Princess Cruises, Grand Princess Review

Overall Rating

Alan & Alana-very hard working entertaining piano duo who did a quiz every night.

This is the second cruise we ' ve been on with this company. Last year we travelled on the Sea Princess and had a wonderful time so we didn ' t think twice about booking with you again. However, we couldn ' t believe the low standards of the Grand Princess when compared to her sister ship and are bewildered how there can be such a drop in quality over the space of just a year.
The ship was highly overcrowded and the crew were stretched to their limit trying to cater for all the passengers. It was virtually impossible to find a seat or sun bed anywhere on board and in order to see any of the evening shows you needed to arrive almost an hour in advance. Many of our fellow passengers were families who had booked with last minute bargain deals and the vast amount of unsupervised, unruly children made the holiday a nightmare for adults like me, my husband and our 28-year-old disabled daughter who were looking forward to a relaxing, sophisticated break. They monopolised the pool area, (which was almost inaccessible for a disabled person anyway as there was no hoist), disrupted the theatre shows by fidgeting and wandering in and out and ran around the Horizon Grill restaurant in their swimwear despite clear signage that proper dress was required for this part of the ship. The crew seemed unwilling to ask children to stop this troublesome behaviour in case it angered the parents but the peace and enjoyment of those passengers without children seemed to count for little. The only childfree public area onboard was the Sanctuary pool and sundeck and you were required to pay extra for use of this facility and wasn ' t accessible for my disabled daughter. I do not see why I have to pay a further fee on top of what is a very costly holiday to escape children whose families 'cut-price deals are already subsidised by our early booking.
One aspect my family have always enjoyed about cruising is getting dressed up and feeling indulged by the luxury of formal dining and good food but this too was totally spoilt by the low standards of the Grand Princess. The buffet meals in the Horizon Grill were lukewarm and the quality of the fare in the formal dining rooms was hardly the gourmet standard you expect from a cruise line. The menus sounded appetising but no amount of creative description could disguise the fatty, cheap cuts of meat, meagre vegetables and limited, bland selection of desserts we were served. To call the experience of your formal restaurant ' fine dining 'is a joke and that is before discussing the behaviour of some of the waiters. When cruising before, the restaurant staff have been the very definition of politeness, pushing my daughter ' s wheelchair to the table, helping her to her seat, offering to cut her meat for her so my husband and I had one less task to do. It was little things like that which made our holiday special and were completely missing in Grand Princess ' s formal dining room. What we did have is a waiter who seemed to have no idea of basic manners or hygiene.What made this lack of standards even worse was that to reach our dining room (Botticelli) we had to use two separate lifts that meant it took us nearly twenty minutes to get there from our cabin. Because of the poor standards of food and service in the formal restaurant, we were forced to shell out even more money on eating in the onboard steakhouse or Italian bistro where we were treated to the good level of service we used to receive in all eateries on previous cruises. I don ' t know whether it is a policy of Princess Cruises to give passengers a rotten experience in their formal dining room so they can extract more money from them in their specialist restaurants but it certainly worked in our case!
The quality of the shows was of a considerable lower standard than on other cruises and repeated on consecutive days to fill up the schedule. There were two different ' comedians ' , who should have been retired long ago and shared most of the same material. The only enjoyable entertainers were the piano duo in the atrium bar which was packed out by passengers looking for something decent to watch.
Even our stateroom left something to be desired. I booked a disabled cabin with a balcony in the hope that we could enjoy some sun in private but as our stateroom was situated below a large overhang it was shaded from sunlight most of the day. I don ' t expect Princess Cruises to control the angle of the sun but it would have been nice to be informed that this stateroom had limited exposure before we paid out for a balcony we couldn ' t use.
After travelling on the Grand Princess I have come to the conclusion that Princess Cruises are lowering their standards and aiming their holidays solely at the family market. This is their choice but I am interested to know what will happen when they have totally alienated your loyal, adult market and have to raise your child place prices to meet the shortfall. Will families with two or three children be willing to pay over the odds for what is in all reality a glorified Butlins?