Weeks before the cruise I spent hours setting up the Medallion Class and Ocean Ready applications on four cell phones so that my parents (in D514), my husband and I could communicate and utilize the newest technology during the cruise. The application never worked for either of my parents or my husband. I was only able to view the stateroom charges the first 3 days of the cruise and then nothing worked on either app. The weeks leading up to the cruise, when logged into the Princess website it stated that we could get on the ship at 10:00AM. When we checked in, we were told that we would have to wait until 11:15AM. When we boarded the ship we were told that the rooms would not be ready until 1:00PM. Therefore, we did not leave the public areas until 1:00PM. We later asked the stateroom attendant when he had to have the rooms ready during turnover and we were informed that staterooms are ready at 11:00AM. We had been awake since 12:30AM for travel that day to Fort Lauderdale and getting to the room for a nap would have been nice when we boarded. Upon entering our room D518 there were dirty towels on the balcony which I had to get housekeeping to remove. When we met our housekeeper for the first time I tipped him $20 as I enjoy the towel animals and requested them in our stateroom. When we did not receive an animal the first couple of nights, my husband tipped the stateroom attendant another $20 in order to get nightly towel animals in the room. During the entire 10 night cruise we received two towel animals for the $40. Although the towel animals were very detailed and we enjoyed them, we do not tip that kind of money for 2/10 nights for something we enjoy so much when cruising.

Missing from our room when we arrived was the dining assignments card. The first night of the cruise, we had no idea where to go for anytime dining until other guests mentioned the card that was in their room. We returned to our room, asked my parents (D514) to check their room and neither of us received it. We had to go to customer service to get the information on where to eat. Later we noticed that our shower drain would start backing up after a few minutes of showering. The issue became worse so we had to have maintenance come in and fix the issue. Half way through the cruise our showerhead wouldn’t stay upright no matter what we did so we ended up wrapping the emergency pull cord around it to get it to stay up. The D514 stateroom on the morning of 10 November had to take a cold shower during the 7:00AM hour because there was not hot water available in the shower or sink. My parents stated that several mornings they were subjected to cold showers early in the morning, as they did not have hot water in their shower or in their sink.

Prior to booking the cruise, we contacted Princess about their staterooms and amenities as we were comparing cruise ships and staterooms. We were never informed that the Crown Princess had tiered balconies. We paid a lot of money for a mini-suite, we could have purchased a balcony on Celebrity with the same square footage, that would have cost us less money and provided us with more perks. We never would have booked such a room had we of been informed. Our balcony had zero privacy, deck ten could look down and see the entire balcony. The balconies were also very unsafe as the handles to the balcony staterooms do no prevent a lock out. If one guest were on the balcony and another is in the stateroom and turns the handle ever so slightly the door is locked and the guest on the balcony is stranded. Read more