This was our second cruise with Princess Cruise Line. Our first was a year ago on the Ruby Princess and we were thoroughly happy with our experience. This time, however, we took a Southern Caribbean cruise heavy with sea days (3). We didn't think we would mind an extra sea day, but for us it stretched to 4 days as we didn't go ashore in Curacao due to weather.

We drove to Ft. Lauderdale Port Everglades and parked at the parking garage. Embarkation was relatively easy and we were onboard and in our stateroom before 12:30! We immediately called room service for a couple bottles of rum for the room, and then called the dining line and made our reservations for the Crown Grill for 2 nights...absolutely the best food we had on the entire cruise!!! Well worth the extra $25 fee per person.

We noticed that the Crown Princess wasn't as well maintained as the Ruby Princess was. There were several rust spots outside on the balcony and noticeable from many areas on the ship. When on the Ruby Princess, people were constantly cleaning and painting. We didn't see one paint brush this time and it could have used it! On our first day, someone was scraping the hand railings above us and the scrapings fell onto our balcony and we had to ask the room steward if he could make sure it got cleaned up so that we didn't have to push it around the balcony and off the seats when out there. He was happy to take care of it and when we returned a couple hours later, it had been taken care of. Our room steward (Michael) was great and always seemed to be working hard. Read more