Ruby Princess Review

Greek Isles were wonderful, loved Italy more.

Review for Greece Cruise on Ruby Princess
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RadiantRed
6-10 Cruises • Age 60s

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Sail Date: Sep 2013

My husband and I celebrated our 35th wedding anniversary with a cruise that began on Sept. 9 in Rome. The itinerary was very good and we have sailed with Princess about 5 times now, the last being just 6 months ago when we sailed on the Coral Princess through the Panama Canal. I liked the Ruby much better than the Panama canal trip with the Coral. The ship was big enough to have the amenities we like and not so big that we feel we have to trudge miles to get anywhere. We stayed on the 11th floor and felt we were close enough to the pools and Horizon Court and everything seemed quite easy to find except the Boticelli dining room, which is on deck 6, in the mid-ship area.

The food was actually better on this ship than it was in Panama but I do think overall, Princess has gone down in quality quite a bit since we first started cruising 15 years ago. The familiar icons of the dining room such as the flambe' cherries jubilee and Baked Alaska parade, singing waiters for Italian night, etc. are shadows of how things were. Some changes are good, we actually like smaller portions and I think Princess is trying to be flexible by allowing 1 bottle of wine per person to be brought in each port stop. We carried in wine and beer almost each time we stopped and security never even glanced at them. Often we paid a corkage fee to have wine in the dining room but sometimes we asked for wine glasses and drank it somewhere on the ship.

The excursions have gone up quite a bit in price and they still have the same format, spend 1 hour sitting in the theater or someplace waiting for your tour to be called and ending with shopping at some place that Princess picks for you to shop. Wasted time in my mind and Europe has great opportunities for self-guided tours. Check out Rick Steves' website for Mediterranean cruise ship port guidebook and free apps you where you can download tours for your iphone or ipad/ipod. They were fabulous, and no heavy foreign accents to wade through. My husband has hearing issues and we did the Sorrento/Pompeii tour and it was really hard to understand our tour guide. Also, we had some very elderly, slower people on the tour even though it had a 'strenuous' emblem but they still came. Really read the tour materials to get the most out of your tour.

Cabin Review

The interior staterooms on the Ruby Princess are adequate, similar to any other Princess ship. We choose interior since we prefer to make more trips rather than have a balcony or window. We're fine with that, don't have any issues with claustrophobia or anything and we don't spend much time in our room. We enjoyed having the fridge to store beer and bottled water.

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