This is our first cruise with Princess, 7th overall, we mostly cruise with RCL and HAL. Overall, we enjoyed the cruise on the Diamond Princess and found Princess to be well organized and the staff friendly. This is a long review because I noticed there arent many reviews on Diamond in Alaska for this year so Im trying to be thorough.

Embarkation: Probably the smoothest we've ever had! We stayed one night at Pan Pacific Hotel in Vancouver, arranged thru Princess, its a beautiful hotel right at Canada Place pier. The morning of our cruise we were able to check-in with cruise folks in the hotel and get our room keys/boarding passes. So all we had to do was walk to pier (next to the hotel) and go thru security and US customs/immigration. We got there at 11:30 when boarding commenced and were on the ship within 30 mins. The hotel also transferred our luggage from our rooms to the ship.

Diamond: Beautiful, clean ship! But the first thing we noticed was hand wash - every time you board the ship and go to a meal, they ask you to wash your hands with waterless hand cleaner - do it, it'll help prevent spread of viruses. After that, we saw nothing but friendly Princess staff. Our stateroom was ready when we boarded. Also, for a ship with 2600 PAX, we only occasionally noticed a lot of people, most of the time the ship did not seem crowded as there is a lot to do. They do have an Internet Cafe with plenty of laptops so you dont need to take one, it costs 35 cents per minute regardless of using their or your computer. Read more