Star Princess report....09/22/19 sailing

[Qcruise]

So the first thing to report here is that our cabin had a barrel chair.....hallaluia....!   The next thing is that the pools on board were heated......the rear pool was over heated on one day to my liking.   The vessel has many plumbing problems with leaks all over the place.....buckets to catch leaking ceilings in public places,  cabins flooded with water dripping down walls,  toilets not working etc.  Our cabin the toilet would not work a total of four times and required multiple attempts to fix.  Now the crew was so happy and the feeling was felt throughout the ship.....from Captain Tuvo "bye bye" on down he runs a great ship.  The crew told us it's going to dry dock in April to fit it with medallion upgrades.  Hope they replace some furniture or uppolstery too.  The couches up in skywalkers have 18 year old uppolstery and it looks it.  Overall the ship runs well,  the air conditioning went out on our hottest day in San Francisco due to jellyfish clogging the cooling system we were told.....we could see many of them in the water in Astoria on Monday.  Any questions go ahead and ask away.......Oh we had anytime dining and never had a problem getting a table.

[mcrcruiser]

Wow   needing buckets to catch the water & toilets that don't work .Not our type of cruise  .This is the problem with old ships   & could have been worse .Sorry you had those experiences

[wineglass]

It’s not just the age of the ship. We were on the inaugural cruise in the Caribbean on Celebrity Edge last year. We had water running out of the ceiling in the bathroom twice before they got it fixed. We loved the glass enclosed showers, but found that if you ran the shower at more than half water flow, the drain was overwhelmed and flooded the floor. Leaking plumbing is an ongoing problem in cruise ships...plastic tubing?

[Deesquared]

What type of cabin were you in? What deck?

So exciting to have the rare Barrel Chair! Ha ha!

 

[mcrcruiser]

9 minutes ago, wineglass said:

It’s not just the age of the ship. We were on the inaugural cruise in the Caribbean on Celebrity Edge last year. We had water running out of the ceiling in the bathroom twice before they got it fixed. We loved the glass enclosed showers, but found that if you ran the shower at more than half water flow, the drain was overwhelmed and flooded the floor. Leaking plumbing is an ongoing problem in cruise ships...plastic tubing?

We never had the problems  of water over flow in Celebrity  cabin showers  & we have done over 40  just on Celebrity .   Apparently your was a isolated case  'being that Edge is a much newer ship However ,older ships have more  of these problems    Simply because of racking problems over longer times   .Also A/C can be a problem in older ships 

 

 For us after doing 84 cruises we can say once we had A/C problems in our cabin because it was a much older ship  & that experience steers us away from ships past 15 years  in service

[Qcruise]

41 minutes ago, Deesquared said:

What type of cabin were you in? What deck?

So exciting to have the rare Barrel Chair! Ha ha!

 

We were in Caribe 330.....

[bostonfred]

Not happy to hear about plumbing problems, but like report of heated pools....were there  any comedians on board and how were they? How was the entertainment in general.? How was food on buffet and main dining room? Thanks,😎😎😎

[JimmyVWine]

1 hour ago, mcrcruiser said:

We never had the problems  of water over flow in Celebrity  cabin showers  & we have done over 40  just on Celebrity .   Apparently your was a isolated case 

 

Ahhh. The old "it never happened to us, therefore it never happens" logic game.  Or "it never happened to us, so your experience is isolated and it hardly ever happens" conclusion.  Let's look at how statistically significant your 40 cruises on Celebrity are. 👨‍🏫  Assume a ship has 1,200 cabins.  Each cabin is flipped to new passengers, on average, every 9.5 days. (Mid-point between cruises of 7 and 12 day lengths.)  So each cabin turns over 38 times per year.  Times 1,200 cabins per ship equals 45,600 turnovers per year, per ship.  Times 12 ships in the fleet is 547,200 turnovers per year for the fleet.  Times ten years (or whatever time it took you to sail 40 times) is 5,472,000 turnovers  in total.  So that is five and a half million opportunities for occupants to experience leaking in their cabin, and your data set consists of occupying 40 of those cabins.   That percentage is immeasurably small and allows for no conclusions, let alone generalizations as to what is commonplace versus what is isolated. 

Edited September 30, 2019 by JimmyVWine

[Qcruise]

2 minutes ago, bostonfred said:

Not happy to hear about plumbing problems, but like report of heated pools....were there  any comedians on board and how were they? How was the entertainment in general.? How was food on buffet and main dining room? Thanks,😎😎😎

They had one comedian Doug Funk who was in competition for entertainer of the year along with two singers and a ventriloquist.  We did not think he was so funny,  used people from the crowd for his act.  The singers were great and one of them one......Phillip Brown.  Food was wonderful in dining room we thought.  The goat cheese souffle is fabulous. The lobster was good and our service great.

[dog]

2 hours ago, mcrcruiser said:

Wow   needing buckets to catch the water & toilets that don't work .Not our type of cruise  .This is the problem with old ships   & could have been worse .Sorry you had those experiences

 

Same situation when I was on the Star in Feb. 2019.

[ColoradoMom!!]

Thanks for some Star info!  We are scheduled to board her to Hawaii in Jan.  I believe we will miss the wonderful Capt. Tuvo however 😞

 

We were on the Coral in July 2018 - it's around the same age I believe- and didn't see any leaks - so not sure if age is to blame or not, but it is concerning.

I fear that if the Star is scheduled for some upkeep in April, she'll be pretty ignored until then, including our Jan cruise - oh well - Hoping for the best!

 

What did you think of the Horizon Court?  Glad to hear ATD was a good experience ! We may try that.

The A/C not working is one of my biggest concerns since we can never seem to get it cool enough (to our liking) even without issues.

 

Edited September 30, 2019 by ColoradoMom!!

[Qcruise]

We thought the buffet was pretty good however were not there that much.  There are now two hand washing stations at each end and not just the hand sanitizer to use.  Our cabin air worked well and we had no issues with cabin temp during our cruise.  The evening it was out we went to Skywalkers for elite snacks and the temp was around 90 degrees up there.....one drink and we were gone.   Most were up on deck until we sailed away at 10pm......lower decks were cool enough.  It has been common in the past while ships transition after Alaska returning to warm waters the intakes get clogged with things thus taking out the air systems until cleared.  Good luck to you in January but I think they are just band aid each issue until dry dock......

[Bdnclc]

I was on this cruise as well.  Was in Caribe 515 and I had a barrel chair in the room.  Both of us were given a goodwill credit of $50 for the water issues.  The only issue we had was leaking sink one day that was slow drip.  It didn't bother us other than water dripping and asked to get fixed.  Our shower would have water go up and down the pipe throughout the day.  No overflow but could hear it when trying to sleep.  I didn't know the AC was out in San Francisco, figured the system couldn't catch up due to being so hot out.  33 C or 96 F was a really hot day to walking the streets.  But there were lots of jelly fish on this street.  All of our meals in dining room were really good.  I agree the cheese souffle was really yummy.  The crab and artichoke dip though was like a bad tuna casserole for me.  I caught the singer and ventriloquist and think the ventriloquist was better.  Couldn't get to other two all venues filled up when tried to get in.

 

My only issue was failure to deliver duty free purchase on last day.  Nothing but run around and passing off to wrong people.  And fact they didn't believe me or the steward the delivery wasn't made.  Shore excursions they need to clean up the logistics and be better organized.  We had to complain for lack of time provided compared to what was to be provided.  

 

Overall other than  two issues the rest of the cruise was great.  I had a friend who was a first timer with us and they thought the cruise awesome.  

[bostonfred]

I can’t believe it..but c515 is our cabin too..what are the chances of that?😊😊 plumbing issues sound reasonable as long as toilet flushes. Did the A.C. get resolved. Appreciate all the info...keep it coming...thanks, Fred

[Neejess]

I was also on this cruise and found it to be mediocre as best. The cabin located on deck 8 Emerald 421 which was a great room with barely an obstructed view.  All of our meals in dining room were good. Buffett was not, selection was limited and much smaller compared to our ONLY other cruise.  We managed to caught all the acts/shows we wanted. Mutually felt that the comedians were good but not great.

 

“Shore excursions they need to clean up the logistics and be better organized.  We had to complain about lack of time provided compared to what was to be provided.”

 

COULD NOT AGREE more. We filed a complaint about “Movie Tour,” which was not as described! It was a couple of movies from the 40s and ’50s. We learned the most about of Golf courses and Clint Eastwood. Tour was 20 minutes late starting this lead to us standing around in the sun. “Luxury coach” my @ss, it had no AC, and the headphones were so scratch sounding we ended up taking them off. The tour ran over, which left no time for shopping.

 

The staff was great and no complaints there, except the EFFY employees “RUDE and PUSHY.”

 

It was so hard to get the most straightforward beverage. Everything had to be ordered or retrieved from a bar, which by looking at the deck plans. Trek up to 14 or down to 5. We ended up getting ice. I stored it in the frig and then used sink water (which was not cold).

 

If this would have been my FIRST cruise I would NEVER cruise again. All I can say is “I tried Princess cruises and WILL NOT be going back.”

[screamingreen]

On 9/30/2019 at 11:07 AM, Qcruise said:

So the first thing to report here is that our cabin had a barrel chair.....hallaluia....!   The next thing is that the pools on board were heated......the rear pool was over heated on one day to my liking.   The vessel has many plumbing problems with leaks all over the place.....buckets to catch leaking ceilings in public places,  cabins flooded with water dripping down walls,  toilets not working etc.  Our cabin the toilet would not work a total of four times and required multiple attempts to fix.  Now the crew was so happy and the feeling was felt throughout the ship.....from Captain Tuvo "bye bye" on down he runs a great ship.  The crew told us it's going to dry dock in April to fit it with medallion upgrades.  Hope they replace some furniture or uppolstery too.  The couches up in skywalkers have 18 year old uppolstery and it looks it.  Overall the ship runs well,  the air conditioning went out on our hottest day in San Francisco due to jellyfish clogging the cooling system we were told.....we could see many of them in the water in Astoria on Monday.  Any questions go ahead and ask away.......Oh we had anytime dining and never had a problem getting a table.

We were on this cruise also in Aloha 631 and never saw these things of which you speak. I did use the rest rooms on 6, 7 and 14 and didn't have any issues. In fact, never saw any that were even closed for maintenance. Also, our AC was fine in San Fran. Didn't see jellyfish in Astoria, but did see a lot in Monterey. Guess it all comes down to location ... location ... location!

[Pstcrik]

Oh my, I am getting old.  I could never tell you what restroom I may have used on a cruise but some have got it right there in their mind.

[Qcruise]

Let me be clear about what I am saying about the Star......my statements are either personal experience or direct statements from others who told us about their cabins.  We personally walked past over three days buckets and dripping water outside the casino on deck 6.  I never said anything about issues with public restrooms....in fact I did say that every time I personally went into a men's restroom either there was a staff member there cleaning or it had just been cleaned due to an empty container next to the exit door.  The restrooms were the cleanest of any cruise we've experienced to date.  Our room C330 had the toilet not work on four occasions the last of which when we left the cabin on debarkation day.  Each time it took multiple attempts to get resolved,  and one time after the third call/request we actually had security come knock on the door to fix the safe.....not a plumber to fix the toilet.  There was a bucket catching dripping water outside the cabin next to ours for most of the cruise.  Our friends who started out in an ocean view on deck 8 were moved along with other cabins next to them due to issues with the cabins to be worked on.  A couple we spoke with up on lido deck during time in Victoria spoke of water running down their walls and carpeting replaced.   I'm not trying to bad speak the ship,  the crew was fantastic.....but the vessel does need work.

[bostonfred]

Qcruise don’t let people get you down. I found your information very helpful and straightforward I appreciate your review..😎😎

[Qcruise]

1 hour ago, bostonfred said:

Qcruise don’t let people get you down. I found your information very helpful and straightforward I appreciate your review..😎😎

Thanks......it just seems as though some people on here make it their mission to discredit or contradict things.  I only post to give people information....but I'm not looking for an argument.

[caribill]

On 9/30/2019 at 2:35 PM, Qcruise said:

We were in Caribe 330.....

 

Isn't that a "Premium Balcony" category?

 

If so, barrel chairs were not supposed to be removed from that type cabin,.

[Azllama]

On ‎9‎/‎30‎/‎2019 at 12:35 PM, Qcruise said:

We were in Caribe 330.....

We were in Caribe 226. Saw the buckets. At least Princess tried to make it right and gave a ship board credit. The ship

is showing her age. Still enjoyed the cruise.