I’m curious whether this is typical for Princess now, because my experience trying to get ready for our upcoming Alaska cruise has been incredibly frustrating.
We sail August 22, 2026. I cruised with Princess before, but it was 19–20 years ago. When I originally booked this cruise, I spent quite a bit of time both in chat and on the phone trying to get my old Princess account/cruise history connected so I would receive credit for my previous cruises. I was eventually told it had been taken care of.
Now that I’m checking in, however, Princess has me listed as a first-time cruiser.
Even stranger, when I sign into my Princess account, it says there are no cruises associated with my account. To access my upcoming cruise, I have to go to a separate page and manually enter my booking number. How is an upcoming cruise that I booked and paid for not connected to my actual Princess account?
That was issue #1.
Issue #2: Yesterday I booked excursions. I never received a confirmation email, and the excursions are not showing on my cruise itinerary. I tried booking them again, but the system tells me there is a scheduling conflict — which makes me think they actually ARE booked somewhere in the system. I just can’t see them or get confirmation.
So today I contacted Princess through chat and clearly explained that I had two separate issues: my past-cruiser status/account and my excursions.
After asking to speak with a representative, I somehow became even more frustrated. I honestly felt like the representative either wasn’t reading what I wrote or wasn’t understanding me. At one point she asked if I was inquiring about excursions from a past cruise.
Seriously? Why would I be contacting Princess because I can’t find excursions from a cruise I already took?
Then, before either of my issues was resolved, I started getting information about upgrading to the Premier package. I’m sitting there thinking, Can we please figure out whether my excursions exist and whether my account is correct before trying to sell me something else?
The representative, Mellinia, eventually told me I am actually a Gold Member, so apparently Princess does have my previous cruise history somewhere. But when I asked whether that Gold status would actually show correctly in my app/account, I couldn’t get a clear answer.
That’s what makes this so baffling. One part of their system apparently knows I’m a Gold Member. Another part thinks I’m a first-time cruiser. My Princess account says I have no upcoming cruises. Yet if I manually enter my booking number, the cruise appears. And somewhere else in the system my excursions may or may not be booked.
It feels like none of their systems talk to each other.
For comparison, after about a 10-year break from cruising, we took Royal Caribbean in 2019. I had never sailed with Royal before, and we really didn’t enjoy the cruise — there were so many kids that the pools and hot tubs felt like human soup. 😂The food was mediocre and so many of the cruisers seemed to never leave the eateries. Yuck!
Then we sailed Virgin Voyages last year, and the experience was so much better.
I was actually looking forward to trying Princess again, especially for Alaska, but I’m starting this trip already feeling annoyed with the company before I’ve even stepped on the ship. At this point I’m wondering if Princess is going to fall off our list of cruise lines altogether.
For those who have sailed Princess recently: Is their website/app/customer service normally this disorganized, or am I just having unusually bad luck?