Princess Cruises - Regal Princess Review

Check in was easy, and as we were fairly early, it was uncrowded. We boarded at noon. We had flown in from Nevada earlier in the morning, so we were very hungry when we got onboard, so we headed to the buffet. The Lido Buffet seemed very nice, with a nice variety. First impressions can often be wrong, however. More on that later. We went to our cabins (p 176, 178, 180 and 182) and were pleased by the size of them. Cabin 176 was set up differently than the other three and seemed smaller. We met our steward, Christopher, who was very, very nice and kept the cabins immaculately clean during our cruise. The ship sailed around 4:30 pm and began the beginning of 5 days at sea. I was amazed at how calm the Pacific was. It was sunny and the sea was almost flat, which made for a pleasant sailing. The first evening we decided to eat in the Lido Buffet, and that is when our dining adventure started. The food was bizarre. The desserts were horrible. Luckily the poppy seed rolls helped fill a void. The salads at the beginning of the buffet line were really weird. One night they had "hot dog and grape salad" which I chose to avoid. They also filled the salad choices with various versions of potato salad (Fish potato salad, salmon potato salad, etc). Without question the strangest food they had in the buffet was a chicken, peanut butter, jelly and sage brown cheese sandwich on a bagel....and I did not taste that one either. My mom and I looked forwarded to seeing what horrible foods we could choose from every night. The kids loved eating in the dining room, which was fine with us since we enjoyed relaxing more than getting dressed up. I brought home copies of the very weird menu choices from the dining room, as well. One night they had rabbit, buffalo and deer, which seemed out of place for a cruise to Hawaii in August. The menu seemed thrown together without much thought, and with little taste. One night they had a smoothie as an appetizer...not exactly fine dining. My mom's personal favorite was a "cold Hawaiian soup" she had at dinner, which we asked about, and were told it was "Melted vanilla ice cream with some fruit in it." Anyhow, the food overall was basically terrible on this ship. We never starved, but we also never enjoyed a meal. We ate in the pizza restaurant several times and while the "margarita" pizza tasted good, it never had fresh basil or tomatoes as described on the menu. We happened to have a large number of kids on this sailing, and we often heard kids crying in the buffet that there was nothing to eat. I also heard kids complaining about how bad the fried hamburgers were; they were right, they were awful. Room service consists of nothing hot, no soups, no entrees. Just salads. Disappointing.

The ship itself was in very good condition, except for a mattress my mom had in her cabin. The ship was clean and the staff was everywhere. I also think the staff had all of their family members onboard because there were several large groups of Italians who sat in the buffet for hours. The officers on this ship, except for Captain Froude, were absolutely uninterested in anything going on. We were startled to find out that a group of teenagers from California had brought cocaine and hash onboard and were smoking marijuana out of apples on the back of the ship every evening. We went directly to the security head, Shane, who asked that we try to help him identify these kids with my video camera. The security on board is a waste. There was an incident in the Adagio Bar on the 2nd day, during the ukulele lessons where this same group of teenagers harassed a couple by throwing balloons at them. I became angry about nothing being done and I went to the purser's desk to complain, only to be ignored by the 4 pursers on duty. The entire staff seemed intimidated by this particular group of teenagers. On the last night of the cruise these same kids had a food fight and created a huge mess all over the ship, and one threw a lounge chair off the ship. No one seemed to care for the first 14 days, but we did hear that the ship's staff woke up the parents of these kids at 4am to clean up the mess. Again, the officers onboard were more interested in spending time with their family members than they were taking charge.

The ports of call were nice, though the visit is brief. In Kona we had a problem with one of the life boats, and so we ended up being delayed in Kona some 4 additional hours. We rented a minivan in each town and avoided the overpriced tours offered. Hilo has little to offer, and Kauai was beautiful.

We met several nice staff members. Two bartenders from Transylvania kept us laughing, as well as one of the waiters from the bar who tried unsuccessfully to get my sister to dance. The announcements from the cruise director, David Bradshawe, were enough to make me crazy. The daily entertainment was the same each day. They got everyone partying and having fun on the 2nd to last night at the "new year's eve" party, and had they done that party earlier in the cruise, I think people would have had more fun. There wasn't much to do onboard this older ship.

The cabins all have satellite TV, which was terrible and not live. The reception fluctuated, and it would have been nice to have live CNN and not taped broadcasts. A clock in the cabin would also have been nice, and perhaps music.

My mother had an oxygen spa treatment for $155, which she said was very relaxing, but was countered by the hard sell of the spa staff for her to buy cosmetics/cleansers for $400, which she did not do. I thought the spa's prices was much higher than the spa on Holland America.

All in all, my kids had a blast. The teen/kids center was terrible, but they made friends from all over the world and came away with the best vacations. We had to drag them off the ship. The cruise was very relaxing, but the poor food choices made it disappointing. I don't think I will ever cruise on Princess again.