My wife and I recently cruised on the Golden Princess to Alaska from Seattle.While the scenery was beautiful, the ship was lovely, and we received, for the most part, excellent service, unfortunately our vacation was marred by the following experience.

Upon arriving in our stateroom on Saturday, my wife looked through the excursion tickets that were left in our room. (We had booked the cruise and all of our tour excursions through our travel agent.) She mentioned that everything appeared to be in order except that there were no tickets for the zip line tour that I was supposed to be taking in Juneau with my brother and nephew. The steward suggested we visit the excursion/tour desk to doublecheck our plans and my wife said she wasn’t worried. She had the confirmation, information and printouts from our travel agent about ALL the tours. The steward said it was always a good idea to check in with the travel desk.

We decided the next day to visit the excursion desk to ask a few questions since we were first- time cruisers and there were some procedures we were not familiar with. For example, we had several vouchers in our room that said we had received several $100 credits for tours from our travel agent. However, we assumed that this money appeared as a credit until we actually went on the excursions. Still, we just wanted to doublecheck as it was Sunday, we were at sea and unable to contact our travel agent.

We spoke with a woman at the tour/excursion desk and explained our questions about the ‘credit’ appearing on our account as well as the zip line confirmation. This is where the problems began. She looked over the paperwork that my wife had from our travel agent and said several times, “The zip line tour is not confirmed.” She seemed confused by the printouts that we had. My wife pointed out several times that there was indeed a booking number for the zip line tour and asked if perhaps we would not get tickets for this particular tour as it was not affiliated with Princess. There were clear directions written on the printout for how to meet this tour in Juneau. The agent continued insisting that we were not booked for a zip line tour, suggested that perhaps the credit on our account was for this tour because for whatever reason it was not confirmed, and seemed to indicate that if we were, in fact, booked on any tour she would have record of it.

My wife and I did not make a decision at the time but went back to our room to discuss it and look over our paperwork again. We felt like our email confirmation was clear enough but were confused by the agent's inability to explain our ‘credit’ and by her insistence that our confirmation/booking numbers were not valid. We finally figured that the tour/excursion specialists on the ship dealt with these things all the time and that they would know what is and is not confirmed. I decided to go down to the desk and try again to clarify the situation. Because my 10 year old nephew was really excited about this zip line tour, I didn’t want to take any chances.

The same agent, again, insisted that the paperwork we had did not indicate any sort of confirmation on the zip line/canopy tour. Although I felt a little unsettled about it, I decided to trust the expertise of the tour/excursion professionals on board believing that they knew better than I and went ahead and authorized charges for the zip line/canopy tour. My wife in the meantime had sent an email to our travel agent asking about the credit and verifying that for whatever reason, our zip line tour had not been confirmed at the last minute.

The following day my brother, nephew and myself went on this tour in Juneau and had a wonderful time thinking the matter was resolved. However, during the tour my wife received a call from the other zip line company asking where we were. We had been double booked after all. The tour desk was closed when we got back to the ship that evening so there was nothing we could do at that point. The next morning (the previous day had been a holiday) my wife received a message from our travel agent saying that we were absolutely confirmed on the first zip line tour and that any credit on our account was for excursions we had already paid for.

Although irritated at this point, I thought that this was a very clear misunderstanding and that once explained this matter could be quickly resolved. Due to a translation or training issue, the tour desk agent had led us to believe that our paperwork was not valid and we were not booked on a tour when we were. Basically, we had pre-paid the zip line tour with our travel agent and then paid again on board for another tour. I stopped in at the tour desk that evening and asked for the manager.

When I was finally able to speak to the tour manager the next day he looked at my paperwork and “straight away” recognized that we were booked and confirmed on a zip line tour that was not affiliated with Princess. He agreed that his staff had made an error in telling us we were not confirmed and should have immediately seen it was not a Princess tour. He also confirmed that the credit that had appeared on our account was for tours booked with Princess. Why the other agent could not have seen and explained this was not addressed but he insinuated that there were language issues and said that sometimes things got "lost in translation". The manager said he would get back to me later that evening with some sort of resolution. However, he called and said he needed more time.

We heard nothing on until the very last day of our trip and I had to seek out the manager again which I knew wasn't a good sign. At this point, he claimed that although he understood the confusion he (Princess) believed that our travel agent was at fault for booking with a non-Princess company, suggested that this was rare, and indicated that Princess’s official position was that our travel agent should have ‘better explained’ the procedures to us. While he did credit us $200, he claims this was the ‘best he could do’ under the circumstances. (He did admit that he felt it was their mistake and we were entitled to a refund) He gave us the information to lodge a formal complaint with their customer relations department which we immediately did upon on our return.
Today after speaking to Customer Relations, they made it clear that a) it is our problem and we should have better understood our own paperwork and that b) we will not be refunded any money and c) they didn't agree with the tour desk manager giving us any refund including the $200 he gave us.

This matter could have easily been resolved while we were on board and our vacation would not have been tainted by this incident. To blame our travel agent for the incompetence of their employees is ridiculous and to take advantage of first time cruisers in this way is unethical. Basically they are saying that their cruise passengers cannot trust what they are told by Princess employees?

Our directions were very clear and we did not question them until we were told by the tour desk personnel that our confirmation/booking information was not valid. If this agent was confused or not clear about what she was seeing she should have consulted her manager for assistance. While we wanted to believe that this was an innocent mistake based on inexperience, it appears that Princess might be in the business of cheating its customers then having the audacity to blame them for following directions/advice given by its employees. We were only originally questioning procedures and did not question our confirmation until their employee told us our paperwork was not valid.

Do not cruise with them. We met a man later who had been charged 6X for a helicopter excursion rather than for an excursion for 6 people. He was fighting that. We are going to continue to fight this but at this point its not even about the $ anymore. They shouldn't get away with cheating their customers in this way. (We are blowing up twitter, facebook and my wife's blog with this story and I am posting in every place I can.)

Grab your depends and set sail on the Grand Princess, my wife (41), two children 13 & 15 and I (41) took our second cruise this year and WOW what a mistake to have chosen princess to celebrate Christmas and New Years December 20 thru January 2, 2010-11. The same food was served for 14 days or re-cycled into a new dish and called something new; the hot food was cold and the cold food hot. The atmosphere on the ship bordered a retirement home and the nite life consisted of bingo.
The staff was adequate as long as you didn’t have an issue that required anything besides clean towels in your state room. One last negative before I mention the positive, if they mentioned Diamonds International one more time I was going to jump overboard.
(The chain of jewelry stores they own and have at least five of on every island and are so over priced it’s tragic that people would fall for this scam)

The islands we visited will leave a beautiful lasting memory for my family to remember and the majority of the island population loved the tourists. So if you are ok with using the ship as a floating hotel and want to be in bed by 9pm then this is the cruise line is for you.

DO NOT EVER USE PRINCESS CRUISE TO BOOK YOUR AIR FOR A CRUISE. We paid Princess ~$500 for a one day extension in Auckland at the end of our cruise. Princess booked us on a 6:15a.m. flight that day which required a 3:30 a.m. transport to the airport. We tried to rebook ourselves so we could use the extention and Princess said we would forfeit 75% of our air fare if we did. When we pushed them to rebook, they said there would be a $2200 "rebooking fee." I personally verified that there were multiple alternate flights available all the way up to our return which permitted Princess to meet the terms of our contract. Even though we paid $351.66 for their "vacation protection", they have totally refused to refund for this un-met part of our contract. This was compounded by their using 4 separate flights both for departure and return (the return 4 segments took 36 hours). Our first connection during departure had an unmakeable connect time (which we managed to modify ourselves with help from the airline). It is obvious that this is strictly a low cost bean counting organization which will totally disregard contractural obligations.

Recently, my wife and I took a cruise on the Ruby Princess. This is a new ship and this was it's fifth cruise. We have cruised before, four times with Carnival. We thought we would try a more "upscale" cruise line. WOW, what a total disappointment!! Our state room was much smaller than a comparable level selection with Carnival. No spa bath tub, Top sheet on the beds are attached to the blanket so you can't cover up with just the sheet. The balcony was not private as advertised. People have a full view of the balconies of the lower decks. Had to pay extra for ice cream, juices and pizza. (all free on Carnival) Soda "cards" cost $40.00!!! WORST of all was the food. Cold coffee, warm juice, warm milk, dripping wet sandwiches, stale bread, dried out meat, slimy gooey scrambled eggs, paste like oatmeal, very greasy sausages, nearly rotten slimy fruit (reused)dried out pastery, etc. Very little menu change from day to day. The food on all of our Carnival trips was of a much better quality and freshness. Believe it or not, the meal we had at McDonalds on our way home was much better than 90% of anything we consumed on the ship!!! We never dreamed that this "upscale" cruise line would serve such low quality meals. I believe most of the food is saved and reused for many days. Also, My wife left behind some clothing. She contacted them and we never got any reply. We also complained about the above mentioned problems to Princess lines and got no response. NEVER AGAIN!!