My wife and i recently took a cruise on princess' Emerald Princess. The whole trip, Samantha was on the ship's tv channel talking about how great the cruise is. The cruise was a disaster. below is a letter i wrote to princess. I want to give Samantha a heads up and see what she says.

here is the letter...

Princess sure took us for a ride. My wife and I decided to spend our honeymoon on the Emerald Princess sailing 21-October-08 from the Port of Fort Lauderdale with stops in Princess Cays, St. Thomas, Dominica, Grenada, Bonaire and Aruba. What we experienced left us very dissatisfied and disappointed. In the end, Princess paid more attention to cutting corners and lowering costs than to serving customers. To be fair, I have listed the pros and cons of the trip.

PROS
1.Staterooms: We stayed in a stateroom with a balcony on the Baja floor mid-ship. While the room was not big, it was clean. The bed was comfortable and the bathroom was sanitary. Our steward, Allan, was fabulous. He made sure our room was always in tip-top shape. There were a few times we left the room to get a quick drink and upon our return Allan cleaned the whole room. Simply amazing.

2.Head Waiter in the Da Vinci Dining Room: My wife is a vegan, which makes eating on holiday a challenge. Francesco, the head waiter in the Da Vinci Dining Room, made sure she ate well. He took it upon himself to conjure up dishes that she simply loved. He also prepared extra of each meal so that I could have a taste. I was actually jealous because the regular food on the ship was awful, as I point out below. Francesco went above and beyond the service anyone else on board was willing to provide. He deserves the employee of the year award! In contrast, no one else seemed to care or understand that my wife is a vegan. The other staff were difficult to deal with and made my wife’s eating experience very negative.

3.Pre-Cruise Services: I was very impressed with the quickness that Princess got us on our ship. From our arrival to the port, it took about 30 minutes until we were in our stateroom.

CONS
1.Food:
oBreakfast left me desiring more. The options consisted of cold eggs, fatty bacon, stale bread selection and flavorless fruit. The oatmeal was more like tasteless slop. The sit down breakfast in the dining room had the same food as the buffet.
oLunch buffet reminded me of Fridays in my college cafeteria. The lunch buffet consisted of meals whipped together at the last minute with the left-overs from dinner the night before (or so it seems). My personal favorite was the “caesar wrap”. The cruise actually took the left over caesar salads from the night before (dressing already applied the night before), and put them into a flour tortilla. As anyone who tries to eat salad that has been sitting in dressing over night knows, the salad was simply disgusting. The lunch buffet was cold, tasteless and generally lacking anything worth eating.
oDinner buffet was unimaginative and bland. The food was cold most of the time and lacked any flavor. The choices for dinner left me wondering who was making the decisions on what to serve the passengers.
oPizza and hamburger stands were awful. The pizza was the worst I ever had. Most of the time it was undercooked or overcooked; never just right. The cheese had a powdery texture and lacked the correct taste. The hamburgers were made from low quality meat that tasted more like soy burgers than hamburgers. I would stay away from the hot dogs.
oSnacks: I do not know where the snacks were, even though certain buffet items were called snacks. Whatever happened to chips and salsa, finger sandwiches, and ice cream? None of this was available on the ship during regular hours.
oDining Rooms: The food in the dining room was bad. The caesar salad was an embarrassment, the meat was tough and tasteless, the lamb was flavorless, and the desserts were not to die for. To be fair, the last couple of days seemed to get better. There was a fantastic wild mushroom soup, the shrimp platter was good, and the turkey meal was very good.
oA word of caution to people with allergies or special diets. The food in the buffet is often times mislabeled or half labeled. Certain vegetables are cooked in butter and sandwiches have mystery ingredients. One big complaint for my vegan wife was that the buffet would not and could not make a sandwich for her without dairy because the sandwiches were premade. This made it difficult to eat during the day.

2.Packed lunches: I have been told that cruise lines wrap sandwiches for day excursions. On this ship, I was told twice that they do not do this. I find this ridiculous. We pay for the food. What is the big deal? Why not wrap a sandwich for a customer?

3.Wait staff: Talk about a crabby group of people. I do not know what happened, but 9 out of 10 wait staff were rude, unhelpful and sometimes never to be found. In the buffet and dining room it was difficult to get a set of utensils, an extra napkin, or a refill on your water.

4.Room service: While the sandwiches were good, the lack of communication skills or service skills made this experience annoying. We tried to order the avocado sandwich without mayo for my wife. Three times we had to call back to re-request no mayo. Two times the sandwich came back with no mayo…and no avocado. Simply ridiculous.

5.Beverage service: I was surprised to learn that water and rank coffee (the kind that makes Folgers seems like a luxury brands) are the only included beverages. Ice tea, soft drinks and the like come as an additional expense. There were times where the included beverage dispensers were closed for maintenance. Alcoholic drinks were $6 to $7.

6.Entertainment: The ship made the decision to have big events in small entertainment rooms, even when the large theater was available. For many shows, the room was packed forcing folks to stand. One night a comedian performed in the bar area even thought the theater was open. I couldn’t even see the performer because I was pegged against the back wall.

7.Pools: While the pools were nice, they seemed to open and close at strange times. One of the few, small hot tubs was closed the entire trip. There were times where two different hot tubs were out of order for some time. Also, pools are “swim at your own risk”. Now I know why they have this sign. Many of the pools are lined with stained wood without foot grips or rubber. I saw 3 people take major spills. Other pools do not have hand rails. Again, people fell. This seemed to be the theme. I do not get why foot grips and hand rails were not installed.

8.Communication of schedule: It seems that everything with a printed schedule for the day (eg, Princess Patter, TV, and signs around the ship) was in constant contradiction of each other. This happened a few times on the ship. Also, my itinerary and the purser desk told us we would arrive in Ft. Lauderdale at 7:00 AM. The ship’s TV gave a report from the bridge that it would be 8:00 AM. Imagine the confusion.

9.Purser Desk: There were three or four people at the purser desk the last day of the cruise. I waited for 30 minutes to talk to someone about the charges on my account. Also, I had to fix Princess’ mistake of my disembarkation time. Online I was asked the time for our flight home, which was 11 AM. Princess gave me tags for a 8:45 AM meeting that would last 30 minutes to get me off the ship. I then would need to find my luggage and a taxi to the airport. This obviously puts me past the 2 hours I need to be at the airport before my flight…it might even put me past the last check-in time should something go wrong. I was very frustrated. Why even ask what time our flight is if attention is not paid to the details?

10.Internet Services: I do not mind paying for internet service, but with Princes…buyer beware! I chose to pay by the minute because I wanted to check emails for less than 5 minutes twice on my trip. The service was so slow that it took 4 to 5 times as long for pages to load as my connection through wi-fi. Needless to say, the time and cost added up fast.

11.Safety: I felt that at times safety was a concern and other times not. We went through the usual emergency muster process. That was very good and well organized. But the rest of the trip was suspect. Exit signs were burnt out all over the ship; one that should have worked near my room was off. I mentioned it to a crew member when passing by and nothing was done.

Final thoughts…I recommend staying away from this cruise. You are far better off with a provider that cares about its customers and offers top notch service. This cruise did not do that.