Laundry

There is a laundry facility on the ship where you can wash and dry your own clothes. There is also a laundry service where they will pick up, wash, dry, fold, hang, and return your clothes. The cost of the later is $1 per pair of socks, $1 per underwear, $2.25 per T-shirt, and $3 for regular shirt. This becomes a lot of money if you do this for everything for the entire cruise.

We get laundry done complementary as part of our cost for the suite. Elite passengers (those who have sailed more than 150 days in the past with Princess) also get free laundry. This is very nice. We did not even know where the do-it-yourself laundry was located until I asked about it for this posting…and neither of us has yet seen it! There are 4 washing machines and 4 dryers, so on sea days these get backed up. Of course, the dryers take longer than the washers, so this further creates a problem. I think this laundry capacity is adequate for a 7-day cruise where Lots of dirty clothes can be taken home, but is inadequate capacity for a 107-day cruise.

Other passengers have said it can be a whole day’s ordeal of going back and forth to the laundry room to see when a machine is open. There have been fights in the laundry room about what is the proper etiquette to follow when someone else’s clothes are done, but they have not yet removed them: can you take them from the washer and place them on the dryer or on a shelf so that the machine can be used, or must you leave them in the machine and wait until the other party decides to show up. (I don’t think most passengers have much recent experience of using a Laundromat.)

The ship will run a special every 10 days of so where you can get one bag of laundry done for $15. Lots of people take advantage of this. There are lots of bulging laundry bags sitting in the hallway on these $15-per-bag days.