We originally were hoping for a western Caribbean cruise and were interested in Royal Caribbean Freedom or Liberty, but due to pricing and coincidence of our anniversary, we chose the Caribbean Princess Eastern Caribbean route. We were told it was an excellent ship for first time cruisers, and a good ship for people who want to "make their own" cruise. As first time cruisers, embarkation was a little intimidating as we did not know what to expect. We did research and found that it was best to come early, so we arrived at 11:30 for our departure which was set for around 5 PM. The cruiseline had recommended to come after 2 for a fast embarkation. We were able to get in the building, wait for our number to be called, get through the registration and get on board by about 12:30. My wife is not a U.S. citizen, so there were some worries about the registration, but I had called all the ports we were visiting and they said just to be sure she had her green card and her passport. I also had done all of our paperwork ahead of time to get through registration faster. Some of the paperwork was never even asked for (passenger immigration form, for example) during the entire trip. Our first thought was that the cabin was small, high up in the ship and very close to the back. My wife is susceptible to motion sickness, so I was a little concerned, but I thought that a ship that big would not do too much rocking and rolling. Also, I had a limited choice when I booked the cabin, and I was in particular looking for a room with a covered balcony and new that some of the lower deck balconies were exposed. So I had chosen this room out of two available on purpose. After a bit of getting used to it, the room seemed to fit us just fine, and we found places for all of our clothes and had plenty of room to still move about the cabin. The ship, to my surprise, actually moved with the swells more than I expected, but my wife never got motion sick on the boat, and she only wore her little seasickness patches when we went on a shore excursion on a smaller boat, and on the airplane on the way home. Our cabin was also right outside the escalator and stairwell lobby, so there were some times when people would have loud conversations right outside out room, and the cleaning people seemed to use that area as a staging area as well. So I would recommend to avoid the rooms right near the elevator lobbies if possible. The public areas were very well kept. We saw where someone had spilled a whole plate with a burrito and all kinds of stuff on it on the stairs, and when we came back from lunch, there was no evidence of it. The only exception was the men's room on the promenade deck next to the Princess Theatre, which stunk badly every time I used it and on two occasions, there were no paper towels. The Promenade deck was too crowded when they had all the picture displays out. The Explorer's lounge was too crowded during several of the acts which we wanted to see. You had to stand outside.

Our first experience with the buffet was a little annoying as they had only one line open and there were a lot of people trying to get some food. This was at embarkation, about 12:30 in the afternoon. We got through the line, and about that time they opened up another line. We ate at the dining room on the first formal night. The service was excellent. The food was not that exciting. I had two fillet mignon medallions which were both small, and not very tasty. Service was fairly quick that night. We had heard that on embarkation night, some people had to wait an hour after sitting down before getting their meal. We decided to skip the dining room for the remainder of the trip and only ate at the buffet. We did, however, eat at Sabatini's and the steak house one night each. Sabatini's was excellent, but prepare to spend 2.5 hours there as they bring you course after course of food. The steak house was similarly excellent, and the portions were very good. It was our anniversary, and they brought us a special desert to celebrate. A nice touch. The buffets were good, as buffets go. Breakfast was pretty much the same every day, with a couple of the dishes rotating in and out. Lunches and Dinner were good, but when they tried to do ethnic, like Chinese or Creole, it wasn't a very good approximation. Princess would earn a lot more kudos from me if they made soda and ice cream free. I got the soda card for something like $36. I wouldn't spend that much on soda at home in a week, but if I drank my usual amount at princess prices, it would have cost me twice that at least. So it was a tossup of paying the $36 or drinking iced tea, and I splurged on the soda card. I did not have the same problems as others have reported about getting people to bring them sodas. I even had someone get me a refill in the dining room. However, I usually just went and got my own soda at a bar before going to the buffet.

Entertainment was very good. They had several comics on board that were very good. The ships band was very good. The ships singers were okay, not great, but they seemed to think they were great. The only guest singer I saw was a country singer, so I didn't care much for it. Some of the lounge acts and pianists were missing notes from time to time, which probably only I noticed, as I am a musician. Still most of them were very enjoyable to listen to. The room attendant was excellent. He worked with us occasionally to let us sleep late or we might come back from breakfast and tell him when we were going out, so he could come back and clean. We never had any problems with any of the service people on board. We did not do any shore excursions with the cruise line. However, I would like to note that the taxi service on St. Thomas was miserable. We wanted to go to Coral World, but did not take the tour because it was cheaper to go ourselves, and also we could stay longer. However, it was like pulling teeth to get a taxi to take us there. We had to wait 10 minutes for a small taxi to come back from a delivery because they didn't want to put us in one of the safari vehicles. Then we had to wait 10 minutes in the van while they waited for someone else interested in going to the east side of the island. Then they found some people to go to the east side of the island, and dropped them off FIRST! It took us over an hour to make a 15 minute trip. We nearly missed our reservation time for the semi-submersible. The Caribbean princess has plenty of deck lounges, no argument on that. However, most people are not interested in just lounging around in the sun in one of the many tanning locations on deck. Most people wanted to sit in the limited amount of shade in the Movies Under the Stars area, in a place where it was both shady, but you could still see the movie. Many people were ignoring the signs about reserving seats, and had dropped off their beach towels in a chair, then were never seen or heard from again. I am not enough of a jerk to toss their towel away and take the chair. I wish they had some crew people to just watch that area, and unreserve any chairs that people were reserving, but not using for more than about 15 minutes or a half hour.