My husband and I travelled on the Golden Princess August 16, along with my sister and a friend. We are past passengers with Princess, but this was my sister first time with Princess. About 2 weeks prior to sailing I was contacted and offered an upgrade to a full suite at a very nominal fee, so we accepted. We went from a mini on Dolphin to a suite on Caribe. We spent the night prior in Seattle at the Marriott Waterfront. We arrived at the terminal around 11am, gave our luggage to the porters and went immediately upstairs to check in without any wait. I had read a lot of horror stories about Seattle check in but we did not find them to be accurate. We went to the mini suite first and found it to be in good condition. It had a new sofa sleeper in the living area. Then up one deck to our suite. Very nice, great space and a huge deck with teak furniture. The deck furniture was showing it wear, but I am sure the weather plays a big part in its upkeep. Our steward was Allen and he was there to make sure we had everything we needed. We found our way to the restaurant for sit down lunch, only after calling to find out the dining room location and telling them we were a suite passenger. We were anytime dinners and had no problem getting reservation and ate in the dining room every night except the last night. We did take advantage of the suite amenity that gave us first night dining in the Crown Grill. The food at the Crown Grill was good, not great and the service was strange. Food and service in the other restaurants was good. We did not get to any of the shows as we did not get out of dinner until around 830p. I agree with the comments on the Horizon, they really need to upgrade the food. They had a strange food theme every night and the food looked really bad.

We have only a couple of complaints and those are disembarking in ports. We had shore excursions, booked with Princess in both Juneau and Victoria, that required us to meet on shore. That meant we stood in a line that they literally went thru the whole ship. In Victoria we arrived almost an hour later than the 7:00p scheduled arrival. We had booked the horse and trolley tour that was to leave at 7:45p but it was now almost 8:15p and almost dark. When we saw the line to get off the ship I called to tell them we wanted to cancel as it was dark and they said sorry no refund. We finally got to the tour location, after standing in line for 30mins to get off and boarded the trolley in the dark. The trolley took us thru the neighborhood, into the city and then into a totally dark park. We could not see anything except the city lights let alone that the trolley moved at an extremely slow speed and the running lights were not operating. This made for a very dangerous situation as cars could not see us. I would not recommend trying to take a tour in Victoria as there is no time. We did not get back on the ship until after 10pm. In Juneau we took the Whale Watching & Wildlife Quest, operated by Allen Marine. We did see whales , eagle and sea lions. Only negative was the guide on board relied on the passengers to spot the whale and was just continually selling drinks, books and salmon. In closing, we found that Princess still offers a good cruise experience and we plan on sailing with them again. Don't know if I would ever pay full price for a suite as I don't think we saw the value in what you received. On return to Seattle we spent three nights at the Warwick hotel. Warwick is a good location and a nice hotel with good staff.