Princess Cruises, Royal Princess South America

This is a great cruise, however it is spoilt by the total inability of Princess Cruises to make sensible land/air arrangements to reach the ship, in our case at Manaus, Brazil, or for the return journey to the UK from Fort Lauderdale/Miami.The BA flight from Heathrow to Miami was fine but I had to go to a lot of trouble to be able to check in for the flight on-line as Princess do not seem capable of handling this although it is advertised in their brochure, the onward flight from Miami to Manaus was by a Omni Air chartered DC10 on which the seats were very tightly packed and sleep was not possible on this overnight flight. The time between the flights was spent at a Miami Hotel where there were insufficient seats for all the passengers resulting in people laying on carpeted areas of floor. For the return journey Princess Cruises had failed to prebook seats with BA resulting in many couples being split up for the flight. We had understood that the time between disembarking at Fort Lauderdale and getting our evening flight would be spent at a Miami Hotel with lunch provided, and we did go to the hotel and have lunch at 1130 and we then had to be back on the coaches at 1215 so we could be "dumped" at a shopping Mall, presumably this is cheaper for Princess Cruises than providing some basic facilities at a hotel. With my experiences I could not recommend a Princess Cruise and would suggest that Alan Buckelew the new President and CEO seriously consider the way that they treat their passengers and the need for a customer focused approach before they lose passengers who are the ones who pay the bills.