Sun Princess - Why such negative reviews?

[suekel]

On 10/1/2024 at 9:30 PM, MsSoCalCruiser said:

I’ve read complaints about The Catch having a smaller menu on the Sun Princess but the other day I saw a post that listed a larger menu (now I can’t find it). I wonder if that person just did a screenshot of a menu or if they actually posted a menu from the Sun Princess. Does anyone have a recent menu? 

I ate there 2 weeks ago and the menu is much smaller.  Even chatted with the waiter about it and he said because right now, it's treated as a pop up.  

[JGmf]

@RNRcruisers Oops yeah, January 25th.  I'm lucky enough to be on the Enchanted this month...that one's the 26th!  So absent minded...

[mkmaj]

21 minutes ago, JGmf said:

@RNRcruisers Oops yeah, January 25th.  I'm lucky enough to be on the Enchanted this month...that one's the 26th!  So absent minded...

Us too! I'm hoping they work out all the issues by then 😁

[Globaler]

5 hours ago, bstrauss3 said:

With bar service to your seat!

Not much atmosphere but you can pretend!

[rmsmith]

On 7/11/2024 at 2:04 PM, MonikaJ42 said:

We are booked on the October 19th sailing. I have been checking reviews and most are very negative and I can't understand why?

Its a new ship so I get there would be some hiccups but the Icon is new and it has rave reviews hence why RCCL prices are ridiculous right now.

 

Any comments? 

 

Regardless I'm looking forward to the cruise.  Its going to be my first Princess cruise in over 15+ years!

 

Having just spent 18 nights on the Sun, I think the biggest thing is to go into your cruise with an open mind. The ship is definitely different from other Princess ships - more modern but seems to lack some of the charm and character of the previous ships.  Would I book another cruise on the Sun?  At this time only if the itinerary was something I was really after or traveling companions want to try the ship.  So wouldn't avoid it, but wouldn't seek it out. I prefer the older ships which also due in part to the size to their size.  We seem to like the 2-3k passenger sizes for the larger lines.

 

Are there issues, sure - the Dome is probably the biggest due to it's small size and also due to them closing it way too much during the day for training, setup and so on.

 

She is indeed suffering from a poor launch and continuing changes - some of which are teething and new learnings (although some of the learnings should have been known before construction) and i suspect some is due to poor corporate change timings which just compounds the ship rollout issues.  Yeah, Princess needs to do a much better job.

 

But despite the issues, if someone goes on the Sun and doesn't have a good cruise I'm not sure they would have a good cruise on any ship, but I say that being a pretty easy gong and tolerant person so your mileage may vary,

 

It will be interesting to see how reviews are for the ship in another 6 months when hopefully all of the teething issues and larger Princess corporate fleet-wide changes are hopefully stable - for a little bit at least. And I wonder what tweaks they are making for the Star.  In talking with some of the more senior staff they did indicate they are making changes to the Star based on the Sun feedback and not sure if it is related, but we saw a lot of people on the ship walking around in small groups taking lots of pictures and talking about a lot of stuff.  Not sure if that is feedback for the Star and or nothing things to fix/adjust on the Sun itself.

[bstrauss3]

FWIW the deck plans for the Star and both versions of the Sun were posted on the Princess site. 

 

Eyeballing them showed very little difference between Sun2.0 and Star. And deck plans don't show small differences that could be made (oh, say a wall separating Crooners - now useless as a music venue - from the Piazza).

[IndyKid]

45 minutes ago, rmsmith said:

..If someone goes on the Sun and doesn't have a good cruise I'm not sure they would have a good cruise on any ship...

This, in a nutshell, says it all. It's about going forward with the expectation that you will enjoy your cruise. Do I expect perfection? Nope, but I'm sure it will be great. I wasn't actively looking for a trip aboard the Sun when I booked her next May, it was the itinerary that first caught my eye (Italy - Turkey - Greece) and the new Sanctuary Collection, which sounds interesting and I'm looking forward to hear how people enjoy it. 

 

As I've said previously, I keep what I call the "gratitude attitude" - I'm grateful to have my life, my health and the financial wherewithal to be able to go on these trips. There are a LOT of people in the world to whom a trip like this would be akin to going to the moon. 

[PacnGoNow]

6 minutes ago, IndyKid said:

This, in a nutshell, says it all. It's about going forward with the expectation that you will enjoy your cruise. Do I expect perfection? Nope, but I'm sure it will be great. I wasn't actively looking for a trip aboard the Sun when I booked her next May, it was the itinerary that first caught my eye (Italy - Turkey - Greece) and the new Sanctuary Collection, which sounds interesting and I'm looking forward to hear how people enjoy it. 

 

As I've said previously, I keep what I call the "gratitude attitude" - I'm grateful to have my life, my health and the financial wherewithal to be able to go on these trips. There are a LOT of people in the world to whom a trip like this would be akin to going to the moon. 

Well said!  Thank you. We’re going to keep an open mind.

[deliver42]

Every new ship is going to have hiccups, either by the crew not being fully familiar with the ship, or shows not quite ready, and a slew of others. Go with an open mind, thinking what a wonderful cruise this will be, and it will be. If you go on worrying about other people's reviews, especially on these forums, you will be looking for things to pick apart.

[bstrauss3]

9 minutes ago, deliver42 said:

Every new ship is going to have hiccups, either by the crew not being fully familiar with the ship, or shows not quite ready, and a slew of others. Go with an open mind, thinking what a wonderful cruise this will be, and it will be. If you go on worrying about other people's reviews, especially on these forums, you will be looking for things to pick apart.

It's certainly some of that, but more It's Princess' evolution to their new identity that will be rolling across the fleet to different extents depending on the ship's capacity.

 

To me the interesting thing about Princess is this article: https://www.carnivalcorp.com/news-releases/news-release-details/carnival-corporation-orders-three-additional-ships-carnival/

 

After Star, there are no ships on order! Not to say there isn't capacity (order book: https://cruiseindustrynews.com/cruise-ship-orderbook/) but it does seem like at least a bit of a pause after the two Sphere class ships. 

 

The fleet has 16 ships, the oldest are the seven Grand class, built between 1998 and 2008. And they did have a 5 year gap between the last Grand and the first Royal class in 2013.

 

I did ask Captain Street about a Sun Princess world tour in five years, he said "we're too big".