Caribbean Princess - service complaints

[spongerob]

Then they were officers acting inappropriately. I just don't think they should be dancing with the guest, in the bar, late at night.

Take a gander at the "Shipboard Love Stories" board. Apparently there is much more than dancing going on. If you read the short bios Princess provides for the various captains, you'll see that many of them met their wives during a cruise. Maybe some day we'll read that a captain met her husband on board. :D

[rexin]

Sue I am not sure I understand your question but I will relay to you what happened on my recent cruise. Ship personel be the officer or staff were in the disco very late. According to our table mates who danced with them, I did not, said they are not allowed to ask anybody to dance but can dance with passengers if they are asked. OK no big deal. However, are table mates where then asked to go to a crew party later on the next night. Look I am all for them having a good time. I just felt it was inappropriate and showed poor managment and judgement of the "officers".

[spongerob]

Since we've strayed far off topic, would you mind starting a new thread about what is and is not proper behavior for officers and/or crew? I think it would be very interesting!

[SissasMomE]

Most of the Cruiselines have instituted the policy of adding tips to everyones shipboard account automatically. This insures an equal distribution of tip money regardless of how an employee performs./QUOTE]

 

 

 

Not exactly. You can have it removed ... at least on Princess you can. I am having the automatic tipping removed as soon as I board the ship. I will tip at the end of the cruise appropriate to the service I rec'd. No way is someone else going to designate how much of a "tip" I am going to give ... no way.

[GloriaF]

Did you notice that the figures posted from travelocity showed the CB with 500 more pax and 8 less crew than the Golden? I still think spongerob has a valid point about pax:crew ratio. CB is 2.7 & Golden is 2.3 Doesn't seem like a lot, but maybe just enough to make the difference in service.

[JUST ADD WATER]

We have been watching the boards for quite some time looking at CP reviews. I think some of the bad reviews the past few weeks have been IN PART due to wild circumstances. However, there were rough reviews of this ship LONG before the hurricaine cruises. We were on the Century in May and had the chance to speak with some passingers on the CP while in port. There were "growing pains" even then. We booked the ship anyways figuring the bugs would be worked out by fall.

 

No matter what, we are going to have a good time on our cruise. We will try to post a fair and detailed review on our return. Sometimes preparation is key to a cruises like this. We are prepared for a few rough spots with service. If they happen we will not be caught off guard. If they do not we will be pleasantly surprised. Either way we are going to HAVE FUN!

[nicering2]

We just got back from the Caribbean Princess. On the back of the Log it says the Max Passenger capacity is 3622 people. It says the "Normal Crew Complement" is 1200.

 

We had no major complaints, service was a bit slow at times all over the ship... but nothing that caused real concern. This was our first cruise, so we really do not have anything to compare our experience with. At times dining room service was really slow. Bar staff, particularly ones in the theatre, and Explorers, were extra slow. Hubby and I noticed when we ordered soda, we would not get it, or we had to ask a few times before it came. If we ordered alcohol, it seemed to come faster!

 

Hope that helps

 

Terri

[bubr61971]

Was on the 10/2 sailing of the Caribbean Princess. Personally the staff was not as personal on the CP as I experience on the Explorer of the Seas. Our room steward always spoke but was to busy to stop for one second to communicate with us. Frankly, all the stewards on Carbe Deck seemed the same way. They where always running around like chickens with their head cut off, always seeming upset if you happen to be in their way as you where walking down the hall.. Our steward keep the room clean but not as much as our steward did last year on RC. I truly missed the extra personal service. I think the staff is straighted to thin and in the long run it will make a difference in repeat customers. I was part of a large group and I would say 95% felt the same way. Over all had a good time but at the same time a little disappointed in Princess.

[c&d]

For Future CP passengers.

 

 

LOCK YOUR LUGGAGE AND CHECK ITEMS LEFT AT DOOR FOR MISSING ITEMS.

 

WE WERE ON THE 10-2 sailing.

 

That is all I will say. Someone else on that cruise wants to comment please do so.

[nicering2]

For Future CP passengers.

 

 

LOCK YOUR LUGGAGE AND CHECK ITEMS LEFT AT DOOR FOR MISSING ITEMS.

 

WE WERE ON THE 10-2 sailing.

 

That is all I will say. Someone else on that cruise wants to comment please do so.

 

 

We were on the 10/2 sailing and had alcohol stolen from our bags. We had an extra suitcase and took the bottles out the box and put them in the suitcase. We had three bottles taken from the bag! We know they were taken on the ship because we checked as soon as we got the the airport, DH thought the bag was a little light!

 

I have a call into Princess.

 

Terri

[Annies Porch]

We just returned from the 10/2 CP sailing and we were also on the Caribe deck. We had a fantastic time and never had a problem with the crew being unfriendly, including the ones who stopped to let us pass in the hallway. We found them to be friendly and courteous and efficient. In fact, we commented on the fact that the crew is made up of people from 44 different countries and it appears that their "work ethic" is probably much better than most Americans. They obviously work very hard and have very long hours, but the ones we talked to had a wonderful attitude and seemed to be very happy to be there.

The only thing we did notice (and it was no big deal to us) is that when we were eating in one of the dining rooms in the evening and didn't order a drink before dinner the wait person who asked us about something from the bar showed fairly obvious displeasure when we declined - after that everything was fine. We did have an occasional cocktail on board but we don't drink much as a rule and wanted to save our appetite for the fabulous meals....:)

[Bob & Barb]

SissasmomE -- are you aware of the tipping policy on Princess? If you remove the tips from your account, any tips given to any staff thereafter must be turned in to the "pool" of tips. If you leave the tip on your account, the staff can pocket the tip you give them for good service. The staff are very careful about this because they don't want to lose their job. If you give them a tip, and they don't already know your cabin number, they will ask you for it so they can make this check before keeping the tip.

 

Bob

[richardj]

For Future CP passengers.

 

 

LOCK YOUR LUGGAGE AND CHECK ITEMS LEFT AT DOOR FOR MISSING ITEMS.

 

WE WERE ON THE 10-2 sailing.

 

That is all I will say. Someone else on that cruise wants to comment please do so.

We too were on on 10/2 cruise on CP, had a great time on board especially meeting fellow CC members. Only arrived home last night so did not bother to open cases until today and found that one of the suitcases must have been tampered with whilst we were at Dinner on the last night. This was the only time the cases were unlocked with the clothes inside and they were perfectly fine when they were packed, my husband is very meticulous with the packing and usually does mine also. When we opened my husbands case this morning to our horror we found 2 polo shirts, 2 pairs of shorts, 1 shirt and 1 pair of expensive trousers had been damaged by some sort of bleaching agent right in the middle of all the other clothes, they now resemble something that would have been worn in the 70's!! (tiedyed). We only had clothes and shoes in the case as all toiletries were in our handbaggage. There was no damage to cases as they are polycarbonate, so where did the bleach come from? We had stored a box which normally held a piece of John Hardy silver in the case but the jewellery was in the safe waiting to go into our hand luggage so was someone searching for the jewelery and were disappointed at not finding anything???? We have spoken to Princess and we now have to prepare reports for them and our insurance. This is the first bad experience we have had in all our years of travelling and this was our third Princess cruise with a fourth booked for February, but we will be more careful next time.

[SissasMomE]

SissasmomE -- are you aware of the tipping policy on Princess? If you remove the tips from your account, any tips given to any staff thereafter must be turned in to the "pool" of tips. If you leave the tip on your account, the staff can pocket the tip you give them for good service. The staff are very careful about this because they don't want to lose their job. If you give them a tip, and they don't already know your cabin number, they will ask you for it so they can make this check before keeping the tip.

 

Bob

 

 

I am aware of the tipping policy. I do not believe in automatic tipping, and I won't reward bad service with a tip that was planned before the service was even provided.

[jeno]

We were also on the 9/18 cruise. The ship was packed. It was much more so than the Grand. We will never go on this ship again. You had to get to evening entertainment an hour in advance to get a seat. Every area was always packed.

We had so many problems in our first 4 hours, including a cabin that reeked of smoke, that we asked to have our cabin changed or we would get off the ship. We live in FLorida, so it would be no big deal to go back home.Three different staff had come in and admited it was really bad. This was not their fault, but they weren't really going to do anything about it. It turned out that the guy before us smoked both a pipe and cigars in the room. My husband is allergic to smoke. We had an outside cabin, but no balcony.

We had gone to lunch and each took 4 coffee cups before we found one without white suff floating in it. The waiters were off in a corner gossiping and wouldn't help- just looked at us and kept on talking. Our cabin was not set up properly and was missing many items. The cabin was so small that our bed was against a wall and we had to crawl onto the bed.

We are Platinum Princess and have had great luck all other times. This ship is a disaster and the help is very lazy for the most part. We had a great steward, Blackjack Dealer and a one good waiter, otherwise pretty much of the help didn't seem to care a bit. Sorry to be so negative, but this is so unlike our other Princess experiences.

The crew may have been too few, but they also did not work very hard.

[Debi_D]

[quote name='nicering2']We were on the 10/2 sailing and had alcohol stolen from our bags. We had an extra suitcase and took the bottles out the box and put them in the suitcase. We had three bottles taken from the bag! We know they were taken on the ship because we checked as soon as we got the the airport, DH thought the bag was a little light!

I have a call into Princess.

Terri[/QUOTE]
Wow I am very surprised by this, as you can see we are leaving soon and we always stuff two bottles in our large bag so when we get to our room we open it and away we go. Did this happen before the sail, in between or when you were on getting off the ship????

Deb

[rexin]

We were on the 9/27 hurricane shortened cruise with 1/3 LESS passengers than the boat's capacity and we still had service problems. I don't know if they let some of them take the week off or not but even with that many fewer passengers it still seemed they were understaffed. I really think the managment on this boat is poor.

[bdjam]

[QUOTE]I am aware of the tipping policy. I do not believe in automatic tipping, and I won't reward bad service with a tip that was planned before the service was even provided. [/QUOTE] [font='Bookman Old Style']Hmm…I guess the question is how do you know you’re going to get bad service? Removing the auto tip only penalizes the staff – if you remove it and get good service the staff will be under-tipped…[/font]
[font='Bookman Old Style'][QUOTE] [font=Verdana]Then they were officers acting inappropriately. I just don't think they should be dancing with the guest, in the bar, late at night.

I was also obvious that those rules are even more lax in port. They were having a good time at Carols and Charlies also. Not officers staff.[/font][/QUOTE]
[font='Bookman Old Style']I know it has been a while since this was posted, but I’ve missed a lot of the responses here. I think inappropriate is in the eye of the beholder – I don’t happen to think officers dancing with guests in a bar late at night to be inappropriate. Even if the passenger was asked to a crew party – they can always decline. As for being on shore, realize that the people who work on these ships are on them seven days a week for months at a time. The only time they have off – weekends for you and I – is when they are in port and it is their rotation off the ship. Give them a break. I am surprised, however, that you found them at Carlos and Charlie’s – normally they try to get as far away from the passengers as possible. [/font]

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