You have an excellent point about communication. Princess flipped the direction of travel for our entire itinerary and it canceled all sorts of excursions & outings that people had planned over Easter on Sun. We spent hours rebooking and re-planning our excursions - cannot even imagine the inconvenience and frustration of having your entire cruise canceled. Thank you so much for your review!
Thank you so much for your open and honest review and for sharing your experience, both good and bad. I hope things smooth out for you and you are able to relax and enjoy! Looking forward to the rest of your tour videos of the ship.❤
I have a cruise booked for next January and I must say this was eye opening.. thank you for taking the time while you’re supposed to be on vacation to share your experience
Thanks both - very informative. Hope things get sorted as best they can. 6 dollars a day, now that’s very spectacular - spectacularly bad. All these issues, reported by you in a fair and balanced way are certainly putting me off sailing with Princess in the future. Celebrity we may be back. Thanks Rex, try to have a good holiday.
The joys of sailing on a first/inaugural/maiden cruise!! There is no way that a ship that was not even out of the shipyard 2 weeks ago or so, could be totally ready and functioning at its best - I suspect that will take at least 3 months before things are even close to a "normal" experience. I love the idea of them serving even at the buffet. we are booked a year from now, so I imagine many if not all of these issues will be resolved by then. Thank you for this review.
Great video, you 2 tell it like it is. First cruises are super tough…. We sail from Rome April 8th! Hope they get it ALL worked out for our RUclips videos.
Princess should have waited until the ship was fully functional before passengers especially in light of the release of the Icon of the seas which seemed like everything was functioning. For icon they finished the ship and did a trans Atlantic with the crew serving as passengers. Princess should follow this lead.
Boy after this experience I would be looking at another cruise line. Lots of choices out there. It frankly does not sound like fun at all Thanks for your honest report. Princess has long had this "disconnect" and it is magnified with this situation.
Did you post on Reddit too? Your wording is exactly like someone who posted on there complaining. Regardless, while I definitely think Princess should have notified guests that the shows & venues wouldn't be available and given them the option to sail later, if that's the only reason you sailed I don't know why you bothered as good entertainment can be found many other places. Go enjoy the ports and the other parts of the ship. You're still on a cruise ship in the Mediterranean and there are so many people who would love to have your opportunities that cannot
Thanks to you both for the insights on this brand new Sun Princess as my wife and I will be cruising on it on the 19th of this month. I agreed with you guys about Princess’ accounting problems. They seemed to have issues in this area when it comes to identify and separate the refundable credit of something we had paid for and the non-refundable onboard credit they gave us, they just default everything into non-refundable so we won’t get anything back if we had leftovers
I was due to go on the cruise on the 18th which was cancelled. As I live in Europe, we were given a different email address for refund requests. Well after 16 days no reply to my emails, and yesterday I received an email from another email address telling me they were just going to refund me the $200 for the plane even though I was already in Italy on February 14th. I think it's going to be a long battle with Princess to get them to refund me what they promised to refund.
This is why I don't do inaugural cruises. Takes time to work the kinks out. Those making knee jerk reactions around never sailing Princess, need to separate which are permanent issues and which are hopefully temporary. If the temporary issues become permanent, then peace. But we all need guinea pigs, so thanks to this couple for producing this content to provide the initial information for everyone.
This is sadly such an accurate statement. The blame goes to John Padgett, current CEO of Princess. It has gotten dramatically worse under his leadership.
Thank you. I've had a lot of frustration already, and I have a strong opinion about the root cause: outsourcing. It took me several attempts (and a lot of wasted time) to find a competent person. Once I did, she was very effective. She was smart to ask me for the previously received documents instead of this attitude: the computer cannot possibly be wrong, so the customer is obviously wrong (I wasn't). Now, I just wonder if I should have selected Celebrity.
What a shame it seems you guys are pioneers for the rest of us! Were due June 1st and really hope they get their act together and really hope you guys manage to Enjoy the rest of your vacation
Thank you for your videos and your review of the Sun Princess. We are sailing on the ship in November and I’m enjoying seeing different parts of the ship.
Thank you for your vlogs. Totally agree with you re lack of entertainment. Terrible and $120 is a joke! We are so looking forward to sailing on Sun Princess Inaugural cruises always have challenges, and this is on all cruiselines. Personally, we now avoid Inaugural. Keep up the great work 👍
I think with Princess Land, customer service is a 3rd party business and not Princess employees. The right hand will never know what the left hand is doing.
Thank you. Very useful. We are booked in September. Why did you have to go in person to customer service? Could you not use the Chat on your medallion?
I appreciate all you said. I would be really angry, particularly about the entertainment. That is one of my favorite things. Plus all the confusion has to be frustrating. The only thing is that you keep talking about all the wasted time of your vacation, yet you decided that making a 30 minute video about missing time might be another waste of your vacation time. We are sailing in December, so thank you for all of this information
Subscriber #376 checking in. My issues: The Dome was beautiful, but the audio is going to be an issue. Between the water feature and the acoustics the sound was not good during the captain's circle event. In my opinion the piazza is a big disappointment. It no longer has that high end granite sophisicated feel. Plus, I do not want to eat sushi, pizza or drink a coffee at the international cafe and have to hear the loud events coming out of the piazza. The International Cafe really needed to be placed in the Dome or somewhere else that was more quiet on the ship. I used to love the International Cafe, but found the food and location not very good compared to the Royal Class. The buffet is not very good compared to past experiences., too small, poor quality food and had no clear start or stop point. The buffett fod literally never changed! Also, there is no self serve coffee or tea station which needs to be remedied. Also, I 100% agree with Rex that $6 a day for a closed theater and Dome is kind of ridiculous. The good: The customer service on the ship was great. My room was great. The dining room in the evening was very good. I also love the pizza on board and the burgers by the pool are a big improvement over the Royal Class. Also, the deck 9 soft servce ice cream is quite nice, but kind of hidden next to the the 3rd pizza location. Disembarkation and embarkation was a breeze, the eleveators were amazing!!!! Once you chose your floor, it directed you to a specific elevator. This helped flow and crowded elevators. Overall, the entertainment crew was top notch and did their best to turn Princess Live and the Piazza into entertainment venues while the Princess theater and Dome were closed. Doug & Jenna
So sorry you had to go through that. After Covid most of their experienced representatives were let go. The new outsourced representatives have no clue. I wasted much of my Christmas/New Years cruise waiting at guest services to reverse erroneous charges. Land and sea systems were not in sync so did not recognize my Premier package. Giving them one more chance then I am done.
Shower too small, no entertainment and the only adult area is a pay to use sanctuary, I’m not sold at all. I am so relieved to be booked on an older ship!
The way they do the buffet is not working for me. I do not get in line for something small and have to get in line for the whole station, so nope it’s a no go cruise line for me
Wow.... Thank you SO much for these videos and all of this information. Were you on a wider bump-out section, or on an in-set section... The balconies on the wider bump-out sections look very small. Small bathroom... Do you not remember the minuscule bathroom on the other Princess ships???? Ohhh my.... And, hey... if somebody is sitting there on the 'throne', I think I can wait until they come out.... Oy Vey!!!! Hahahaha!!!! Tip... for the old shower curtains.... WET THEM DOWN BEFORE YOU GET IN... they wont be as friendly / clingy!!!
great review very dissapointing becuse we joing the cruise Mar 9, and not having entertainment is not acceptable. We have not received any notification about this yet from Princess, becuase quite frankly we would probaly take options. I did get request to give up cabin I believe to overbooking. thanks for heads up in advance at least we will be prepared for it. Enjoy what you can.
Rex - people are reporting that they are being offered a move over cruise for the month of March because facilities aren’t open. Is anything being said about that on the ship and any news at all about when things will be open ? Many thanks.
I have not heard that on the ship at all, only on the boards and facebook. They are working on the dome and Arena all the time to get ready. Dome was closed yesterday and we couldn’t even get in. I think the arena will be ready 1st, then the dome, and I haven’t seen anyone working on Park 19. So, to answer your question, I don’t have the facts and no one from Princess seems to know either. Sorry I couldn’t be more helpful.
What a cluster!!! No organization and no one knows what the other one is doing. Not good for princess who has been lacking in customer service for some time now
@@rexdillinger talk to the HGM ( who is it now) and ask if you can meet the President, not sure he will agree to an interview. Most meetings/presentations are set up a head of time with the PR people.
Did you only hear the complaints and not the complements? My goal is to help people be informed so they can make the right decision about their vacation.
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You have an excellent point about communication. Princess flipped the direction of travel for our entire itinerary and it canceled all sorts of excursions & outings that people had planned over Easter on Sun. We spent hours rebooking and re-planning our excursions - cannot even imagine the inconvenience and frustration of having your entire cruise canceled. Thank you so much for your review!
We are on the ship with you, and I can agree 100% with everything you said about the ship AND Princess Corporate, Thanks for posting your critique!
Thank you so much for your open and honest review and for sharing your experience, both good and bad. I hope things smooth out for you and you are able to relax and enjoy! Looking forward to the rest of your tour videos of the ship.❤
I have a cruise booked for next January and I must say this was eye opening.. thank you for taking the time while you’re supposed to be on vacation to share your experience
Princess should have anticipated the issue with updated Medallions. They did not have enough time to ship the new ones to ANYONE. WT...?
Thanks both - very informative. Hope things get sorted as best they can. 6 dollars a day, now that’s very spectacular - spectacularly bad. All these issues, reported by you in a fair and balanced way are certainly putting me off sailing with Princess in the future. Celebrity we may be back.
Thanks Rex, try to have a good holiday.
The joys of sailing on a first/inaugural/maiden cruise!! There is no way that a ship that was not even out of the shipyard 2 weeks ago or so, could be totally ready and functioning at its best - I suspect that will take at least 3 months before things are even close to a "normal" experience. I love the idea of them serving even at the buffet. we are booked a year from now, so I imagine many if not all of these issues will be resolved by then. Thank you for this review.
Thanks for your honest views….we are going on the sun princess in April…hopefully some of these issues will be worked out by then.
Was very useful your comments. Thanks
Great video, you 2 tell it like it is. First cruises are super tough…. We sail from Rome April 8th! Hope they get it ALL worked out for our RUclips videos.
It's was very useful your comments. Thanks
Princess should have waited until the ship was fully functional before passengers especially in light of the release of the Icon of the seas which seemed like everything was functioning. For icon they finished the ship and did a trans Atlantic with the crew serving as passengers. Princess should follow this lead.
Boy after this experience I would be looking at another cruise line. Lots of choices out there. It frankly does not sound like fun at all Thanks for your honest report. Princess has long had this "disconnect" and it is magnified with this situation.
I can’t accept the ship is still not ready after several delayed
No ship is 100% on inaugural. You must be new to inaugural voyages.
I can accept the operation not go smooth! But how can we accept the feature venues not open and no production shows ?!!!
Did you post on Reddit too? Your wording is exactly like someone who posted on there complaining. Regardless, while I definitely think Princess should have notified guests that the shows & venues wouldn't be available and given them the option to sail later, if that's the only reason you sailed I don't know why you bothered as good entertainment can be found many other places. Go enjoy the ports and the other parts of the ship. You're still on a cruise ship in the Mediterranean and there are so many people who would love to have your opportunities that cannot
Thanks to you both for the insights on this brand new Sun Princess as my wife and I will be cruising on it on the 19th of this month. I agreed with you guys about Princess’ accounting problems. They seemed to have issues in this area when it comes to identify and separate the refundable credit of something we had paid for and the non-refundable onboard credit they gave us, they just default everything into non-refundable so we won’t get anything back if we had leftovers
I was due to go on the cruise on the 18th which was cancelled. As I live in Europe, we were given a different email address for refund requests. Well after 16 days no reply to my emails, and yesterday I received an email from another email address telling me they were just going to refund me the $200 for the plane even though I was already in Italy on February 14th.
I think it's going to be a long battle with Princess to get them to refund me what they promised to refund.
I hope not. Remember, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Keep at them.
This is why I don't do inaugural cruises. Takes time to work the kinks out. Those making knee jerk reactions around never sailing Princess, need to separate which are permanent issues and which are hopefully temporary. If the temporary issues become permanent, then peace. But we all need guinea pigs, so thanks to this couple for producing this content to provide the initial information for everyone.
Seems like Princess is too busy nickle and dime everything that they could care less about anything else, including their guests and their problems.
This is sadly such an accurate statement. The blame goes to John Padgett, current CEO of Princess. It has gotten dramatically worse under his leadership.
Thank you.
I've had a lot of frustration already, and I have a strong opinion about the root cause: outsourcing. It took me several attempts (and a lot of wasted time) to find a competent person. Once I did, she was very effective. She was smart to ask me for the previously received documents instead of this attitude: the computer cannot possibly be wrong, so the customer is obviously wrong (I wasn't).
Now, I just wonder if I should have selected Celebrity.
I think you are correct and it is not just in cruising
Hope it's all sorted out by the time I cruise in Feb. 2025
What a shame it seems you guys are pioneers for the rest of us! Were due June 1st and really hope they get their act together and really hope you guys manage to
Enjoy the rest of your vacation
Thank you for your videos and your review of the Sun Princess. We are sailing on the ship in November and I’m enjoying seeing different parts of the ship.
Thank you for your vlogs. Totally agree with you re lack of entertainment. Terrible and $120 is a joke!
We are so looking forward to sailing on Sun Princess
Inaugural cruises always have challenges, and this is on all cruiselines. Personally, we now avoid Inaugural.
Keep up the great work 👍
I think with Princess Land, customer service is a 3rd party business and not Princess employees. The right hand will never know what the left hand is doing.
Thank you. Very useful. We are booked in September. Why did you have to go in person to customer service? Could you not use the Chat on your medallion?
I appreciate all you said. I would be really angry, particularly about the entertainment. That is one of my favorite things. Plus all the confusion has to be frustrating.
The only thing is that you keep talking about all the wasted time of your vacation, yet you decided that making a 30 minute video about missing time might be another waste of your vacation time.
We are sailing in December, so thank you for all of this information
Subscriber #376 checking in. My issues: The Dome was beautiful, but the audio is going to be an issue. Between the water feature and the acoustics the sound was not good during the captain's circle event. In my opinion the piazza is a big disappointment. It no longer has that high end granite sophisicated feel. Plus, I do not want to eat sushi, pizza or drink a coffee at the international cafe and have to hear the loud events coming out of the piazza. The International Cafe really needed to be placed in the Dome or somewhere else that was more quiet on the ship. I used to love the International Cafe, but found the food and location not very good compared to the Royal Class. The buffet is not very good compared to past experiences., too small, poor quality food and had no clear start or stop point. The buffett fod literally never changed! Also, there is no self serve coffee or tea station which needs to be remedied. Also, I 100% agree with Rex that $6 a day for a closed theater and Dome is kind of ridiculous. The good: The customer service on the ship was great. My room was great. The dining room in the evening was very good. I also love the pizza on board and the burgers by the pool are a big improvement over the Royal Class. Also, the deck 9 soft servce ice cream is quite nice, but kind of hidden next to the the 3rd pizza location. Disembarkation and embarkation was a breeze, the eleveators were amazing!!!! Once you chose your floor, it directed you to a specific elevator. This helped flow and crowded elevators. Overall, the entertainment crew was top notch and did their best to turn Princess Live and the Piazza into entertainment venues while the Princess theater and Dome were closed. Doug & Jenna
So sorry you had to go through that. After Covid most of their experienced representatives were let go. The new outsourced representatives have no clue. I wasted much of my Christmas/New Years cruise waiting at guest services to reverse erroneous charges. Land and sea systems were not in sync so did not recognize my Premier package. Giving them one more chance then I am done.
Shower too small, no entertainment and the only adult area is a pay to use sanctuary, I’m not sold at all. I am so relieved to be booked on an older ship!
Thanks for this. Great information.
The horizon dining room was even more understaffed than the eatery 😅 and doing laundry was chaotic…as many of the machines are not working
The way they do the buffet is not working for me. I do not get in line for something small and have to get in line for the whole station, so nope it’s a no go cruise line for me
Thanks for share 👍🏻
Thank you for all the updates! Have they said when the entertainment will start?
Not this cruise. Other than that, no one has said.
Wow.... Thank you SO much for these videos and all of this information.
Were you on a wider bump-out section, or on an in-set section... The balconies on the wider bump-out sections look very small.
Small bathroom... Do you not remember the minuscule bathroom on the other Princess ships???? Ohhh my....
And, hey... if somebody is sitting there on the 'throne', I think I can wait until they come out.... Oy Vey!!!! Hahahaha!!!!
Tip... for the old shower curtains.... WET THEM DOWN BEFORE YOU GET IN... they wont be as friendly / clingy!!!
We are on the inset 12262. I think these are smaller than what I remembered on the older ships before Royal.
The dome look like all it had was chairs around a pool ?
great review very dissapointing becuse we joing the cruise Mar 9, and not having entertainment is not acceptable. We have not received any notification about this yet from Princess, becuase quite frankly we would probaly take options. I did get request to give up cabin I believe to overbooking. thanks for heads up in advance at least we will be prepared for it. Enjoy what you can.
Rex - people are reporting that they are being offered a move over cruise for the month of March because facilities aren’t open. Is anything being said about that on the ship and any news at all about when things will be open ? Many thanks.
I have not heard that on the ship at all, only on the boards and facebook. They are working on the dome and Arena all the time to get ready. Dome was closed yesterday and we couldn’t even get in. I think the arena will be ready 1st, then the dome, and I haven’t seen anyone working on Park 19. So, to answer your question, I don’t have the facts and no one from Princess seems to know either. Sorry I couldn’t be more helpful.
You are and have been Rex - thank you.
Any wonder Carnival Shares are showing a loss.
Any feedback on how starlink internet is working? details on stability and speed?
It took 14 hours to up load this video!
What a cluster!!! No organization and no one knows what the other one is doing. Not good for princess who has been lacking in customer service for some time now
I am surprised you did not see the president and the upper management from Princess around the ship as they are on it.
I would love to talk with and even interview the President !
@@rexdillinger talk to the HGM ( who is it now) and ask if you can meet the President, not sure he will agree to an interview. Most meetings/presentations are set up a head of time with the PR people.
People very upset.mangement of princeless cruises lines are the dump and dumber of industry
It’s a shame for Princess, such a bad organization on everything!!!!!
❤
REMEDY FOU YOU STAY AWAY FROM INGNAGURAL CRUISES. SUCH COMPLAINERS
To really be an inaugural cruise, the ship would have to be finished. This one isn’t.
30 minutes of Complaining. Why do you do it ?
Very useful information. If you want to continue to live in a Lala Land, why did you watch it?
Did you only hear the complaints and not the complements? My goal is to help people be informed so they can make the right decision about their vacation.
It was a fair and balanced AND FACTUAL review - keep it going Rex.
I agree. Though informative, totally nitpicking
Guest services told me that there are 36xx guests on board on this Feb 28 cruise.
Sounds awful.