Princess Cruises, Crown Princess, Mediterranean

We sailed on our 1st cruise for 15 nts in the Med starting by flying to Rome. Picked up and coached to the ship, WOW what a wonderful sight Crown Princess the embarkation was very quick and painless. Had been told by a few people re the tips situation (had read a lot of the reviews prior to sailing) Passenger services do not deal with the gratuities this year if you wanted them taking off. We were given 1 hour on either of the 2 sea days to go the the Crown Grill with a form signed, to stand in a line to be interviewed by a member of staff as to why we wished the tips to be removed. A lot of other passengers (all nationalities) felt it had been done to cause the maximum embarrassment a few passengers decided they did not wish to wait so left. We do not have Credit Cards and I had emailed Princess Lines prior to sailing asking if we could pay by debit or if there was a set amount we needed to take on board was told they do not accept Debit Cards and it would depend on how much we would be spending to use cash. The passenger services told us we had to pay $300 each to open a shipboard account which we had not bargained for and did not have that amount of dollars with us. They admitted to change sterling or euros to dollars on board would be expensive as the exchange rate was poor, as we had sailed unable to go ashore to get more dollars we offered to pay $300 this was not accepted with any grace at all and it became embarrassing standing at the desk in earshot of other people trying to explain what we had been told by Princess Office. We had 3 letters over the course of the cruise asking for us to report to passenger services desk and pay the extra $300 otherwise the account would be suspended. It almost became harrassment and I eventually said this to one of the crew and the letters ceased. That said the rest of the cruise was superb, the food was 5 star +++ movies under the stars with warm travel rugs umm loverly. Fantastic pools never crowded, entertainment was good a number of shows were repeated the following night. We opted for anytime dining and never had to wait to be seated. Sight seeing we did independently using shuttle buses where needed. If we can make some satisfactory arrangements re a shipboard account we would be prepared to cruise again.