OMG - What has happened to the Golden Princess?

[CallistaSkye]

I'm guessing there was no compensation offered?

 

("Well, you are on the ship, after all... so what if it can't sail?") :D

 

 

Grey

 

haha. Ya, nothing was offered. I thought it was kind of odd they didn't at least give a free drink coupon or something....I know maintenance happens, and that's fine. But the way that they just last minute surprised us with that knowledge was what irritated me because it was clear that they had known for some time that this was the plan. They could have just been honest with everyone from the start instead of handing out a paper after we were boarding.

[shredie]

haha. Ya, nothing was offered. I thought it was kind of odd they didn't at least give a free drink coupon or something....I know maintenance happens, and that's fine. But the way that they just last minute surprised us with that knowledge was what irritated me because it was clear that they had known for some time that this was the plan. They could have just been honest with everyone from the start instead of handing out a paper after we were boarding.

 

You got a piece of paper? We got assurances that everything was fine and that we would sail at 4 pm. We sailed at midnight. This has been happening with nearly every sailing of the Golden out of San Pedro, so I was kind of expecting it. On my next shortie, we left at 5 pm.

[Cruisin' Chick]

I've mulled this over a few days and still don't understand how your experience could be so different from mine. On the Sapphire, Golden (twice), and Crown, they gave us a ticket when we ordered an omelet, and the convention was that we put it on our table and the server who brought our drinks picked up the ticket and went and retrieved our omelet for us. I knew to expect this from the experience of others here on Cruise Critic, so it didn't surprise me. But on the Star last May, the servers didn't get the omelets, but rather people waited around for them. Hence my concern that this was a new trend with Princess.

 

But, as you would say, UH, you can think what you want.

 

 

My hubby has been getting the made-to-order omelet for some cruises now (over at least a nine year period), and always waits for his to be ready. I don't know if any one there offered to bring it to him in the dining area or not or if he had been asked if he wanted to take a seat and have it delivered to the table. But I don't it would be a big deal for him one way or another.

[Greyhound3]

No compensation, and not even an apology that I heard. Just two very matter-of-fact overhead pages.

 

haha. Ya, nothing was offered. I thought it was kind of odd they didn't at least give a free drink coupon or something....I know maintenance happens, and that's fine. But the way that they just last minute surprised us with that knowledge was what irritated me because it was clear that they had known for some time that this was the plan. They could have just been honest with everyone from the start instead of handing out a paper after we were boarding.

 

Hmmm... this has me rethinking our upcoming trip. Sounds a little shady to me and the theory of saving fuel by skipping a sea day is making more and more sense.

 

I've updated my signature line accordingly to reflect my concern.

 

 

Grey

Edited November 16, 2014 by Greyhound3

[ar1950]

The Golden has had many late departures from San Pedro this year. I don't know if any of the short cruises actually left on time. The explanation is always "standard maintenance."

 

On our 10-27 sailing we were told that due to work being done by divers we would leave at 6:30 pm. We actually left at 5:00 pm, so no big deal. On the next sailing on 10-30 we left right on time, probably a few minutes after 4:00 pm.

 

Now leaving Ensenada on that sailing was a different story. :cool:

[redtogo]

so i assume no shops were open and the casino was closed

 

No shops nor the casino were open. I would think that they lost money on the casino being closed. Oh well....

 

Another thing is that this cruise was supposed to be

 

-leave at 4:00 from San Pedro

-2nd day in St. Catalina

-next day At Sea

Then the remainder followed the original itinerary

 

In the last few days prior to the cruise, we received an email saying that "At Sea" would be the 2nd day and Catalina would be the 3rd day. I really think that they planned to delay sailing from the get-go. The itinerary swap was just a way to make it convenient for them to delay sailing. Whatever they were working on took all night it seems. Someone said they got up during the night and the ship was moving around in the harbor. I can't vouch for that as I didnt personally see us moving in the harbor. But, this person said that it appeared that they were testing something out to be sure it worked properly.

[CallistaSkye]

You got a piece of paper? We got assurances that everything was fine and that we would sail at 4 pm. We sailed at midnight. This has been happening with nearly every sailing of the Golden out of San Pedro, so I was kind of expecting it. On my next shortie, we left at 5 pm.

 

It was right when we got to the top of the gangway, there was a crew member with a stack of the notices. He stopped us to ask if we had gotten one yet, looked surprised when we said no we had not, and then let us know that the ship was delayed for maintenance. I felt bad for him having to hand out those, and his stack of them was not very big, there was absolutely not enough of them for everyone on the ship.

We weren't happy but it wasn't his fault, so we just grumbled between ourselves in private once we were out of earshot.

 

The email said we switched days at Catalina due to it being super popular with cruise ships. I thought this was strange because when we showed up, there were literally no other ships there. Maybe that's normal, but if it's SO popular and busy, wouldn't that extend to more days than just one? you would think that cruise lines would talk to each other about each others schedules? I know they're competing companies, but if they all have huge ships shouldn't someone organize that at the ports? It just was really odd and seemed like a cover story to us as well. We were just glad we booked our excursions within the cruise line so that we didn't have to worry about switching the days for that.

 

We did see a Carnival ship dock at San Pedro, and then the next day, Island Princess came in too. So it was neat to see the other ships and compare them.

[RickEk]

On our 10-27 sailing we were told that due to work being done by divers we would leave at 6:30 pm. We actually left at 5:00 pm, so no big deal. On the next sailing on 10-30 we left right on time, probably a few minutes after 4:00 pm.

 

Now leaving Ensenada on that sailing was a different story. :cool:

 

We left on time on the 10/24 sailing... and we were "late" leaving Ensenada too... the classic run of shame. :p

 

3-day Cruise Golden Princess by RickEk, on Flickr

[Quilting Queen]

We were on the Nov 10 sailing and have no complaints about the late departure. We still had our dinner in the dining room and our room steward was great.

 

We took the Princess up grade to a Penthouse Suite on deck 10 and had no problem on the ship at all. The only think I did not like about the suite was the shower head. I like the personal shower head on the pole so I can adjust it to my hight instead of DH. We had our friends join us for lunch on the balcony on the Ensenada day. Very good room service, prompt and no mix up on the food orders.

 

We had a table reserved for 5 for anytime dining at 5:45 every night. We had the same wait staff and got to know them and they got to know us and our beverage orders.

 

DH was disapointed that the casino was closed the first night but we went to the MUTS movie that we had not seen yet. Great movie with Tom Cruise. We would not have done that at sea.

 

We will be taking a B2B2B in January but it will be on the Crown as the Golden will be going somewhere else.

 

We were told the delay was cleaning Alaska cold water muscles from the under water parts of the ship. The Golden will be going to dry dock or major maintenance in April or May of 2015.

 

Norine

[travelingpair]

We sailed on the Golden Oct. 30 - Nov.3, and were shocked at the lack of service! We were asked to vacate our table on the first evening - we were visiting over coffee. Our reservation at the Crown Grill was "lost" when I phoned to confirm, and we were unable to book another any evening. The water in our cabin smelled of sulfur - was repaired twice to no avail. The first AM we were told that no oranges were available from room service - then they became available for the remainder of the cruise. Another AM room service explained there was no cream for coffee - they had not supplied since they left Seattle 5 weeks ago.

The service was terrible, and there was general apathy among the staff. If this were our 1st cruise it would have been our last. Mary

 

We sailed on the Golden Oct. 13, 2014 with 2 other couples. Two couples were allowed to board immediately while the 3rd couple who had lower status were told they could not board with us and did not get on the ship until 1 1/2 hrs. after us. We were sailing for a fund raiser for the Shriners -- about 30 of us. We were placed at a different table in a different dining room. We tried to get this resolved in the afternoon, but were told we could not get this problem fixed until 5:30 p.m., the time of our seating. Where normally you are served one course at a time, we were served appetizers, soup and salad at the same time. This was rough since there were 7 of us sitting at a table for 6. We did not get our luggage until 7:00 p.m. and when we called the Front Desk, we were told our luggage was confiscated for illegal alcohol. They never notified us, we had to call them. When they opened our luggage, nothing -- we don't drink!!! We did get a nice apology letter and chocolate covered cherries (at least we didn't get a bottle of wine!). Our friends had tile coming up in their bathroom which was replaced the second day. Our other friends had to have maintenance come up because they couldn't get the shower to work. But, these things happen. The point here is that the people our friends talked to were not pleasant. We sail on Princess the majority of the time and we saw a problem on our sailing. A majority of the crew was not friendly as we have come to expect. When walking down hallways, they would pass by us and not say hello, good evening, etc. We became elite on this sailing and have 3 more Princess sailings booked. They were other problems on this ship so we did take the time to let Princess know since they was definitely not the 'norm' we have come to expect on sailings. Our neighbor sailed the same ship a week later and had no problems, but it only takes one problem sailing to make people 'jump ship' to another cruise line.

[shredie]

We left on time on the 10/24 sailing... and we were "late" leaving Ensenada too... the classic run of shame. :p

 

 

I was on that sailing and watched that scene from Skywalkers! Those girls were in a cabin on our hallway. They did make it back but barely.

[shredie]

We sailed on the Golden Oct. 13, 2014 with 2 other couples. ... We were sailing for a fund raiser for the Shriners -- about 30 of us.

 

I was also on this sailing. We didn't notice much difference in the general attitude of the staff, but someone at our table remarked that there seemed to be a large number of big groups aboard (not just you) and that was causing some bottlenecks at the bars and the buffet. Our waiter told us he had worked a section of 50 people on a previous cruise, where they all expected to be served at the same time. Apparently, his head waiter was pitching in. These short cruises seem to attract the big groups, and when there are several big groups on one sailing, I can see how problems might pop up. If you're not just a passenger on a cruise but one piece of a 30-piece passenger, late luggage would seem inevitable to me.

[rocker57]

Was on the Oct. 20th sailing. We had no problems, ship left on time, arrived and left the ports on time. The only thing I noticed, was I did not think our waiter was too friendly. But then, we were 3 women at a table for 8, with no one else. One night, they sat two other women with us. They said they were anytime dining, and they wanted traditional, but told their was no room, but we seemed to see a lot of empty spots, so I suspect that a lot who booked traditional did not show up, which I would think would of affected our servers tips, but we still enjoyed it

[cvpends]

Really? Never seen anything brought to you in Horizon Court. That's a buffet.

 

 

 

Uh, never seen anything "brought to you" at MUTS. You go to the popcorn stand (usually same as soft ice cream) and get your popcorn. And bring some salt packets from HC, as it is unsalted. Probably in deference to those who must limit salt intake.

this week on Golden I found out the answer to your question, Upcountry: in Horizon Court, they still give you the ticket for your omelet and direct you to give it to your waiter, as they always have.