Cruises, Cruise Deals & Cruise Holidays

An excellent report by Gili of what actually occured (9/5/09 - 24/5/09) in the weeks preceding our Alaska cruise 24/5/09 -3/6/09 on Sea Princess. This Ship was late arriving in San Francisco 24/5 delaying embarkation by 2 hours and as on the previous trip we were also greeted with a letter from the Captain stating that due to engine problem the itinerary would be curtailed. The above review proves that the ship had engine problems for several weeks and like them we had not received any communication from Princess Cruises (disgraceful). Unlike them we were not even invited to a meeting with the Captain to express our grievances (perhaps he had learned his lesson). Previous reveiws and comments earlier on this site explain dissatisfaction regarding this cruise. I wrote to 'Passenger Relations, Princess Cruises, Southampton' on the 8th June, and so-far have not received the courtesy of a reply, I would therefore be interested to hear whether any other aggrieved passenger from this cruise has been more successful. I would also be interested in any reviews or comments of the Alaska trip starting the 3rd of June. People who comment on moaners (just because they had a good time or enjoyed some other cruise) should first be aware that besides having our time in the allocated ports cut short and most launderettes not operational, some passengers had no hot water in their cabins, no change of bed linen, sewage smell in the corridors and luggage dropped into the sea on disembarkation. Accepting poor service encourages low standards.

We were on the Barbados to Fort Lauderdale 7 day May 2 to 9, 2009 and we did have our share of issues. I don’t know how Princess makes any money. We had booked a BF balcony guarantee for $750 USD base price each. A few days before the cruise Princess called and said they had over booked the balconies and would we take an outside for $500 each. I managed to get a large outside and felt it was a fair trade. While on board we were credited another $381 each for the book value difference between the two cabins. We missed Princes Cays so we received another $50 each. At the end of it all Princess paid us each $82USD to take their cruise. We did have propulsion problems, missed Princes Cays, late getting to St Maarten because of life boat issues in Antigua, but at the end of the day it’s hard to complain about a cruise when we were paid to go. We finished the cruise with an $1,100 credit and Princess insisted we take cash before leaving the ship.

So sorry to hear of your problems on your cruise, but at least you had a cruise. We were booked to go on Celebrity Milennium in March 09 out of Auckland New Zealand. We flew out early to Hong Kong on 7th March for a few days before heading on to Auckland. On the 9th we had a message from our travel agent informing us that Celebrity has cancelled the Cruise, due to pod propulsion problems and that she was to go into dry dock in Sydney. We immediately emailed Celebrity to find out why from them. We then had to either return to britain and cancel the rest of our once-in-a-lifetime holiday as my husband has health problems or try and find something else to do for 14days. We spent the rest of our days in H/K trying to sort something out, so did not get to see many of the sights, only Hong Kong Island 1/2 day trip. Through these problems my husbands health deteriorated and he spent time in hospital to our expense. Anyway our travel agent managed to find us a coach trip from north to south island N/Z and we headed off to Auckland as my husband said we had come all this way so to carry on. We had to pay an extra £1500 pounds for this trip on top of what we had originally paid, but we had a super trip, but being packed for a cruise we only had summer tshirts etc and N/Z was going into Autumn. We were not the only people that were stuck in H/K or Singapore that were on this cruise as we found out during our 3 day stay in Auckand. We met many people who had travelled out earlier from Canada and the States and Europe who were in the same situation as we were and had booked the same tour as we had. Celebrity told our travel agents that we would be given our money back for the 'cruise only' part of our holiday and that we would be given 'upto' $300 for extra flights journeys etc. We exchanged emails with our new found friends on our holiday and have up until now heard from some 700 people who had the same problems. We all wrote en-mass to Celebrity with our complaints, having sorted out the correct correspondence letter. Celebrity replied to say that they we sorry for the inconveience to us all and that the amount we had was all we were going to get, as that was their standard procedure within their T & Conditions. I can only hope that you get recompence from Princess, but do not get your hopes up.