Welcome to Your Favorites, where you have the opportunity to share your travel experiences with fellow Internet Travelers around the world.

Princess Cruise Line

MS Crown Princess

Your Rating:
Reviewed by: Ira Miller
# previous cruises: 6
Date of Trip: September 7, 1998
Itinerary: Alaska

Alaska was wonderful. The Crown Princess is a nice ship but the service was irregular and went from very bad to pretty good. We were on D-Deck (D-151, reasonably expensive outside cabin), and there is a GARBAGE storage room opposite our stateroom that reeked the entire cruise ...and they would never close the door to it, even after numerous requests. Totally unacceptable. Ship is only eight years old and is really starting to to show her age due to the neglect of the Princess Lines. Never felt the ship was totally clean. I felt there was a lot lacking for a supposedly 5-star ship. We were on a 14 day Eastern Med/Black Sea cruise on Holland-American's MS Maasdam last May and thought the similarly rated Maasdam was a much nicer ship with better food and service.

See above. Our first dining table was so bad we had to move. It abutted a support pier that was impossible for anyone to walk around, including the waiters, who continually crashed into us while we tried to eat. The second table was much better, but still somewhat crowded. The casino tries to be everything for everyone...constant live singers, slots everywhere, hustle & bustle. Staff OK. Too cold for a pool for a Southern man in Alaska in September so I couldn't judge that!

Food in main dining room was pretty good (but not great) after the first night, which was awful. Food on Lido deck was very average, like an all-you-can-eat buffet on land. The ship does have a pizzeria that was OK, as well as a hamburger grill. Dining room service was good, as was cabin stewardess. The attendants in the ship's shops were often downright surly, and acted like a customer's presence was an intrusion into their space. Not good. My wife liked the beauty salon; the bar service went from very bad to pretty good, depending on where you were and when it was. The shore personnel for Princess leave a lot to be desired as to customer relations, and embarkation and disembarkation were very poorly done. The ship did hire a naturalist to lecture on the Alaskan Inside Passage journey and he was EXCELLENT! If you go to Alaska, try to find a ship with Brent Nixon aboard. He was great!

One comment: When I asked a steward to do something about the stench of garbage in the passageway when we first went to our stateroom, his reply was that they had been "too busy with our suitcases to worry about garbage, but would try to clean it up within 24 hours." That kind of summarizes the overall approach to service that we encountered from Princess, both on land and on sea, with some notable exceptions.

There was one medium sized closet in the room. Reasonable drawer space. Cabin still seemed small. Shower was adequate, but not large, but the constantly changing water temperature made showering an adventure. The cabin, like the entire ship, could use a good refurbishment. It's certainly not bad... just not what I could consider 5 Star.

See above about the naturalist. His talks became SRO! The other entertainment that we saw was pretty much like most cruise ships.....OK.

Not a lot of places to stop in Alaska. Stopped in Ketchikan, Juneau and Skagway. Alaska itself is simply beautiful, and it always was spectacular as we cruised by. The Captain seemed to make an effort to spend time at two of the really pretty glaciers, which was nice. Since it was my first cruise to Alaska, I have nothing to compare that to as to other lines, and how much time they would spend.

One note: They have "art auctions" every day at sea, which is just another ploy to get into the passengers' pocketbooks. They hype these "auctions" unmercifully, and display the mostly reproduction art in many of the passenger areas. Even though I am an art collector, I found these auctions, and the displays and the use of the ship's PA system, etc., to hype them to be very annoying!

The Crown Princess seems to direct its efforts to very middle, no frills America. Lots of first time cruisers, families, etc. Wide variety of ages, and a large number of Oriental passengers. There is nothing very sophisticated about the ship, but (aside from the garbage problem) was not a bad ship. (Probably 20% of the men didn't even bother to wear a TIE on 'formal nights', much less be properly dressed, and -I think unfortunately- Princess does not enforce its dress code.) It's a lot like going to a Holiday Inn and eating in its restaurant; a little better than a Day's Inn, but no 5-Star hotel!