I really don’t understand the number of negative reviews at all, on a sparkling brand new ship with a memorable sail-away to match. Our trip was fantastic. We’re Ruby on Princess but I can’t imagine that made much difference in the great way we were treated (really doesn’t take much to get Ruby status). Here’s our story.

On March 31 my wife and I happen to celebrate the same birthday so with low airfares to Europe from the US we decided to treat ourselves to a few days in Italy. Kind of by accident we happened to find the preview voyage of the Majestic Princess, departing March 31 (good timing!) and because we had limited time, the four-night sailing Trieste to Rome was the perfect cruise for us. Because it was a preview cruise, kind of the maiden voyage before the maiden voyage, like the soft opening of a restaurant) it was not listed on all the usual cruise sites, or it would appear and then quickly disappear. One of the invited travel agents on board told us the preview cruise was purposely kept about two-thirds full to give the ship and the crew a good practice run but not strain everything to the limits of capacity.

Let me get the two negatives out of the way first because they’re relatively small given the cruise overall. First, as another reviewer said, the muster drill was ridiculously long. We sat in the photo gallery (our assembly point) for nearly an hour. They really need to correct that. The only reason it got seriously annoying at the time was because the City of Trieste was making a big splash over this maiden departure and we almost missed some of the sail-away. They need to get the muster drill down to normal times or passengers are going to get angry. Second, the first night lining up for the main, set-time dining room was kind of a traffic disaster. We had second seating so perhaps the first wave didn’t leave when they were supposed to and caused the traffic jam, but the entry area to the dining room is much too small and turned into a sardine can for 75 people. People got very crabby and the traffic flow was badly handled. Our room cards also listed a dining room that didn’t exist on Majestic Princess – the Pacific Moon, which is on Diamond Princess I think. Oh well, it’s a preview cruise to work out the bugs. By the second night they had it pretty much squared away. Well okay, here’s kind of a third negative. We were a party of four (in two mini-suites on Deck 15). When we booked weeks prior we asked for traditional, late seating, table for eight because to us meeting new people is part of the fun of cruising. Shortly before dinner we got a letter in our rooms telling us the assignment had been changed to a table of four. It all worked out because our table for four was placed very close to another table of four with two delightful British couples and we hit it off very well. That was a stroke of good luck, but had we not gotten lucky, sitting by ourselves at dinner every night would have been very disappointing. Read more