Just returned from the Regal Princess

[dcassetta]

I thought I would contribute a quick review as a quick comparison to DCL to go along with the recent RCL and Carnival comparsions.

One previous cruise on Princess 30 years ago to Alaska that included a land package at their Denali lodge. This was on one of the old "Love Boat" sized ships. As that was so long ago, this really seemed like a first Princess cruise.

We sailed from Galveston to Costa Maya, Roatan, and Cozumel. The draw of the cruise was Roatan, which was very nice.

It was spring break so more than 1000 of the passengers were kids.

What was great on Princess
Their Deck pizza - this was on a par with Holland America and far outshines DCL
Their internet service - this came with our package, so I am not sure about the daily cost, but I thought it was very good and much better than past DCL experiences
The Retreat adult pool area (with one caveat, see below). The pool itself is terrific, you can actually swim. Similar to the adult pool on the DCL classic ships
The Vista Lounge - comfortable seating, good views of the stage for various presentations and films

What was good on Princess
Their app. Similar to DCL, although not quite as intuitive
Comfortable bed and balcony furniture - we had a deluxe balcony
Good water pressure in the stateroom shower
They do have a 24 hour cafe with sandwiches, cakes, and small desserts.
The Piazza (central plaza area) during the day. Lots of comfortable seating and nice views of the activities.

What was not so good on Princess
The daily schedule on sea days. Many of the activities involved the shops or the spa and most of the cruise staff that hosted events like trivia did not seem to enjoy their jobs.
The Princess Live lounge and main theatre. The Live lounge was small, the seats were not comfortable and most of them were unmoveable. Some events that should have been in the larger Vista lounge were held here, which meant if you did not get there very early (like 30 minutes) you were out of luck. The main theatre was poorly designed and a number of seats had poor views.
The lack of adult spaces outside of the pool area. None of the bars or lounges were adult-only at any time. This meant that all the karaoke was groups of teens signing off key Taylor Swift, and evening activities often included teens climbing over others to be with their friends. I did get the impression that there were large groups of kids from the same high schools. This probably contributed to the behavior issues. There was one event where a group was very rude to the cruise staff host, but there wasn;t much she could do about it.
The Retreat pool deck - there is almost no shade so for people who do not want to sit in the full sun, there are very few options.
The crew - with the exception of one bar server, the best word I could use for most of them was courteous. But, some were not even that. Very few smiles all week. I have no idea who the stateroom host was beyond knowing his name.
The upkeep of the ship - many stained carpets and furnishings. This was true of the cabin and public areas.
The food and dining service. Some dishes were good, but none were outstanding even at the extra-charge restaurants. And, the service was either super speedy (4 courses at their steak house in less than an hour) or snail-paced
Pool deck hamburgers - Pizza excellent, but the burgers were not

What was poor on Princess
Cleanliness - for a number of reasons.
I don't think I ever observed anyone else washing their hands before going into the buffet area. So gross. Did not eat there due to this.
One of the elevators had a used tissue in the corner for 2 days. I would have gotten another tissue to pick it up and throw it away, but there were no trash cans in the elevator lobbies. In fact, there were very few trash cans anywhere.
They may not have enough crew right now, but many of the tables on the pool deck were a mess much of the day. They do not have any of the trash stations like on DCL, so there is no way for the guests to help by clearing their own tables.
I never saw anyone cleaning in the public areas inside the ship. I am sure they did, but I never saw this. Perhaps the lack of ongoing cleaning explains the stains and generally poor appearance of the public areas.

The Piazza after 5pm. They had music every night and the musicians were good, but this area was all glass and metal, so all the sound echoed and was very loud. As a result, it was uncomfortable in the evening.

Being on a cruise is better than not being on a cruise, but I would not choose to sail Princess again.

 

[Ensusieasm]

Thank you for your detailed review. I already had to cancel my Princess Cruisetour to Alaska this summer, and your review makes me glad I did!

 

[ronandannette]

We've sailed the Regal Princess and Royal Princess; it's the favourite line of our good friends and frequent travel companions. For us, Princess is a total snooze - very weak in the way of active recreation and entertainment, which is a high priority for us. I guess I can't say we'll never cruise them again but we'd never willingly choose them.

 

[randumb0]

What did you think of the medallion and it's capabilities?

 

[we"reofftoneverland]

I thought I would contribute a quick review as a quick comparison to DCL to go along with the recent RCL and Carnival comparsions.

One previous cruise on Princess 30 years ago to Alaska that included a land package at their Denali lodge. This was on one of the old "Love Boat" sized ships. As that was so long ago, this really seemed like a first Princess cruise.

We sailed from Galveston to Costa Maya, Roatan, and Cozumel. The draw of the cruise was Roatan, which was very nice.

It was spring break so more than 1000 of the passengers were kids.

What was great on Princess
Their Deck pizza - this was on a par with Holland America and far outshines DCL
Their internet service - this came with our package, so I am not sure about the daily cost, but I thought it was very good and much better than past DCL experiences
The Retreat adult pool area (with one caveat, see below). The pool itself is terrific, you can actually swim. Similar to the adult pool on the DCL classic ships
The Vista Lounge - comfortable seating, good views of the stage for various presentations and films

What was good on Princess
Their app. Similar to DCL, although not quite as intuitive
Comfortable bed and balcony furniture - we had a deluxe balcony
Good water pressure in the stateroom shower
They do have a 24 hour cafe with sandwiches, cakes, and small desserts.
The Piazza (central plaza area) during the day. Lots of comfortable seating and nice views of the activities.

What was not so good on Princess
The daily schedule on sea days. Many of the activities involved the shops or the spa and most of the cruise staff that hosted events like trivia did not seem to enjoy their jobs.
The Princess Live lounge and main theatre. The Live lounge was small, the seats were not comfortable and most of them were unmoveable. Some events that should have been in the larger Vista lounge were held here, which meant if you did not get there very early (like 30 minutes) you were out of luck. The main theatre was poorly designed and a number of seats had poor views.
The lack of adult spaces outside of the pool area. None of the bars or lounges were adult-only at any time. This meant that all the karaoke was groups of teens signing off key Taylor Swift, and evening activities often included teens climbing over others to be with their friends. I did get the impression that there were large groups of kids from the same high schools. This probably contributed to the behavior issues. There was one event where a group was very rude to the cruise staff host, but there wasn;t much she could do about it.
The Retreat pool deck - there is almost no shade so for people who do not want to sit in the full sun, there are very few options.
The crew - with the exception of one bar server, the best word I could use for most of them was courteous. But, some were not even that. Very few smiles all week. I have no idea who the stateroom host was beyond knowing his name.
The upkeep of the ship - many stained carpets and furnishings. This was true of the cabin and public areas.
The food and dining service. Some dishes were good, but none were outstanding even at the extra-charge restaurants. And, the service was either super speedy (4 courses at their steak house in less than an hour) or snail-paced
Pool deck hamburgers - Pizza excellent, but the burgers were not

What was poor on Princess
Cleanliness - for a number of reasons.
I don't think I ever observed anyone else washing their hands before going into the buffet area. So gross. Did not eat there due to this.
One of the elevators had a used tissue in the corner for 2 days. I would have gotten another tissue to pick it up and throw it away, but there were no trash cans in the elevator lobbies. In fact, there were very few trash cans anywhere.
They may not have enough crew right now, but many of the tables on the pool deck were a mess much of the day. They do not have any of the trash stations like on DCL, so there is no way for the guests to help by clearing their own tables.
I never saw anyone cleaning in the public areas inside the ship. I am sure they did, but I never saw this. Perhaps the lack of ongoing cleaning explains the stains and generally poor appearance of the public areas.

The Piazza after 5pm. They had music every night and the musicians were good, but this area was all glass and metal, so all the sound echoed and was very loud. As a result, it was uncomfortable in the evening.

Being on a cruise is better than not being on a cruise, but I would not choose to sail Princess again.

Surprised to hear this about cleanliness. We have found Princess to be as meticulously clean as Disney which is one of the reasons we like them.

 

[auntlynne]

Thank you.

Several things you said remind me of the Princess cruises I have taken. And it’s not the good things. The lack of activities. The more stand-offish nature of the crew.

Love the tagline and bottomline, “Being on a cruise is better than not being on a cruise, but I would not choose to sail Princess again.”

 

[tidefan]

Surprised to hear this about cleanliness. We have found Princess to be as meticulously clean as Disney which is one of the reasons we like them.

Same, and I was just on Regal Princess in May and found it to be spotless (unlike Independence of the Seas, which was the first cruise ship I was actually looking forward to getting off of…). I am sorry you did not have the same experience. We’ve been on Princess many times and always enjoy it.

Also, we thought the buffet was fantastic on our British Isles cruise, I wonder what is different now.

 

[dcassetta]

What did you think of the medallion and it's capabilities?

I don’t like to wear a lanyard, so I treated my medallion the same way I treat my KTTW card. I either carried it in my pocket or in my wristlet. I thought it worked pretty well and especially liked the fact that I didn’t have to take it out to open the cabin door. I did not use it for making purchases on shore because I was not comfortable and using their third-party system to store my credit card. Also did not use it for room service deliveries outside of the cabin, although I did observe a number of people doing so. The downside of that was when people had food delivered to some of the lounge locations, trays, and partially eaten plates ended up on the floor, because there wasn’t any place to return them to, and the people who ordered them did not use the app to request a pick up.

 

[dcassetta]

Also, we thought the buffet was fantastic on our British Isles cruise, I wonder what is different now.

I can’t really give a description of the quality of the food in the buffet which might’ve been fine. But the lack of handwashing was so offputting I did not feel comfortable eating there. Occasionally picked up a banana, because it could be peeled, and did have an omelette on the first sea day, because the plates were only handled by the crew who were wearing gloves. Embarkation lunch was the only time I observed a crewmember asking people to wash their hands before they went into the buffet.

 

[MomOTwins]

What did you think of the medallion and it's capabilities?

We thought it was hit or miss. I like that I could use it to see in the app where our family members are. But we often ordered drinks that never arrived because in crowded areas it was harder for the staff to locate us, and twice had to have charges removed from our accounts for drinks we didn’t order because we were sitting by someone else who ordered them and our medallion got charged by the server in error (they gave us a surprising amount of grief for removing the charges, even though it was obviously an error because we had the full drink package so shouldn’t have been charged at all). Overall it seemed if you were in a crowded area like the atrium or buffet, mistakes were pretty common. It did work very well for ordering coffee to the room in the morning.

Several things you said remind me of the Princess cruises I have taken. And it’s not the good things. The lack of activities. The more stand-offish nature of the crew.

Love the tagline and bottomline, “Being on a cruise is better than not being on a cruise, but I would not choose to sail Princess again.”

I was reminded of the same issues—there would be only a couple family friendly activities per day (trivia, bingo etc) and otherwise it was mostly weird medical spa/shopping stuff that we had no interest in attending. It was a big shock coming from DCL where the problem we have is usually having to choose between multiple activities happening at the same time.

The other comment that resonated with me was how the food even in the upcharge restaurants was just ok. We thought the best food on the ship was the free pizza place—and the rest of the ship seemed to agree because it always had an hour wait. We got in the habit of “rope dropping” it to get a table at lunch time. The steakhouse, french and italian specialty dining were not great—not terrible, it is just I went in expecting something amazing like Palo and it turned out not to be any better than the MDR. The one upcharge place I really enjoyed was the gastropub, and that was the least expensive one of them all.

 

[tidefan]

I can’t really give a description of the quality of the food in the buffet which might’ve been fine. But the lack of handwashing was so offputting I did not feel comfortable eating there. Occasionally picked up a banana, because it could be peeled, and did have an omelette on the first sea day, because the plates were only handled by the crew who were wearing gloves. Embarkation lunch was the only time I observed a crewmember asking people to wash their hands before they went into the buffet.

When we sailed there was a hand washing station at each entrance as well as a free-standing purell dispenser. Did they get rid of those?

At least they don’t have that annoying “washy-washy” person that drives you nuts on RCCL…

 

[tidefan]

What did you think of the medallion and its capabilities?

I have to say, just getting off Carnival Mardi Gras made you notice just how big a difference it makes in the simple things. With Carnival’s drink package, anytime you get a drink, be it a cocktail, or coffee, or just a Diet Pepsi (blah! Why can’t they have Coke!), you had to give your sign and sail card and get a receipt and sign it. It really made me appreciate Princess last summer where you could just walk up to anywhere, it would pull up your picture on a tablet and they’d just hand you the drink. So much better.

I also enjoyed being able to order room service and drinks to our back of the ship deck seating location. It worked great! (Full disclosure on that… we were the second sailing after the ship upgraded to Starlink last May. People said it made a huge difference vs. how it worked prior to that).

 

[NAB]

We are going on the Majestic Princess to Alaska in May. I have a question….what do people wear to dinner is it like DCL or more like it used to be a dress for dinner?

 

[we"reofftoneverland]

I have to say, just getting off Carnival Mardi Gras made you notice just how big a difference it makes in the simple things. With Carnival’s drink package, anytime you get a drink, be it a cocktail, or coffee, or just a Diet Pepsi (blah! Why can’t they have Coke!), you had to give your sign and sail card and get a receipt and sign it. It really made me appreciate Princess last summer where you could just walk up to anywhere, it would pull up your picture on a tablet and they’d just hand you the drink. So much better.

I also enjoyed being able to order room service and drinks to our back of the ship deck seating location. It worked great! (Full disclosure on that… we were the second sailing after the ship upgraded to Starlink last May. People said it made a huge difference vs. how it worked prior to that).

Yes. We have never purchased the drink package on any line except Princess. We are not big drinkers and generally do want to deal with packages. But the package on Princess is great because every time I walked up to a bar they knew what I wanted. Almost no lines except at cafe for coffee drinks. I also felt like the staff wanted you to use your package. We had one bartender who asked us, “You don’t like to drink, do you?” I didn’t know why he was asking us that and then I realized he could see everything we had ever ordered. He handed us several bottles of water and said, “Use your drink package!” And yes no receipts. So no attempts to get extra tips (we do tip but don’t like it when compelled to tip on top of a tip).

 

[dcassetta]

When we sailed there was a hand washing station at each entrance as well as a free-standing purell dispenser. Did they get rid of those?

At least they don’t have that annoying “washy-washy” person that drives you nuts on RCCL…

The station are there, but the vast majority of guests walked right by them. Only on embarkation day was there a crew member reminding people to wash their hands.

 

[we"reofftoneverland]

We are going on the Majestic Princess to Alaska in May. I have a question….what do people wear to dinner is it like DCL or more like it used to be a dress for dinner?

It is slightly dressier. We were turned away 2x for dinner on Princess . Once dh had on shorts and it was formal night. We were surprised because he looked very nice with Oxford and I had on a dress but is what it is. We went to the buffet. Another night we got turned away because teen had flip flops on. That was a regular night. He also looked nice. Showered, golf shirt, but I am glad they hold the line!
We are also on Princess in Alaska in May! But we are on discovery. Have a great trip.

 

[dcassetta]

We are going on the Majestic Princess to Alaska in May. I have a question….what do people wear to dinner is it like DCL or more like it used to be a dress for dinner?

Quite a few people dressed up on the second night. This was listed as the formal night and they had many photographers for pictures with various backgrounds.

But, like DCL, not everyone dressed up so we did see both fancy and casual that night. The other nights most everyone was casual. There did not seem to be a dress code for their upcharge restaurants as there were people in casual shorts and t-shirts in both.

In my experience, people do tend to be more dressed in Alaska, just due to outside temperatures.

 

[dcassetta]

It is slightly dressier. We were turned away 2x for dinner on Princess . Once dh had on shorts and it was formal night. We were surprised because he looked very nice with Oxford and I had on a dress but is what it is. We went to the buffet. Another night we got turned away because teen had flip flops on. That was a regular night. He also looked nice. Showered, golf shirt, but I am glad they hold the line!
We are also on Princess in Alaska in May! But we are on discovery. Have a great trip.

This is interesting because there was a person in the steakhouse with casual shorts, a Ron Jon t-shirt, and flip-flops. So, it was okay there, but perhaps would not have been in the MDR?

 

[NAB]

Quite a few people dressed up on the second night. This was listed as the formal night and they had many photographers for pictures with various backgrounds.

But, like DCL, not everyone dressed up so we did see both fancy and casual that night. The other nights most everyone was casual. There did not seem to be a dress code for their upcharge restaurants as there were people in casual shorts and t-shirts in both.

In my experience, people do tend to be more dressed in Alaska, just due to outside temperatures.

I was hoping to wear jeans and a nice sweater or even my hoodie with a t shirt. I get hot flashes so off with the sweater. Plus my running shoes. We are in our 60’s so it won’t be holes in the jeans etc.

Would probably skip formal night. With the warm clothes we have to take was hoping to leave dress clothes and dress shoes at home. Maybe will have to rethink our clothes.

 

[dcassetta]

I was hoping to wear jeans and a nice sweater or even my hoodie with a t shirt. I get hot flashes so off with the sweater. Plus my running shoes.

Would probably skip formal night. With the warm clothes we have to take was hoping to leave dress clothes and dress shoes at home. Maybe will have to rethink our clothes.

I think this would be fine, based on what I saw on the Regal.