Emerald Princess

In the late 90s, my family and I enjoyed a huge family reunion cruise on board a Princess liner. We sailed through Alaska and the coast off of British Columbia. We floated pass glaciers, swimming pods of dolphins and whales, and enjoyed the fjords. After making landfall in Vancouver, a chartered tour bus zipped us from Vancouver to Calgary and back. We drove through the amazing Canadian Rocky Mountains and visited Banff. Memories from this trip were very pleasant, until I got violently ill after splashing my face with the crystal clear waters in a mountainous lake up in Banff!

I had fond memories of the Princess: a well groomed professional staff, pleasant fellow passengers, excellent food, creative fruit carvings, and minimal peddling. These were the memories which influenced our decision to try another Princess cruise for a mini-family reunion trip through the Baltic.

We sailed the Emerald Princess on the Baltic Sea between May 16 and May 26, 2009. We embarked from Copenhagen and made stops at Stockholm (Sweden), Helsinki (Finland), St. Petersburg (Russia), Tallinn (Estonia), Gdynia (Poland), and Oslo (Norway).

There was a noticeable difference between the quality and service on this most recent Princess experience. First, the food was awful (i.e., tasteless meats, over salted soups, minimal buffet selections). The entire ship was crowded with loud, arrogant, and angry Americans. Except for the brief moments ashore, I felt we were trapped on a floating American colony. Some days we had to take food back to our cabin and eat it on our beds because the dining rooms were filled to the brim with people.

Staff members were ok, not exceptional. Our cabin toilet smelled really bad and overall air quality on board was debilitating. Then came all the excessive peddling from staff to purchase exorbitantly priced "treasures" (i.e., by the end of the trip, you probably had over 100 "professional" photos taken of you). We were held hostage on 2 sea days where staff increased the peddling of photos, gifts, and bingo games. We were attacked from all directions. Even when the on board professor lectured, he would find moments to solicit sales of various sorts. There was hardly enough time to truly enjoy each city.

There were two advantages. First, we were able to cut down on travel costs. Second, we were able to cut down the annoyances of the pack-and-go traveler (when you cannot fully unpack because you're moving from hotel to hotel). At the end, the quick tour of each port city allowed us an opportunity to sample what cities we'd likely return to. The experience is analogous to enjoying a sampler appetizer plate.

Personally, I will not be traveling on board Princess anytime soon...or any cruise ship for that matter. I'm more of a land animal. I like to be on shore looking out far at a distant cruise ship imagining all the things I'm not missing.