If you take a cruise on a ship owned by Carnival, you may want to bring along a flashlight. The newest Princess Cruises ship, the Royal Princess, suffered a power outage while sailing between Mykonos and Naples. Power was reported to be out for between three and four hours. The ship, carrying 3,594 passengers and 1,336 crew, was on the seventh day of a 12-day voyage from Venice. The cruise has been cancelled and passengers will disembark in Naples. The ship will then be taken out of service for repairs. The power outage may not be the only problem on the ship. As reported by Cruise Critic: A Princess Facebook fan posted on Princess’ page today that “the ship has had many other problems in the past eight days, plumbing, electrical, air-conditioning, and last night we were delayed leaving Mykonos for over four hours because they couldn’t get the anchor up.” The Royal Princess entered service in June of this year after being christened by the Duchess of Cambridge. Princess Cruises is a subsidiary of Carnival Corporation.
Carnival has been having some trouble keeping the lights on its ships. In November 2010, the Carnival Splendor suffered a fire and a blackout while on cruise in the Pacific. The ship was adrift off Mexico for four days before arriving under tow to San Diego. The Carnival Splendor is a sister ship to the Costa Concordia, owned by the Carnival subsdiary Costa Lines. In February 2012, the Costa Allegra, also suffered a power outage after an engine room fire, while in the Indian Ocean and need to be towed to port in the Seychelles. In February 2013, the Carnival Triumph suffered a fire and blackout while the Gulf of Mexico, stranding passengers for days in very uncomfortable conditions. Then only a month later, the Carnival Dream suffered a power outage while at the dock at Philipsburg, St. Maarten, in the eastern Caribbean, resulting in the cancellation of the cruise.
Many of us have written Posts and comments about this continual problem. It seems to me that the power requests for these vessels exceeds the power supply available. If a generator unit goes down there does not seem to be enough back-up to maintain the power requirements. It also seems that the “hotel and retail persons” running these cruise lines nowadays are unable to grasp how a shipboard system works!! They certainly do not listen to any advice from us professional seafarers.
Good Watch.
I have a somewhat different take on the problem. The designs overall look generally fine. The twin engine-room arrangements with three diesel engines in each engine room, each driving independent generators, should provide more than enough power as well as considerable redundancy for maintenance. The larger problems seems to be that the yard, Fincantieri, appears to have serious design and quality control issues. The good news with the Royal Princess is that whatever caused the initial power outage appeared to only impact one of the engine rooms, as she is able to get to port under her own power but at a reduced speed. Apparently there are numerous other mechanical problems with the ship as well. The Carnival Splendor, Carnival Triumph and the Carnival Dream, each of which have had significant electrical failures, were each built at Fincantieri. So was the Costa Concordia, which had big problems with the emergency generators after she had her side gashed open of Giglio.
I was part of the hotel set up team for Crown Princess, the one that almost capsized sailing out of Cape Canaveral. As Rick says, Fincantieri is a very old facility, very relaxed, where contractors fight each other on a daily basis, the one laying cement on the alleways steps on newly laid out carpet and the carpet fitters step into fresh cement. So on and so for.
To my understanding, not one ship is ever finished 100%.
Now, to be honest, the old Royal Princess was built in Finland and it was a disaster too, so its probably a race to build them fast and as cheap as possible. There is a reason why Fincantieri is booked for years ahead, if you know anything about the shipbuilding industry you’d know why.
My comments were probably unfair to Fincantieri. No doubt Carnival, the ship owner, deserves a fair share of the blame. I spent many years as an owner’s representative in shipyards and know that if the owner does not actively supervise and inspect the progress of the construction, the delivered ship is likely to have problems.
That Cruise Critic, doesn’t know much of the problems on the Royal Princess Cruise with the power failures problem. That Cruise Critic is an Idiot. We were there too. We have emergency electrical power(lighting), the gallley(food court) were opened and MOST IMPORTANT THE PLUMBING WAS CHECKED….IT WAS WORKING GREAT, because every deck level the Crew where checking the Plumbing System. I like their plumbing system…..THE SYSTEM WILL SUCK YOU YOU WHEN YOU FLUSH IT! I was USN, Retired from the Submarine Service. I hope one of these day that CRUISE CRITIC WHEN HE FLUSH THE TOILET ON THE ROYAL PRINCESS HIS BRAIN WILL BE SUCKED! I thank the Captain and the Crew for a job well done. We felt sorry from them but we had good time on board. We were home safe! ALOHA AND MAHALO NUI!
Your comments regarding the Cruise Critic report miss the point. The Cruise Critic was reporting complaints which had appeared on the Princess Facebook page. I am glad to hear that you did not have problems but apparently many did. Obviously the ship had serious failures if the company saw fit to break the cruise and to take the ship out of service for repairs.
I was on the cruise. The power failed totally for 7 hours. Our toilets on Riviera deck (suite) did not work. Princess have not issued a full refund they have kept flight fees (which they booked as part of INCLUSIVE cruise) they have not refunded for tours booked independently, they have not refunded onboard spending (which included tours they booked). I am out of pocket by nearly £2k on their FULL REFUND. Princess have lied consistently to the passengers and the media about what happened. I for one will avoid them like the plague in future
I too was on the Royal Princess and was disembarked in Naples. I think the Captain did what had to be done to get the ship into port. Electrical problems…yes. Taken care of sufficiently to get us to port … yes.
I would like to talk about getting me home from Naples versus the intended port of Barcelona. The ship told me I was on an Air France flight going from Rome to Paris to Seattle. I emailed my wife (not on the cruise) to get me seat assignments. She told me after contacting Air France that I had no reservation because Princess had not paid for the ticket. Also the record locator number was for a flight which would have taken me to Turino to Paris to Seattle.
My wife spent several hours talking to Princess Customer Service and finally found out I was to be on Delta flying from Rome to Amsterdam to Seattle. This was great, but no one on the ship ever told me I had a different flight other than Air France. The Delta flight left one hour prior to the time I would have left if I was on Air France. Again…no information from the ship. I changed my own disembarkation luggage tag to get me off the ship (midnight) so I would be able to get the right bus for my 3-1/2 hour bus ride to the Rome Airport (Information given to me by the ship was that I would depart at 12:45 AM).
My take was the Princess corporate office did a great job in getting flights and hotel reservations for almost 4,000 passengers. The ship did a lousy job in communicating anything to the passengers. No one on the ship ever gave the correct flight details … Ever!
I was aboard the Princess Royal when we had to abort our cruise at Naples in September. In compensation Princess offered to refund our Cruise payment and if not sent home via their arrangements, would refund our out of pocket expenses incurred in reaching our destination.
I lodged the documentation,including original receipts, soon after arrival home and the fare refund arrived soon after, for which I am grateful, but I have received no contact whatsoever regarding my personal expenses.
I have sent them the details a second time and how do I get them to respond?
It is now January 23, 2014. We received our refund for the fares but are still waiting for our out of pocket expenses to be refunded.
We were quite stressed by this experience and did not collect receipts for all our meals and taxis etc. before we arrived in Barcelona.
I have been advised to get legal advice, perhaps involve the ombudsman.
Has anyone else had this problem????
At least all that the above had to put up with was a power outage. I was on the Royal Princess in November of 2013 and had the following problems :
1st Night : Blood on girlfriend’s pillow and pillow case
2nd Night: Blood on my pillow and pillow case
3rd Night : Blood on my bedsheets at chest level. Thankfully wearing a shirt
4th Morning : Coughing up black phlem from the ship’s smoke stack. It was
not until I spoke to a ship supervisor about the blood stains
that I was advised that there had been a design flaw in the
ship’s smoke stack from day one. I know why Princess did
not contact me or anyone else to advise about this problem.
They wanted to fill the boat !!
It would have been nice to have been contacted months in advance of the cruise by Princess when there were still plenty of good locations available.
Instead, Princess has chosen to put all of our lives at risk because the fuel that was being burned was not a clean fuel. Princess, like most other cruise ships and freighters that sail in International Waters, burn the second lowest grade of bunker oil in order to keep the fuel costs down. Problem is that the exhaust coming from the smoke stack can cause serious health risks. “Thanks Princess for choosing to shorten our lives!!”
My only other grief with Princess besided the joke in size (lack of) in regards to the elevators,main theater and most other common areas is the misrepresenation that we experienced regarding a brochure that we received in September of 2012. It stated that :
” The new International Cafe now has much more available seating and now includes in your cruise fare ALL Speacialty Coffees”. I don’t know if we received this brochure because of it being missed by an editor but we recieved it none the less. On our first day we visited the International Cafe to begin enjoying these drinks. Problem was is that there was a price list. Upon visiting the front desk to advise them what was on our brochure, we were very rudly tuned away. We then spoke to the ship’s supervisor and after the third day were offered 2 “free” coffee cards. We then started to advise other passengers about the charge. Because I advised my girlfrien to bring the brochure with us on the cruise, we were able to get the drinks for free. With the other people who went to the front desk about this issue I
am not sure if they got anywhere without a paper trail that we had.
My advise for future cruisers is to take along any brochure that may display something that could cause the cruise line to lose money as the coffees that are being served, although very good, is going to be a cash cow for Princess over a one year period.
Will I sail with Princess again ? More than likely but never again on the Royal or Regal Princess vessels. The only thing memorable about the Royal Princess was the main Atrium. It was spectacular but that is where the possitives end … unless they correct not only the electrical problems, but the smoke stack.
I rather doubt that based on an email I received from Princess advising that the Regal Princess is going to debut a month earlier than originally expected.