Princess Plusses

The last time I dissed Princess - today I praise them.

Once we stepped on board the Crown Princess it felt like all our troubles (and especially those involving getting to the ship) we lifted off our backs.

I cannot remember the last time I felt as relaxed as at the sailway party. We watched the ship begin to pull away from shore from our balcony, then headed up to the outdoor promenade deck to join hundreds of others as we sailed past Battery Park, the Statue of Liberty and under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge (barely). A band played Calypso songs, a little Jimmy Buffett and a host of other tunes to get people dancing and in the mood to escape...completely, as the cruise line says.

We stood there enjoying the ocean breeze and watching people hang up and turn off their cell phones as we sailed out of range. It was a pleasure to turn off the electronic anchor - I am one of those people who believes you can be too easy to reach.

The Crown Princess is a beautiful ship but huge beyond belief. At the time of our sailing we were told the ship was the fifth largest cruise ship in the world. It stretches 951 feet long and 118 feet wide, with room for more than 3,000 passengers and over 1,000 crew members in its 19 decks.

Wood panelling and polished brass are everywhere, and the town centre of this floating community is the three-deck 'piazza,' an open area for sitting with a glass of wine or a cup of coffee and dessert while listening to a string quartet or watching jugglers, acrobats or a food carving competition between the ship's chefs. Surrounding the piazza are a coffee bar, wine and sushi bar, lounges, a casino, duty free shops and some of the dining rooms.

We chose this particular cruise for the itinerary (NYC up to Halifax and back down the coast to NY). As we got closer to sailing day we became more comfortable with the idea of a big ship. We like most people but we also liked the idea we could be anonymous if we wanted. And we also felt that the bigger the ship, the more there was to do and the Crown Princess never let us down.

One of the main attractions to a cruise for a lot of people is fine dining, and the food is every bit as good as you may have heard. The Crown Princess offers three dining rooms, one with traditional cruise dining each night, where you sit at the same table at the same time with the same people. We chose Anytime Dining, where you come down when you're hungry and you can sit with others or by yourselves. The menu changes each night but the choices are identical in all three.

Including the dining rooms, the Crown Princess has 10 places to go if your feeling peckish. These range from two alternative restaurants (a steak-and-seafood grill and an Italian trattoria, somehow offering you more food and better service at a surcharge) to two buffets, a pizza and ice cream bar and a hamburger and hotdog grill.

Room service is there for you around the clock and Princess also features what they call Ultimate Balcony Dining (for a surcharge). For dinner you will get steak and/or lobster, soup, salad, appetizers, dessert, cocktails and a bottle of wine. Each course is delivered one-at-a-time by a waiter and a ship photographer will drop in to take a shot to remember the evening by. We opted for the ultimate balcony breakfast, with a half-bottle of champagne and enough pastries, hot dishes and fresh fruit to feed Luxembourg.

Ironically, neither of us gained any weight on board. It seemed like the only time we sat down was when we were eating. We walked and walked and walked around each of our ports of call and in the evenings we danced, played miniature golf or strolling the outdoor promenade. Even when we weren't doing anything 'physical,' we were burning calories walking from the wine tasting in one end of the ship to the theatre in the other end and, after that, going back to the top deck to watch a film or concert at "Movies Under the Stars" a 300-square-foot outdoor movie screen. And if you can make sure you use the stairs instead of the elevators wherever practical you can burn off yesterday's dessert.

There are those frequent cruise vacationers who say you lose the intimacy of a small ship on a giant vessel like the Crown Princess. For us, we enjoyed being in a big enough shipe where we could be anonymous if we wanted to but where there was no shortage of things for each of us to do from sunrise until way past sunset...

In closing, despite the way they botched our trip to the ship, we'll be sailing again next January on our first-ever winter vacation. It just happens that the Crown had the itinerary we wanted so it'll be like visiting an old friend again.

The End of Culpability?

Last fall my wife and I went on our first-ever cruise. We are not exactly luddites when it comes to going places, but living within an hour of the geographic centre of North America does limit our sailing options somewhat. Getting to a port almost doubles the cost of our trip.

Since it was our first time, we decided to move cautiously, taking a short trip in an area with which we were somewhat familiar. We chose a seven-day cruise aboard the Crown Princess from New York to Halifax and back.

We loved every minute - once we were on board (more on that later). Getting to the ship was a disaster. Sort of like Planes, Trains and Automobiles.

We flew out of Winnipeg at 6:20 a.m. in order to get to New York early enough to enjoy some of the sights and sounds (but not the smells) that day before setting sail the next. Northwest surprised us and we arrived in the Big Apple right on time.

We were met (not greeted - that would indicated a degree of friendliness) at the airport by a Princess rep. We told her who we were and where we were staying and she asked us to hang on for another 20 minutes because she was waiting for another couple for us to share the shuttle with. No problem, and then about 45 minutes later she loads us into a van and we're headed downtown.

The only problem is the hotel Princess was putting us up at was in Brooklyn, and the airport rep did not bother to tell the driver. He just assumed we were staying at the same hotel on 7th Ave. as the other couple. He checked with someone (the rep? his boss?) and said she knew we were going to different hotels but didn't bother telling him.

So we sat double-parked for more than 45 minutes on what is possibly the busiest thoroughfare in the world. The driver called his people, we called our travel agent and she called Princess to see if we had been moved (when we first booked the trip we were supposed to stay at that hotel, but they changed it).

Once it was confirmed we were Brooklyn-bound our driver said he'd take us there but it would cost us $20 each. We went for it because we were too worn-out to make other arrangements. We got to the hotel at 4:30 and paid the driver. We dropped the bags off in the room and hopped onto a subway for Midtown.

When we checked in at the hotel we got a note from the cruise line saying to have our bags packed and ready for pick-up by a bellman at 11:30. The next morning while my wife was in the shower the phone rang - it was a (different) rep from the cruise line saying the note was incorrect. The bags would be picked up at 9:30. So much for a restful morning.

We race to get ready and about 10 a.m. we go down to the front desk to see if someone is coming up for the bags. The desk clerk speaks to the head bellman and they agree no one from Princess asked them to pick up the bags but they head back to the room with us right away.

Our bags now in storage, we can finally head out for breakfast. We meet the second rep in the lobby at the appointed time and the shuttle to take us and one other couple to the port is nowehere to be found. We wait...and wait...and wait. Half an hour later the rep tells us there's been some mechanical problems and another shuttle is coming. We're happy the ship doesn't sail for 4 more hours and we're relatively close to the port.

Eventually the shuttle pulls up for the four of us - and it's a ginormous Greyhound-style bus.(Of course, the four of us could've fit easily in a taxi.) We get going and the driver radios his dispatcher, saying he'll have us at the Midtown port in 45 minutes. I yell out "We are not sailing out of Midtown! We sail from Brooklyn." The driver stops, talks more to the dispatcher who says "If they say they're sailing out of Brooklyn, take them to Brooklyn."

We got to the port, stepped on board the ship and everything was better than we'd hoped - and we had high expectations. When we arrived back in NY, we were one of the first groups off the ship but were told our bus would not be leaving the port for Midtown for several hours. When we complained to the supervisor (mentioning our earlier travails), she said "Oh, you're the people..." She arranged for a car to pick us up and take us to the hotel and then for another to pick us up at the hotel and take us to the airport when we left a few days later.

Back at home, I got in touch with the cruise line and said we wanted to be compensated for the extra costs. We provided copies of the receipts and the cell phone bill for calling Winnipeg from NYC. They agreed to pay the transport costs but refused to acknowledge the cell phone bill or provide any sort of recognition of culpability for what happened and their employees (in)actions. We were not expecting much - just an acknowledgement of the errors and perhaps a $50 credit towards a future cruise. If they had said the cars provided in NY were because of the earlier episodes, we would've been OK.

Furthermore, their correspondence was filled with corporate double-speak. Things like "We are sorry you feel like were badly treated." Not "we are sorry you were badly treated."

Does no company or nobody take responsibility for their actions anymore?