Princess, what happened? I’ve been on close to 40 cruises, including over 100 days with princess, and this was by far the worst cruise I’ve ever taken. When I go on a cruise, I choose the itinerary, the food, and entertainment as reasons to cruise. Halfway through this trip to Panama Canal, I have been let down so much that for the first time, I am actually posting how disappointed I am on a forum. Let’s start with the food. In the main restaurants for both breakfast and dinner the food quality and preparation has been less than what I would consider diner, quality food. During All my meals. they were something wrong whether it was raw scallops, tough steak, un edible vegetable risotto, and tough veal Marcella. There hasn’t been one meal that was anything better than low quality diner food. This includes their better restaurant that cost $35 per person Sabatini’s where the veal was so tough that the maître came by and asked when he saw that I didn’t have more than three bites out of one of the 3 pieces of veal on the plate, and asked about it, I told him it was tough, he said try the other piece on my plate. I did and one of the 3 was more tender but by then the experience was ruined. The only thing that was of quality was the ice cream and pizza on deck 15. Smaller than normal with less quality food was the buffet. And the salty dog was also awful. The vegi burger there that my wife ordered look like a piece of fried tomato between a bun. And the chili fries with cheese was nothing more than french fries with some cheese and whole beans. Again unedible. I have to wonder if they hired cooks that didn’t go to culinary school?

The other reason I go is to be entertained and the shows or should I say show was Just as bad as the food. Shows used to last an hour and a half in the main theater. Then, you would go to the back of the ship to see another show that lasted about an hour, and finally a comedian close to midnight. Not here the shows here last between 30 minutes and 45 minutes and featured one musician with the orchestra. The other show with the dancers played songs from 1950s - My wife and I are both 60 and never heard any of these. These were 70 years old who does that? at the end of the 30 minute show there was almost nothing to do. There was a game called majority rules, which again was around 30 minutes long and that’s it. we ended up in our cabins usually around 9:30. The Cruise Director used to be in combination of entertainer and MC. Not here. He would introduce the Act and give a few sentences on what’s going on the following day and send us on our way. The service was also not great. At lunch we would order a drink and it would take 20 minutes to get because the servers had to go to a bar to get a coke. No coke machine near by.

When I asked guest relations, the Director of entertainment on board got back to me and he told me that princess was still trying to recoup from Covid and that they would be extending their shows soon. Covid was 2 years ago. Princess has been sailing full for a year now. Read more