Mediterranean honeymooner

Ok I know from experience that it tends to be mostly negative reviews that get posted on review sites but really concerned now that we booked and paid for this trip as there was a really good offer.

We sailed on the Crown Princess last summer and I guess as she was our first cruise we are always going to compare but if memory serves there were lots of negative reviews of her, which we found completely unfounded but the reviews of the Dream are quite consistent.

It's too late to cancel but dreading the thought that we have paid to spend a week on a rust bucket with scruffy bedding, substandard food and the lovely noro virus as a departing gift!

We have recently returned from our honeymoon on a princess ship and we ...ehem accidentally brought on board six bottles of wine which we didn't pay corkage on :halo:but we still managed to accrue a $700 bar bill at the end of a 14 night cruise and can assure you we didn't drink loads.

It was the ridiculous bar prices on board plus the 15%gratuity added to the price of the drink that did it for us.

I work for a living and have no problem paying a fair price for a good product and a good service that we received but to be fair we were fleeced on the drinks we had.

We didn't deny ourselves on our honeymoon but didn't spend it completely soused! :halo:

We sail on the Britannia next year and are hoping for a good cruise but hoping for a fairer drinks bill or I guess it will be our last cruise. We just can't justify champagne prices for just everyday drinks.

All of this is quite disconcerting! My husband and I are on the Britannia in July next year and I am beginning to feel that all this negativity with Britannia .......well no smoke without fire!

We have recently returned from our honeymoon on the Crown Princess and prior to sailing on her there was a lot of complaints and negativity. We went with an expectation of tired decor lacklustre staff and terrible food, none of which was our experience. We quite determinedly decided that we wouldn't let little things upset us and colour our experience but it really wasn't a problem. I will be honest and say that embarking and disembarcation was a shambles and did seem to take forever but that would be our only "complaint" .

We are not difficult customers and generally easily pleased but the prospect of paying £5000 to sleep in a toilet is something I will struggle to "make the best of" ��

My prayers for all those involved and their families.

We were lucky enough to walk up and down Las Ramblas two weeks ago on an excursion on the Crown Princess. So sorry to hear that Barcelona joining the list of cities attacked by extremists. We were in London the week before we boarded in Southampton and it saddened us seeing the barriers on either side of the London Bridge to prevent the same happening again.

We have just come back from our honeymoon and thought I would share my thoughts on the cruise and the ship.

Firstly I did encounter negatives but they were very small things that we decided weren't worth spoiling our day,evening or cruise mumping about and just enjoy something that was a once in a lifetime and cost three months salary! :confused:

Embarcation

I have to say this was a bit of a shambles, due to their being a problem with the previous cruise getting off due to a faulty ramp this slowed things considerably. We arrived at the port at 11.30 am despite the agreed time for Caribe passengers embarcation time being 1.30 pm. I know we were quite early but eager to start our holiday, in retrospect it was better to turn up early and get to our cabin around the original time rather than turning up at the agreed time and still be waiting to get to our rooms after muster.

Our room, Caribe 222

We got to our room at around 1.30 and was greeted by our steward Manny (Manuel) who is an absolute blessing and by the end of the cruise we wanted him to come home with us so that he could sort the rest of our lives out the way he did our room :D

The decor was a little tired and my bedside drawer was stuck and we had to take the top one out to get to the contents of the second drawer however this was a minor inconvenience. The bed and bedding was as good if not better than some hotels we have stayed in. The balcony was a dream come true it really opened up our room to a wonderful living space and we had a fabulous time on it.

Anytime dining in MDR

We tried out all three of the main dining rooms Botticelli, Da Vinci and Michelangelo. All three were good, the food was outstanding and stretched our tastebuds trying things we wouldn't normally try but enjoyed every bite.( My only criticism is the Curtis Stone fish stew was too heavily favoured with fennel in my humble opinion). The food was always hot and served with a smile and genuine pride by the waiters. We loved the food that much that we couldn't find one menu that we disliked enough to try one of the speciality restaurants

and we went on the cruise with an expectation of doing that!

Horizon court.

This as a really good venue for food at most times of the day, the food is fresh well presented and tasty, I believe that anyone who can't find something to eat here is being too picky. It is buffet style and there is the problem of other passengers trying to use the same spoons for different dishes etc but the staff try to run things as smoothly as possible. As a coffee drinker I found the coffee in horizon court difficult to adjust to but luckily I had my trusty coffee card so could get myself a good one from the international cafe.

International Cafe

We loved the coffee from here and the staff were very friendly and eager to share a joke. It was here that I mostly encountered very rude and ignorant passengers. The staff very quickly tried to rectify any problems and diffused the issue with humour. I was well impressed with their attitude.....if it had been me there would have been a few passengers with coffee shampoo!;p

The food is a smaller selection of buffet food plus sandwiches, paninis etc and lovely looking deserts to go with your coffee. I wasn't very lucky with the paninis here as I ordered one twice and both times the middle of the sandwich was still chilled so didn't bother with those again.

Pizza, burgers etc

There are a few venues on board around the pool areas where you can grab some pizza, burgers, hot dogs and fries as well as ice cream. We got a late night snack from here after watching a MUTS . It's as good as any you would get from the high street chains.

Bars and drinks

Ok you don't have to stumble far to find a bar on board and other venues such as the Crown grill etc double up as bars on certain days (sea days I believe) the quality of the decor, staff and drinks are fabulous! I loved Crooners during happy hour even the staff greeted you with "happy hour" cheers. They also furnished you with little bowls of bar snacks. My main criticism for the whole cruise was the drinks pricing. It was overtly expensive so we tended to wait for happy hour or special events when drinks were provided. We are not cheap but with the wine we brought with is this was ample.

Entertainment

I will be honest and say we didn't get to see much of the entertainment as most port days were exhausting so we mainly ate and then relaxed on our balcony in the evening but we did catch the Freddie Mercury tribute act. It was billed as a tribute with a comic twist so wee weren't sure what to expect and when he first came on stage I was even more unsure if this was going to be my sort of thing. It was brilliant he was funny and had a great voice, he was very energetic and most importantly his passion for Freddie Mercury and his music was very obvious. It was a great night out!

There was a Welsh comic and magician called Taffy who was good, some of his jokes were quite adult but funny all the same, his magic tricks were very Tommy Cooper like in that they were simple and tended to be a vehicle into the next joke but very enjoyable.

We were lucky enough to catch Magic To Do as well, this was good and as we were sailing round the bay of Biscayne at the time and one chap was singing from the top of a ladder being pushed round the stage by two other cast members took some cahones! My husband is an amateur magician and was hoping for some spectacular tricks or illusions in the show but was disappointed with the tricks within the show but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Excursions

We visited every port or went on an excursion at every port day except Genoa, by this time we had done four port days in Barcelona, Civitiveccia and Rome, Livorno for Florence and Adjeccio in Corsica, all in 40 degree heat and we were exhausted. We loved all the ports of call and want to go back to all of the except perhaps Rome. We were dropped off at the Vatican city which is where there were lots of beggars, looky looky men trying to sell all kinds of things but it was totally overkill there seemed to be more of them than tourists and it was exhausting keeping your eyes on them to see who was coming towards you and making sure you had all your belongings every time you bumped into someone. Didn't enjoy that one much at all.

Ultimate balcony dinner.

We were recommended to do this and saw a YouTube of someone getting this from a different ship but we felt as it was our honeymoon we would try it. On arrival on embarcation day was a menu for us and the number to call to give our main course and cocktail choices as well as booking the time. We did this and booked it for the fourth day of the cruise as it would be the night before we docked in Barcelona so hopefully out of the high winds and seas from the bay of Biscayne. It was wonder full, our waiter was very good he was very attentive, witty and also gave us space to enjoy the moments we will treasure for a lifetime. The food was amazing, the cocktails and half bottle of French champagne were lovely. All I would say is that next time we will only have two courses as there were cocktails with hors d'oeuvres, then a starter of a crab cake, followed by pear and walnut salad with goat's cheese. After that was the main course which you could choose between a steak, lobster or if you couldn't choose between them you could have surf and turf!!! After that was a trio of chocolate mouses served in a tempered chocolate lattice construction that was like a piece of contemporary art! So you are thinking well that surely must be the end of that.....no! There was coffee and Pettit fours after that!!!!! Thankfully you have a photograph taken at the beginning of the meal or I would have looked like Augustus Gloop! I slept very well that night!

Disembarcation

The end of our cruise came too quickly as they do but the highly organised machine unfortunately came to a grinding halt at disembarcation due to technical difficulties again so we were facing a six hour drive from Southampton to our home town in Yorkshire but couldn't get off the ship until 11am despite being asked to vacate our rooms before 8am! Not the best but these things happen and I won't let it colour my view of the whole thing.

Conclusion

I loved our honeymoon, I loved the Crown and finances permitted I would book her in a heartbeat. I would avoid school holidays if possible as there were few opportunities to get near or into the pools due to children and there were a few incidents where pools had to be shut down, emptied, cleaned and refilled.....twice! It was so funny listening to the captain announce that the pools had to be shut down due to a vomit and fecal incident!!!!!:eek:

My conclusion is that if you go on holiday determined to enjoy it and look for solutions instead of faults it will be everything you want it to be.

We sail on our honeymoon on Saturday and to be honest nothing will stop us enjoying our cruise, it cost twice as much as our wedding and will be full of memories for years to come so reading that article gave me a bit of food for thought as these things have happened and there is the potential of it happening again. I took your post in the way you intended it as a bit of fun and being thankful that the majority of cruises are the luxury holiday that people want and expect......to be honest pirates would have a fight on their hands after we made final payment because that felt like giving birth!:o

We sail in 10 days on the Crown for the Mediterranean Adventure and I am sooooooo excited however my burning question that has kept me awake since Monday night (you would have thought it would be my impending wedding on Saturday :D) is will I still be able to watch Game of Thrones???? Season seven started on Monday night and I don't think I can wait to come home to catch up!

I've never been good at delaying gratification and to be honest waiting for this cruise has nearly killed me....we booked over a year ago!;p

Hi all

Just thought you might like an update.....it seems my work pc has a really out-dated browser and that meant the formatting was wrong so I used a different pc and managed to print them off successfully!

Hopefully this will mean that my wedding photos will feature my hair :D

Thank you all for your helpful advice.

Do not copy and paste to Word. Why? No need to do that.

It is just a PDF.

What printer? Print output, and paper settings? On a Mac or Windoze?

I guess I was panicking and thought it might be a solution :') I realise now that on the personaliser the formatting is not conducive with my work pc so I am going to email the pdf file to work and use acrobat to print it. Thanks :cool:

Luggage tags are a PDF document.

You might have more luck saving them to your PC first then opening them with Acrobat reader (or whatever PDF viewer you use) and printing from there.

You print the full page then fold it to suit.

Thanks for that I will give it a go. I have to use the printer at work (ssshhhh don't tell the boss ;)) as the one we have at home is having marital issues with my pc and is of no use whatsoever!

.Disclaimer: we are allowed to use the printer at work for personal stuff as long as it is "reasonable" and we are not printing reams of stuff :halo:

Ok I am not a complete troglodyte when using a computer but the damn things won't print it either prints the whole page when you use the "print luggage tag" button or it prints them half on one page and half on the back of the same page ! I have tried copy and pasting just the tags onto a word document so that I could then print it but I'd saves as a block of colour and no text!

Please, please tell me I am not having a senior moment and that everyone else had this issue.....I am tearing my hair out and I'm going to ruin my wedding photos with one whispy hair wrapped around my head....the fiance will do a runner at the isle when he sees the bald bride wailing and screaming "luggage tags" as she lurches toward him.

Please help :D

We are on the Crown for the 29th July sailing and we were offered a move over deal. As others have said it was one free cruise. As it is our honeymoon and we have been counting down the days, we couldn't accept the offer because we really need to go on holiday and everything else for the same period is sold out.

It does worry me slightly about what happens if they can't get other people to accept the offer?

As a couple we are quite easily pleased and accommodating but draw the line at sharing our cabin on our honeymoon:o

I had heard that a few people on the same cruise as my fiance and myself had received a "move over" deal. At the time I had thought that it was a really interesting quandary to have, cruise when you planned or have your original cruise price as obc, a free cruise plus an upgrade and £200 per person towards flights with princess air! :o

We have planned our honeymoon for over a year, looking forward to it, counting down the months, weeks and days. We have already paid for our hotel in Southampton and the valet parking so it would be a bit of a loss financially (however in terms of gain with the obc etc I realise its a small loss). We both work full time and to be fair our employers have been understanding so far with all the time off with the wedding and then the honeymoon.....I think my boss would have a stroke if asked to change plans now ;p.

After the initial excitement of the offer and the possibilities it opened up we both decided that the cruise we booked is what we wanted and are grateful we have that opportunity and are thankful we are cruising at all. :cool:

I was advised by my TA to leave it until after the honeymoon purely as we embark a week after the wedding so all credit and debit cards not to mention the booking and passport all still in my maiden name. We will take our marriage certificate to confirm its our honeymoon.

Here in the UK getting your passport changed at the height of holiday period is lengthy so just going to wait til we get back.

So I am a cruise newbie, my fiance and I are going to sail on our first cruise for our honeymoon in late July. My only expectations are to make it the best holiday ever and just enjoy all aspects of cruising.

Since joining this site all the warm and wonderful advice has whetted our appetite for the trip. The things that I am most looking forward to are:

1.Sailaway just the idea of standing on deck with a glass of wine and watching the port drift behind us and sharing it with everyone.

2. Our first night in our cabin, sitting on the balcony watching the sunset.

3. Meeting interesting people from all walks of life, all ages, nationalities and experiences.

4. Down time on sea days, organising a wedding has not been without stress so really looking forward to rest!

5. We are really looking forward to the ultimate balcony meal, a romantic meal on our own balcony.

6. A night at the casino, I have never been to one so looking forward to experiencing all those movie references like James Bond.

7. The food, it all looks yummy and best of all I haven't had to prepare, cook and clean up afterwards!

8. Formal nights ....who doesn't like dressing up?

9. Waking up somewhere new every morning but unpacking once.

10. Entertainment, we love live music, magic shows and comedians but don't get the opportunity at home.

What is everyone else looking forward to?

Really enjoying your review as we are sailing on the Crown Princess late July for our honeymoon. You seem to have had a wonderful time so far and this does put some of my fears to rest as there have been some terrible reviews of the Crown on here.

It's good to here about the weight limit for the cases as you rightly say this isn't mentioned and we can plan for that.

Looking forward to the next instalment.

So nice to see people coming together to show support, a commendable gesture from the Captain and Princess and its passengers.

Forget about buying wine in Singapore. It'll be much cheaper on the ship. Those pesky passengers from Southhampton can't possibly drink the ship dry. :evilsmile:

I would have a good try ;)

If you are going to buy 6BP-7BP wines and then pay corkage, you are better off getting the wine package. After converting pounds to dollars, your sunk cost per bottle will be around $24 per bottle. After getting two bottles on for free, an additional 12 bottles will cost you $288. If you drink your free bottles in a dining room, a corkage fee will be added to each bottle and your cost will now climb to $318. For that amount of money you can get the wine package and the quality of the wines will be at least as good as what you are buying at a supermarket for 6BP. Plus, it is much easier than lugging 12-14 of your own bottles onto the ship. Taking that many bottles of your own wine only really makes sense if your goal it to have access to wine that is of higher quality than what can be sourced on the ship. As a general rule...if you are happy with the quality of the wines on board, drink the wines on board. If you want aged wines or high end wines, bring your own.

Aha that makes sense, If the package is available....should be as its a 14 night cruise I think I will just go with the package and bring my two free on for in my room....I am assuming any that I dont consume on board I can take home with me? Blimey! Im gonna be swaying without the motion from the ocean :D

I like my wine and I know that I couldnt do 14 nights without any (it is my honeymoon too :)). So I have three choices

1. All Inclusive Package. this is far too expensive at £625 for the whole cruise and even I cant drink that much wine!

2. Buy the wine package, at a fraction of the AIP around £200-300 for 12 bottles which has the corkage and gratuities included (still a bit pricey for me)

3. Buy my wine at the supermarket (where I normally get it from at £6 - £7 per bottle) and pay $15 corkage per bottle.

If I go for option three, is there a specific way I must pack the bottles and arrange the fee, how do they know the corkage is paid etc has anyone done this before?

We have reserved a Florence excursion through princess but it is very pricey so was thinking of researching private tours however with Florence being quite a way from livorno, so my question is would you take the risk? I definitely want to see the the sights like the Ufizzi, the Cuomo, David, the doors at the baptistry and as it is our honeymoon a stroll on the Ponte vecchio is mandatory.....surely? What would you recommend ?

When you are on board you can buy various wine packages that will bring the cost per bottle down by $5 or $6 or so. You need to be sure that you will drink at least 10 bottles on your cruise. We got the 12 bottle package - no problem on a 17 day cruise!

 

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This is true Wowzz, however it is important to note that the wine packages are only available on 14 day plus cruises and then at the discression of the Cruise Director, I've seen lots of posts on the Princess boards where they are really upset that the wine package is not available due to number of days on board and I remember one post from someone on a 14 day Aussie cruise (on Princess) stating that as the Cruise Director didnt order enough wine for the trip they would be no wine packages!:mad:

The All inclusive drinks package is rediculously expensive and even I couldnt drink £600 worth of alcohol in two weeks. I am afraid that my other half will drink an occasional rum and coke on holiday and he has even been known to finish a meal with a Samucca however on holiday I can easily polish off a between three glasses to a bottle of wine a day so my only hope is the wine package will be available:o either that or we win the lottery lol

This is very interesting as we will be sailing on the Britannia next year!

This year we are sailing on the Crown Princess for our honeymoon and let me tell you it is a whole different ball game on the American ships!

We are allowed on 75cl bottle of wine each, (two per stateroom, which you can only drink in your room) and if you bring any more on you pay $15 per bottle corkage fee, or alternatively you can pay $29 per bottle from the ship plus gratuity!

We are sailing on Crown Princess on July 29th from Southampton on a Mediterranean cruise it says in our personaliser that we will have three formal nights...but doesn't say which nights they are. Is there a way we can find out?

Really enjoyed reading this thread. The reviews of the ship, the dining and excursions interesting and funny. My fiance and I are booked on the crown princess this summer on the med so found this review really helpful and very entertaining 😄