Having traveled on Princess
Cruise ships for over 50 days in total, and having signed up for a 90 day
cruise in early 2017, it should be clear to Princess Cruise line and to general
readers that I have some serious appreciation for the line, its staff and ships.
Nevertheless, nothing is ever and always perfect and, given my experience, it
seems reasonable that I am allowed to make some comments on the less than perfect
elements which, for me, diminish the pleasure of a Princess Cruise line shipboard
experience.
Some of these less than
perfect elements are:
· The low chairs in
the dining rooms which mean that those vertically challenged diners [like my wife] end
up with their chin on the table [I exaggerate, but only a little, and only for
effect]. Cushions are available to alleviate the condition but the dining room
staff never offer them and seem reluctant to provide them even when specifically
requested.
· The food
available at second sitting, which generally seems have been sitting and
stewing in a bain marie since it was cooked before the 1st sitting. Promotions such
as ‘Aussie BBQ’, where overcooked, stewed ribs represented the only apparent
element of ‘BBQ’,was a risible effort. Princess make much in their advertising of
the high 'top notch dining' quality of their food, but the reality differs
significantly, and not to their credit. Curtis Stone, the monetised Australian chef-for-sale,
is now supposedly the creative artist behind Princess food – I hope his input will result in a significant improvement, but I won’t hang by the thumbs waiting.
Now, more substantially, my
last cruise was a 15 day round trip on the Dawn
Princess from Sydney to Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, taken
largely to see the World War II battle sites of Milne Bay where allied forces
[Australian] first defeated Japanese forces, and Guadalcanal where largely US
forces ultimately ended Japanese expansion. A poignant moment in the cruise was
the laying of a wreath in Iron Bottom Sound off Guadalcanal, in 760m of water over
the wreck of HMAS Canberra. The cruiser was severely damaged on 8 August 1942 at
the Battle of Savo Island, and subsequently sunk by a torpedo fired by the destroyer USS Ellet after 263 5-inch shells and four other torpedoes fired by USS Selfridge failed
to do the job.
Given that both the
embarkation and disembarkation ports were Australian, and given the Australian
connection, then and since, with the area through which the cruise travelled,
it will not be a surprise to learn that the overwhelming majority of passengers were Australian.
It would therefore be a reasonable expectation that the ship’s in-cabin TV
would carry a channel of Australian news, particularly since Dawn Princess is
currently dedicated to cruising from and to Australia. Such was definitely not
the case, a reasonable expectation or not. There was virtually no Australian news
available, but there was plenty of US so-called news on a dedicated Fox news
channel, a dedicated MSNBC news channel [which carried never ending shows about
US prisons and prisoners, of which there are many], a dedicated US CNBC news
channel and a dedicated BBC news channel carrying only US news. I’m now a Trump
intimate.
With current satellite communication
technology, and the global and on-board resources available to Princess, it
would have required very little effort to provide an Australian news channel,
or at least a daily news summary delivered to cabins. It is hard not to escape
the conclusion that Princess management suffer from a serious inflexibility or indifference, leaving them incapable of summoning
the imagination to understand what the needs of specific passenger groups may
be, and unable to summon the little effort required to satisfy those needs.
While on the subject of the
in-cabin TV, and specifically the Ch43 ScanDisplay which shows the moving map
track chart, weather conditions and navigation data, is it too hard to ensure that
it works? During all my time on board Princess ships, the ScanDisplay system has
been down, partially or completely, for the majority of the time. I like to see
where I’m going and where I’ve been and the serial lack of interest by Princess
management in ensuring that ScanDisplay is properly and continuously up and running is infuriating.
My final comments are related
to the destination information provided on board by the so-called ‘Destination Lecturer’.
The information is almost without fail unreliable, incomplete and out of date.
For example, at the beginning of June 2016 the port of Sydney information still
refers to the elevated Sydney Monorail as a preferred transport alternative.
The monorail ceased operations in June 2013. Maps of destinations are mostly unavailable
and in my view the quality of the destination lecturers leaves a lot to be
desired.
On my last cruise our 'destination lecturer' treated the audience as an unfortunate
cross between children and inmates of a home for bewildered geriatrics. Destination
ports are a major element of the cruise experience and it is totally insufficient for
Princess to allow the important
task of informing passengers about the history, geography, layout and
attractions of the destination to be casually and blithely confined to a few photos of local children and suggested shopping ‘opportunities’.
