Recently, our daughter's family relocated to London for business reasons. We had not seen them for a year so we checked airline prices for our planned visit. We had sticker shock at the high cost of airline tickets and decided to check into transatlantic cruise prices. We discovered that for only a few hundred dollars more, we could cruise in style to the UK instead. We chose the M/S Crown Princess Transatlantic 17 day cruise to Southampton, England because of its itinerary. The ports of call were mostly in Europe: Galveston, Texas, Fort Lauderdale, FL, Ponta Delgada (Sao Miguel)/Azores, Lisbon, Portugal, Zeebrugge, Belgium, Le Havre, France, Southampton, England. Unfortunately, for us, the ship departed from Galveston, TX - a plane ride away for us living in Florida. While looking into alternatives, we discovered that it was possible to join the ship in Ft. Lauderdale only missing some sea days. The cost would be lower also.

This was our first cruise on a Princess ship and we were not concerned that it would be 14 days on a cruise line that we had never before sailed. Princess has a good reputation so we were excited to cruise one of its ships. A few weeks before the ship sailed, we secured a big reduction in price that made the cruise even more economical compared with flying. Just before we began packing our bags, Princess notified us that we were receiving an upgraded stateroom, which meant a larger balcony. We were thrilled.

We rented a car, returned the car to the rental office in Fort Lauderdale and took its complementary shuttle to the pier. I figured we would be onboard quickly since most of the passengers were already on the ship. Unfortunately, this did not happen. It took almost 45 minutes for us to be processed. There was too few staff on duty. We were in the long general boarding line but the staff at the two other boarding lines continually fed their people into our line so we hardly moved. We were very discouraged. It was not what we expected of Princess. However, once we boarded, things improved greatly. By the way, debarkation was a breeze, I must add. Read more