I love Princess Cays.  It is clean and safe and has always been a good beach day for me.  That's my opinion.  For those of you who wish to stay on the ship by all means do!!  There are lots of loungers - always more than enough in both sun and shade, the bbq is adequate (go back on the ship if you want more)the sand is lovely and there is lots of land to go for a great walk.  This particular time the wind was perfect so we rented a hobie cat.  $55 per hour for a whole lot of fun!

Princess Cays

We went on Bernard's Island Tour to Maho Beach, the Market in Marigot and to  Orient Beach.  We had about 1 Â½ hrs at Maho which is really interesting to watch the planes come and go, then about 45 min at the market and an hour at Orient.  With all the driving time though it makes a really full day and another time I wouldn't recommend tackling all that.  All we really had time for at Orient was lunch which is priced in euros.  If you have cash they do it 1 to 1 ratio.  Have cash.  It was about $70 for four of us to have tuna melts and a drink.  Good and tasty but expensive!  Personally I wished we'd had more time at Orient as it is one of the top 10 beaches in the world!  
St Maarten itself was not at all what I was expecting.  I had no idea it was so poor, dirty and depressed.  Their economy is dreadful, especially on the French side. Yes the beaches are lovely but otherwise, I didn't see any place I'd like to be!

St. Martin

We went to Coki Beach with Godfrey's Tours (have used him a number of times) after shopping for an hour. For $20 it is a great bargain.  He (or one of his co-workers) will pick you up at the pier, take you downtown for an hour or two what ever you arrange, then take you to a beach (what ever one you arrange - Coki or Magens) then take you back to the ship.  If you added up all the individual taxi rides it would cost you way more.  My parents also did an island tour with Godrey himself for only $5 more.  They loved it.    Coki was great -- clean, lots of fish.  We rented loungers, unbrella, snorkels, fins all for $5 each. We have gone to both Emerald Beach and Magens other times and Coki compares favorably.

St. Thomas

I'm giving the Port a rating of 2 (as rated by me) and the Flowrider a rating of 5 (as rated by my kids!)

I did not like that port at all.  Unfortunately we arrived several hours after the Carnival ship whose passengers had hogged every single lounger with their towels, but there were very few of them actually sitting on the loungers.  Very, very maddening.  I admit to saying a few unkind words about Carnival people under my breath (sorry Carnival people).  We finally found a little plot of sand that we could put our towels on.  If it had not been so sunny we could have just sat near the water but it was so hot you couldn't sit out in the unprotected sun for long -- consequently you needed a spot where the loungers were.  The loungers are partly covered in a lovely coconut grove.  This would all be great if ONE ship is in port.  Otherwise you can sit around the big pool but the noise/music is blaring and all the Margarittaville people are drinking... you get the idea. My kids had booked the Flowrider surf machine which they loved. However, when it was their time to go on it, we moved to the pool area to watch them and 12 loungers away from us was a Carnival passenger puking his guts out on the deck -- NO I am not kidding.  In my opinion, the Margaritaville staff should have helped him back to the ship but no, they left him to keep upchucking while his girlfriend yelled at him.  It was awful.  Someone said he'd been like that for an hour.  Finally a staff person came and poured a bottle of water on the pile of grossness.  Great solution.  I tried to concentrate on the flowrider but with the circus going on near me it was difficult.  So that's my Grand Turk memory.

Baja 749
This is a coveted corner aft stateroom.  It has a lovely huge balcony with two chairs, two lounger style chairs and a coffee table. The aft railing slightly wraps around the corner giving you further side views.  Absolutely no one can see into your balcony except perhaps your neighbour to the right if they really, really tried.  The privacy is wonderful. Otherwise the room is identical to all balcony staterooms.  
The down side is that you definately feel more motion from this location.  We have also stayed in C753 (identical but on Caribe) and said we'd never take an aft stateroom again for this reason but memories of the privacy won out and we booked B749 this time. 
However, we had a very smooth sailing and have to admit that we were both queezy often in this stateroom.  We have never experienced this in any other location.

Christmas activities: Beyond the decorations, snow, carolers, and the Christmas Production Show which I've mentioned, there were many other Christmas touches:  Gingerbread house decorating contest,  Christmas menu items including gingerbread souffle, stolen all week, turkey dinner of course, Ron Goodman read the Night Before Christmas to the children in the Piazza, Santa came and brought every child a lovely wrapped Princess bear, many staff sang beautifully to us in the Piazza (with Princess Carols hand-outs for all guests to sing-along),  Carols played over the speakers (but I noticed they did stop on Dec 26 which was fine), the photo set-ups had Christmassy back-drops to choose from.Curiously enough, although there were 5 staterooms between the 14 of us, the Princess staff insisted that all 14 of us go up to the check--in lady in ONE group.

Ruby Princess Review

A Magical Ruby Christmas Cruise 2012

Rating by category

Additional details

Cabin Review

Balcony

Find a Ruby Princess Cruise from $172