We were on our second cruise, starting in Venice and travelling around the Greek isles, mainly. I'll start with the conclusion for those who don't want to read what ended up being a lengthy one: The conclusion A lovely ship, beautiful stateroom, great ports of call but sadly offset by memories of being treated like we were poor country cousins when all we wanted was to not be over-charged... Princess - if you are listening - change your business model and operating practices before this gets worse!

The room We had a balcony stateroom on the Aloha deck and it was a great size with a queen size bed, small fridge and the balcony was lovely. The linens on the bed were beautiful - white and soft! However, the bathroom was very small and we started off with a moldy shower curtain (took them a couple days to change it after we requested a new one). Our steward was a friendly, courteous fellow but it seemed that perhaps 18 cabins was too much to service - we found articles on the floor from the prior occupant at the side of the desk - clearly no one had gone there to clean up. In addition, we were surprised to read in the materials in the room of all the things that were supposed to be in the room (bottled water, laundry bag/list, recycling bin (which is really really needed given the amount of printed materials you get)) but we never saw...

The ship Given that this was the first year of operation, the ship was in good shape. Compared to the other ship we have been on, this one did not have as nice/as large public spaces - the piazza was moderate. The pools were generally small and very crowded with screaming, kicking children. It was often difficult to find a deck chair - although they said "don't reserve" seats people often did and there was no sign of reinforcement. Read more