Hi everyone, new to the site and I&#39;m kind of embarassed that my first post here has such a negative connotation, but my husband and I really want our story told&#33; Cruise Lines are such a big business, and we want people to be aware of what our experience was like with Princess Cruises before they make an investment like we did. We were married in September and postponed the honeymoon (we were on the Star Princess December 16th -23rd), and had high hopes for a relaxing week, good food, and friendly service. Instead it turned out to be mediocre at best, and incredibly disappointing in other aspects. I&#39;m just going to be lazy and copy and paste the letter we are sending to the cruise line. Sorry for the long read&#33;   <br /><br /><br />The first major disappointment was before we even embarked. We stood waiting in a humid, airless room in Ft. Lauderdale packed in among hundreds of other people for over an hour, waiting to check in. There were attendants at the little check in booths, but the lines didn?t seem to be moving. When we finally got on the ship, what we encountered set the tone for the rest of the cruise, though we were unaware of it at the time. On the Lido deck during the sail-away party, we were immediately struck with an odor of raw sewage. We noticed other people on the deck commenting on it, but we didn?t say anything to any crew members, hoping that it was just a temporary thing, or maybe a Ft. Lauderdale thing. It wasn?t. The terrible odor persisted for the entire cruise, and each day it was so overwhelming that we couldn?t even enjoy the balcony on our stateroom that we paid extra for. Often, we could even smell it inside the ship?s lounges when doors to the outside of the deck were opened. When we would tender back from shore excursions, we could smell the Star Princess hundreds of yards away from it. It only intensified over the course of the cruise. Smelling over two-thousand other people?s waste products on a daily basis was definitely a damper on the beauty of the Caribbean. When we addressed the smell with a deck crew member, he replied to me in very poor English something about it being ?normal?.   <br /><br />During the sailing party we were also literally bombarded with crew members bearing forced smiles and drinks. When we declined one, two seconds later a new person took their place. This set the tone of ?sell, sell, sell&#33;? for the rest of the cruise. Crew members always seemed to always be trying to sell us something. Coffee cards, Coke plan, photos, art auction, art auction, art auction, drinks. We even made the mistake of asking one of the young ladies at the photo desk about some pictures that were taken of us during our snorkeling excursion in Cozumel, and without even taking a breath (or answering our question&#33;) she turned it into a sales pitch for the Princess souvenir DVD. When we kept trying to get our question across, she merrily went along with her sales pitch about how we should watch the DVD and what a great purchase it was. We ended up simply having to walk away.   <br /><br />The smell of cigar and cigarette smoke in the designated non-smoking areas was a great disappointment as well. We were also unable to enjoy our balcony most of the time because of a cigar smoker in one of the cabins adjacent to ours (added to the sewage smell, this was nauseating). On our first morning of the cruise, which was a day at sea, we awoke to wet, soggy cigarette butts and other assorted litter on our balcony. Apparently the admonition to ?not throw cigarettes and trash over the side? of the ship is simply that; a suggestion, but not something to be enforced. Had it not rained that first night, would we have had burning cigarette butts on our balcony?  <br /><br />Our dining room experience was perhaps the biggest disappointment of all. We chose Princess because our AAA travel agent advised that the food was superior and the ?Personal Choice Dining? would be great for us since we wanted some privacy on our honeymoon. The food was decent only two nights in the dining rooms, and the other nights some of the dishes were downright tasteless, certainly not the ?highest quality cuisine? that Princess advertises. I have honestly had better seafood in Lean Cuisine frozen dinners. The soups were bland and gritty, the desserts seemed to be straight out of a mass-produced pre-frozen pacakage, and the salad dressings seemed to be watered down. Food was only occasionally warmer than room temperature by the time it reached us. As I mentioned before, one of the reasons we chose Princess for our honeymoon was because we were told that we could sit together, alone. However, each night when we arrived at the dining room, the first thing out of the hostesses? mouths was always ?Is it okay to share a table??, and when we replied that we would rather sit alone, we were treated like it was an inconvenience, and we were rudely handed an Applebee?s-style pager and told to wait. The rudeness from the hostesses was only the beginning of the negative interactions in the dining rooms. The waiters were universally surly, unprofessional, and impolite, with many of them speaking almost unrecognizable English. (The two exceptions to this were Cesar and Mongkhol ? both wonderful, friendly gentlemen and great crewmembers.) On our second-to-last night on the cruise, our waiter, without even greeting us, literally banged down our water glasses so hard on the table that some water sloshed out of the glasses. We immediately got up and left for the other dining room. Daily, we found ourselves looking forward to the buffet because we knew we didn?t have to interact with any crew members (except the sour-faced attendants that cleared off tables in the Horizon court area; are interpersonal communication skills even a requirement for these positions? Crew members here rarely even made eye contact, and the ones that did never smiled).  <br /><br />In addition to the unbearable smell of human waste that was ever-present on the outer decks, it was also impossible to even find a place to sit and enjoy the sunshine. My husband and I fantasized about spending hours in the Caribbean sun on our days at sea, catching up on reading and relaxing. Rather, trying to find a place to sit on deck was consistently a nightmare, and as un-relaxing as it could have been. Another admonition (in addition to the cigarette butt one) that everyone was given was to not ?save seats? on deck, but it was never enforced. There was even one occasion where a man was saving TEN seats on deck for people in his party, and there were crew members helping him arrange them around him&#33; At that time, there were at least that many other people roaming the deck looking for seats. When I asked the man when his party was arriving, he said it would be thirty minutes from then. I originally intended to take two of the seats from him, but by that point we had been roaming the deck for twenty minutes and I was so angry that I left him to it.   <br /><br />Other issues include: The crew at the purser?s desk were generally ill-mannered and unfriendly, and we even witnessed one elderly lady being quite literally yelled at by a male crew member at the purser?s desk. I have no idea what the issue was about, but it was incredibly unprofessional and left a very bad impression. The high prices of drinks and water on the ship were a big problem (don?t you think people would be more likely to purchase things in greater quantities if the prices were lower? ?Everyone make sure to drink plenty of water in the 80-degree Caribbean heat on your shore excursions, but here, we?re going to charge you &#036;3 a bottle for it before you disembark&#33;?). It was also almost impossible to reach room service or cabin stewards by phone.   <br /><br />There were a few positive things that we encountered on the cruise; the shows were outstanding, and Sabatini?s and Tequila?s had very good food (we don?t, however, include these in our assessment of the cruise dining experience, because we had to pay extra for these&#33;). Our cabin steward, Rodel, kept our room immaculate the entire trip, and we were never without fresh towels or a made-up bed. And as I mentioned before, Cesar and Mongkhol in the Anytime Dining rooms were the only truly nice people we encountered in there for the entire seven days. Unfortunately, these few things aren?t enough to make us want to cruise with Princess again, and we will definitely be recommending the other, superior cruise lines we have sailed with to our friends and family.