John Stokelmiss

Age: 32
Occupation: Director of Entertainment
Number of Cruises: 3
Cruise Line: Princess Cruises
Ship: Grand Princess
Sailing Date: April 28th, 2002
Itinerary: Western Caribbean

Well I must say the cruise was relaxing. I would rate my overall experience on the Grand Princess to be 6/10.

My wife and I have cruised 3 different lines and this experience had more ups and downs than any other cruise we have taken. We did a lot of research about the Grand Princess including reviewing this website extensively.

*** The UPside ***

The grand is a beautiful ship. The decor, pools, spa and entertainment areas were outstanding.

Personal Choice Cruising is cool. I will say for us we found eating to be a breeze but everything else became a little difficult for us because of Personal Cruising. We would still do it again but the Cruise line will have to do a few things different to make it more accommodating with everything else. See my Downside comments.

The food was great but only exceptional on a few nights. See downsides about eating on the ship below. The 24hour buffet was the best of any ship or resort we had been to.

The stateroom met all of our needs. It was nice but they really need to get rid of that little annoying round table in the room. Where your knee pads. Stateroom Service was excellent.

Best Port of Call was Cozumel. We ditched all cruise sponsored payable and went to Chankanaab Park - 10 minutes from the pier. $10 per person to enter and you have everything for an entire day for any age. It rivals some of the resorts where we have stayed. Biggest surprise was they waited on our every need. I didn't get up to get anything while laying under my free personal canopy. We snorkeled and would have rented scuba equipment if we didn't feel compelled to eat at one of the two decent full service restaurants. All of which is with 1 minute walk of everything. Absolutely a reason to just go to Cozumel. Spending the day their made our trip.

*** The DOWNside ***

Qualifier: We are critical only because we can't help comparing our experiences. Hopefully these comments will help someone plan their cruise a little better and make wise decisions that meet their needs. Everything you will read from here on was carefully submitted on 3 feedback surveys to Princess:

1. Personal Choice was great for us. We ate whenever we wanted in the dining rooms. However, we never could manage to find anything to do that hadn't already started or was scheduled to repeat at like 12:15 am. So basically we felt as we personally chose to miss almost all of the entertainment because the schedule never had any fun activities lasting for more than an hour (LIKE KAREOKE :().

Gratuity, Gratuity, Gratuity - We never really had much control over anything. We did opt to reduce the auto gratuity at the end (read next comment). Not my idea of all inclusive. And if you enjoy ice cream - enjoy paying for it on this cruise ship!! The most absurd thing I have ever heard of.

Soda Sticker Shock - Well the shock wasn't the price (for $20 you can get all the sodas you can stand for the entire cruise) - the shock will occur if you can get anyone to bring one to you within 20-30 minutes from anywhere on the ship. My advice is to buy the sticker and get your own drinks. This fact and the ice cream fees became the early joke among dinner conversations each night among just about everybody we sat with.

Biggest Negative - The ship's daily event schedule revolves around traditional seating. Twice as many passengers do personal choice. PROBLEM - The events are for first the family crowd (times as well for early bed times for the kiddies) and for the late night adults who want comedy at 11:30pm or 12:15am entertainment.

The ship not once had cool stuff that met our 30 something or our 40 something friend's needs for any duration at all. However, we did go and hang out in the disco ‘til 2 am twice because we wanted to dance a bit.

Did I mention they only had Karaoke for 1 hour on 2 nights. That was the way it was for just about everything we would have enjoyed.

I must say after all it is a LOVE BOAT and my wife and I did get to spend some much needed time together quietly trying to figure something out to do.

We met a lot of great people who were also wandering around trying to find something to do because they were caught in that personal choice time warp thing. We made a lot of great friends and had a great time with a number of couples.

Finally - I would consider going on Princess again if the ice cream were free, they had long 4 hour karaoke sessions so we could sing too, Princess let me control whether I wanted to reward someone for providing good service, I could order a cost effective soda and actually get it that same day, etc... you get the point. It was nice we learned we needed to be more informed about what happens on the ship, not just what to do when you get to the ports.

Speaking of PORTs

One reason not to book Princess Western Caribbean "Costa Maya". Although we had to skip this port due to sea conditions. I went top side to sulk and see what we were going to miss and asked one of the ship employees where was the rest of Costa Maya. He just laughed.

I suggest if you do Western Caribbean do Ocho Rios - Forget these cruise ship only money gouging ports. I am sure though that if someone was really hyped to spend $130pp to do an all day tour in the Yucatan looking for stone temples they could. But of course that is only possible if the cruise ship would bother not to cancel and reschedule new tours constantly.

I just can't seem to get it all out of me. Let me make one more comment. I felt like Princess in their own subtle way tried to find and capitalize on every dime I was will to spend. I did everything I could to keep my money so I could spend 2 hours in Cozumel trying to power shop since that was the only port that had anything beside cheap tourist crap to sell. The Cayman Islands doesn't count because the CI is worth more the our US dollar. No deals there - I promise!!!

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