14th - 26th OCTOBER 2013 - BALCONY CABIN - ALOHA 601
I have previously posted a Cabin Review of a Balcony Cabin, from our cruise on Crown Princess to Norway and Spitsbergen in June/July of this year, so it is not my intention to repeat it here. Although there are one or two items I would like to add to that.
Firstly I forgot to say in that review that apart from the two inadequate American type electric sockets that there is a European type socket you can use if necessary. Unfortunately this involves moving the bed to give access to the socket for the bedside lamp. It is really quite a ridiculous operation but it can be useful if you have a phone or media device and only have a European style plug or adaptor. I do have a very good multi choice charger with USB connections but, as I pointed out in my last review, the closeness of the two American sockets make it impossible to use both at the same time. I find it incredible when so many of us are travelling with devices that need charging that the cruise lines, and in this case Princess, expect this to be adequate for our needs.
So on to my second gripe. From day one we did have quite a bother with Evac toilet system not working at some point or other most days. We duly reported it every time to our stateroom attendant, Christopher, who could do nothing but apologise. It was always fixed quite promptly but it was unsatisfactory and rather a nuisance. On the morning of a sea day in the second week we had what I can only call a 'burst pipe' when the a pipe to fill the toilet started gushing out, thankfully, clean water. I immediately called Customer Services to report this while my husband threw all the towels onto the floor. The water was pouring out so hard that eventually the towels were floating and the water threatened to overflow onto the carpet outside the shower room.
I managed to get the waste bin from the cabin under the pipe and we were able to empty it as quickly as we could into the shower cubicle. We couldn’t keep up with it but we did our best. Eventually after what seemed like quite a long time a man in a white uniform with maroon epilates on his shoulder arrived and switched the water off to the toilet. After he left we realised that we had been seeing him regularly in our corridor so we can only presume that there was a considerable problem on that deck.
A young man came with a huge vacuum type thing which he used to take extract the water from the floor and from the carpet outside the shower room door. Christopher did tell us that he wasn’t the plumber but one would come to fix the toilet.
Clearly we could not use the toilet but apparently we could use the shower. Well, we didn’t fancy doing that if the plumber was about to arrive. However after waiting for quite while with no sign of the plumber we had a quick wash and left the cabin. With hindsight I should perhaps have taken a photo or two of this but as we were too busy paddling about in water up to our ankles I think I can be forgiven for the oversight. It was a sea day so there was plenty to do around the ship to occupy us so we made the most of the morning and the use of the public toilets.
After lunch we went back to the cabin and the problem had been fixed - or so we thought. First flush of the toilet and out came the flood again. Thankfully it didn't stay on long but by this time we were really getting fed up so we left the problem with Christopher and went to Customer Services to complain. All the details were taken by a lovely young woman who was very sympathetic and assured us her supervisor would be in touch.
We felt a bit like nomads and instead of wandering around the ship again we went to the Theatre to watch a film. It is something we’ve never done before but it was just the thing that particular day to help us calm down and spend a couple of hours away from the cabin.
After watching the film and going back to the cabin it appeared that the problem had indeed at last been fixed. The amount of water in the actual toilet was minimal but it was working and there was no need to be visiting the public toilets.
There was a message on our phone from someone from Customer Services asking for feed-back but we‘d had enough toilet talk for one day so we ignored it. As it was a Formal dress night we were delighted to be able to shower and get ready for our pre-dinner drinks.
We did receive a phone call the next afternoon - after a soaking of the rain kind in Vigo - from a Customer Services Supervisor who had been trying to speak to us. She did apologise for the inconvenience we'd had and as a 'gesture of goodwill' offered some OBC to our ship account. I dislike the use of the 'gesture of goodwill' wording as it sounds a little like 'it was not our fault but this is to keep you sweet'. Needless to say we accepted it but would far rather that we had not had to deal with the problem in the first place.
I must add that on this cruise our stateroom attendant was Christopher from the Philippines and like most of the others we have had, he was working very hard but always had a smile. The standard of his work could not be criticised in any way. I think he must have been as frustrated as we were with the toilet problem and I'm sure ours was not the only cabin on that deck affected.
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