Royal Princess Review
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As with all new ships there is great fanfare and much excitement. Unfortunately, it is way over done for a ship as poorly designed as the Royal Princess. It is fairly obvious to anyone who has cruised a great deal that the architects of the internal space of the Royal Princess had no idea of traffic flow on a cruise ship. Let's start with the elevators. No one in their right mind would increase the passenger load significantly (the Royal is currently the 6th largest cruise ship afloat) and not increase the number of elevators. That is what the architects of the Royal Princess failed to do. Those passengers with physical handicaps that prevented them from climbing stairs often (not rarely but often) had to wait 20 to 30 minutes for an elevator. But it doesn't stop there.
Most of the lounge areas have a piano. The piano is situated so that the backs of the people in the lounge face the piano. More than one musician rightfully made comment about it. In order to watch the musician you had to physically turn your chair around blocking the aisle. One of the lounges in the atrium has a sitting/conversation area off to the side of the ship. it looks nice and is somewhat private for conversations except there are only two access points at either end. To get in or out of the area you have to walk through everyone else's conversation. But it gets worse.
The seats in the Princess theater are so narrow and so close together that you feel as if you are sitting in the coach section of some very cheap airline. There are only two access aisles with the side areas along the walls block by railings. The space is so tight that it is impossible for the bar waiters to work. What is so very frightening about the ill-designed space is that it would be impossible to effectively evacuate in an emergency. I need only refer to the Iroquois Theatre fire in 1903 which resulted in the deaths of over 600 people and was the impetus for safety regulations regarding theaters. Apparently, since this is an international ship so those safety regulations do not apply.