. They also clean after minor outbreaks to keep them from growing to major events.

[Bruin Steve]

For the sake of clarification, I am only "Ruby" on Princess. This one will be my FIFTH Princess cruise and get me to Platinum.

I am Diamond on RCCL...Elite Plus on Celebrity.

 

Princess does do some things well and I have no major objection, obviously, to cruising with them. I just believe they need to learn to do some things better. Trying to improve would be a good thing.

 

I really don't want to "just cancel and get my money back"...and I am NOT looking for compensation. I cannot reschedule. Our vacation window is limited and not movable. All I want is the cruise I bargained for.

 

I never advocated a boycott of gratuities for the crew. What I was discussing was the types of actions that would get Princess' attention. It was in response to a previous post by another member of the roll call suggesting a boycott of the shows. I was trying to explain that a show boycott had no financial implications to Princess. It was by way of example that gratuities was one form of income that has an indirect financial implication...but said I would NOT do this specifically because it would not be fair to the hard working crew. Thank you for bringing the quote to this thread out of context.

 

The discussion on the Roll Call is NOT directed toward squeezing out some sort of compensation. We are just mostly upset about having our already short cruise shortened. It is NOT a question of money for any of us. We all just want a FULL cruise...and some of us don't buy that the disinfecting cannot be done without the considerable delay. It is NOT a matter of anyone wanting to contract Norovirus or any other illness. We would like a safe ship, obviously. Some of us just believe that it could have been accomplished more efficiently...or timed differently. It is directly inconveniencing US. To those who think all of this is no big deal I would suggest that you might feel far differently if it was YOUR cruise...and you had flights, hotels, plans, etc. for your arrival...and less than three days from sailing, you were suddenly informed that one-third of your cruise would be severely affected.

 

Let me also say to any of those ignorantly judging me: I am NOT a negative or unhappy person, not a constant complainer. For those who have read most of my almost 10,000 posts here on Cruise Critic, you might know that most have been in efforts to help people...providing advice and recommendations on various ports of call boards, especially on the West Coast Ports board where I really try to make an effort to help my fellow Cruise Critic members with hotel, restaurants and tour recommendations. On the various Roll Call boards of cruises I've been on, I've organized many group port tours...and given advice to others about ports, the ship, pre- and post-cruise details, etc. I love cruising and look forward to all of my cruises.

 

Those who actually know me or have cruised with me would probably tell you that I am not a bad guy at all.

 

OTOH, when discussing details of cruises, I try to be completely fair and honest. Where there IS an issue, I have no problem pointing it out. Doing that should NOT open me up to derision and ridicule. However, I also understand the nature of internet message boards. Posters can hide behind their anonymity and write things they would never have the nerve to say to your face. There are also a good many who do rush to the defense of their favorite cruise line. Obviously, reasonable minds can differ as to such items as what standards to hold a cruise line to...or what the relative importance or unimportance of any particular issue might be. What is unimportant to you might be important to me...and vice versa. We all have different standards, criteria and expectations...so, how we see things might be considerably different.

 

I started this thread because THIS issue is importan

Edited January 2, 2015 by Bruin Steve

[RDC1]

For the sake of clarification, I am only "Ruby" on Princess. This one will be my FIFTH Princess cruise and get me to Platinum.

I am Diamond on RCCL...Elite Plus on Celebrity.

 

Princess does do some things well and I have no major objection, obviously, to cruising with them. I just believe they need to learn to do some things better. Trying to improve would be a good thing.

 

I really don't want to "just cancel and get my money back"...and I am NOT looking for compensation. I cannot reschedule. Our vacation window is limited and not movable. All I want is the cruise I bargained for.

 

I never advocated a boycott of gratuities for the crew. What I was discussing was the types of actions that would get Princess' attention. It was in response to a previous post by another member of the roll call suggesting a boycott of the shows. I was trying to explain that a show boycott had no financial implications to Princess. It was by way of example that gratuities was one form of income that has an indirect financial implication...but said I would NOT do this specifically because it would not be fair to the hard working crew. Thank you for bringing the quote to this thread out of context.

 

The discussion on the Roll Call is NOT directed toward squeezing out some sort of compensation. We are just mostly upset about having our already short cruise shortened. It is NOT a question of money for any of us. We all just want a FULL cruise...and some of us don't buy that the disinfecting cannot be done without the considerable delay. It is NOT a matter of anyone wanting to contract Norovirus or any other illness. We would like a safe ship, obviously. Some of us just believe that it could have been accomplished more efficiently...or timed differently. It is directly inconveniencing US. To those who think all of this is no big deal I would suggest that you might feel far differently if it was YOUR cruise...and you had flights, hotels, plans, etc. for your arrival...and less than three days from sailing, you were suddenly informed that one-third of your cruise would be severely affected.

 

Let me also say to any of those ignorantly judging me: I am NOT a negative or unhappy person, not a constant complainer. For those who have read most of my almost 10,000 posts here on Cruise Critic, you might know that most have been in efforts to help people...providing advice and recommendations on various ports of call boards, especially on the West Coast Ports board where I really try to make an effort to help my fellow Cruise Critic members with hotel, restaurants and tour recommendations. On the various Roll Call boards of cruises I've been on, I've organized many group port tours...and given advice to others about ports, the ship, pre- and post-cruise details, etc. I love cruising and look forward to all of my cruises.

 

Those who actually know me or have cruised with me would probably tell you that I am not a bad guy at all.

 

OTOH, when discussing details of cruises, I try to be completely fair and honest. Where there IS an issue, I have no problem pointing it out. Doing that should NOT open me up to derision and ridicule. However, I also understand the nature of internet message boards. Posters can hide behind their anonymity and write things they would never have the nerve to say to your face. There are also a good many who do rush to the defense of their favorite cruise line. Obviously, reasonable minds can differ as to such items as what standards to hold a cruise line to...or what the relative importance or unimportance of any particular issue might be. What is unimportant to you might be important to me...and vice versa. We all have different standards, criteria and expectations...so, how we see things might be considerably different.

 

I started this thread because THIS issue is importan

 

Been there done that. 3 different cruises out of the last 10. 2 on Princess 1 on Celebrity. 1 included a fog delay on the ship coming into port, on top of the enhanced cleaning delay. The advance notice on the enhanced cleaning was 72 hours on the Princess cruise, 24 hours on the Celebrity cruise. The fog delay that pushed it back even further was put out only 6 hours before the already delayed boarding time (Houston last year). It happens.

[badger1829]

We have a three night cruise scheduled for THIS Saturday on the Crown Princess.

We had planned to get there early, eat lunch on board, relax a little, hit the muster drill, then do a Meet & Mingle with our Roll Call group, return to the room dress for dinner, get to dinner early to avoid the typical lines and crowds in Anytime...then go to the 8:15 show...and then on to one of the later night activities before retiring to bed...

 

Today, less than 72 hours from sailing, Princess sent us an e-mail telling us that boarding has been delayed until 5:30 pm with some decks being told to show up to board AFTER 8:00 pm!

 

The excuse was that the ship needs to be disinfected due to an outbreak of Norovirus.

 

Problem is that, since I regularly read Cruise Critic, I know that there is NO CURRENT outbreak of Norovirus. The last Norovirus outbreak reported on the Crown Princess was back in MID-NOVEMBER...

 

So, I called Princess for an explanation. The agent I spoke with had no clue and was unaware of the delay. She put me on hold to go find the "official" word, then came back with, basically, the same explanation as on the e-mail. I told her that there was NO current outbreak and she admitted that I was correct...but there had been an outbreak recently. I told her that it was over a month and a half ago...and she admitted that I was correct, but that Princess decided to do this cleaning NOW in response to that...

 

So, what Princess has decided to do, in response to a situation that passed several cruises ago, is to arbitrarily ruin OUR cruise experience on less than three days notice.

 

The cruise is already a very short one as it is. This delay basically makes it that much shorter. They expect us to forego the first afternoon...arrive at the pier at 8:00 pm...rush to the likely overcrowded Anytime dining room for what will be for us a very late dinner...sneak in a muster drill (still required, of course, as our evening's entertainment...and go to bed, hopefully with our luggage showing up to our cabin sometime or another...

 

For those flying in and with transportation and flight arranged, I suppose they are expected to wait for several hours standing in the San Pedro parking lot...

 

A wonderful first day of only three...Thank you, Princess Cruise Lines!

We were on the 12/20/14 sailing on Crown Princess and there really was a noro outbreak.

[elliair]

 

NO corporation does things "in the best interest of their customers". (I can say this from experience...having spent a 36 year career as an attorney and executive with major national and international corporations including a couple in the hospitality industry).

 

 

I agree with that. I for one do not do what's in the best interest of the corporation. If I were to get sick, I would not quarantine myself, I would not go to the infirmary, I would let nature take it's course. I paid for the cruise, I paid for everything that I wish to do on the ship sick or well. I've seen plenty of sick people on the ship. I've witnessed vomit on stairs, at the bottom of stairs, in the restrooms, etc. Was it from sea sickness or was it noro or some other type of illness. These ships are floating petri dishes. I am well when I get on the ship and if I catch something so be it. I won't do the "corporation" a favor and stay in my cabin. Fair enough!

[peety3]

You're the one who thinks the whole cruise is ruined because of a delay.

 

Princess doesn't delay for the fun of it - they have to pay overtime to crews at embarkation, they have to pay for more fuel burned to make up the time underway, they have to pay out credits and who knows what, etc. If you think they do it for the fun of it, you're wrong.

 

Get over it, enjoy your cruise or cancel it, and enjoy your next Princess cruise too.

[Mommypig]

The issue that is important is not that everybody gets exactly what they want in a cruise, but that every passenger and crewmember is safe. Safe from disease and safe from injury. Princess takes this seriously.

 

Princess will change itineraries if someone needs to get to a hospital, if the weather changes and travel to a port would be dangerous, or if a critical system requires repair. I have been on one cruise where we ended up doing two ports in New Zealand twice and skipped the Fiordlands due to gale force winds on the Tasman Sea. On the same cruise we had to make an unscheduled stop in Tonga to get a crew member with appendicitis and and an ill passenger to a hospital. I was really bummed that we didn't get to do Fiordlands but glad that the captain put safety of the passengers and crew first.

 

Princess will delay boarding if required maintenance or cleaning needs to be done first. This is for the safety of all. There are not only Noro outbreaks, but also outbreaks of flu or upper respiratory viruses that can necessitate extra cleaning. Personally I would much rather have a delayed boarding than run in with illness on a cruise of any length. There is a thread on the Celebrity boards right now on upper respiratory illness on the Infinity. I certainly hope that Celebrity puts the health of its passengers first and does a thorough cleaning before my cruise on that ship in February.

 

 

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