Background - We're a young 30 something couple who have thoroughly enjoyed our last 7 cruises (3 of which have been with Princess). We have sailed on two other Hawaiian cruises with Norwegian and sailed through Hilo and Maui on a 30 day cruise with Princess. We have also stayed on most of the islands in the past, so we know Hawaii pretty well. This was however our first cruise from Los Angeles. We booked this trip less than 2 months before the cruise and were wait-listed for a month and a half. We found out we were matched on the wait-list for an inside stateroom about 1.5 weeks before we were to sail. Because of the late match, Princess was unable to sell us transfers, but assured us we could purchase them when we arrived in LAX.

Embarkation - Being that we live in Northern California, we flew down the day of the trip and did not experience any problems. We were very relieved to find a Princess representative waiting in the airport terminal and she was more than happy to sell us a transfer to the ship. We were whisked away to our bus and loaded up. I will say that our luggage was haphazardly loaded onto a luggage cart and while we were waiting on the bus to leave, one of the luggage carts carrying some fellow passenger's luggage was dumped to the ground. In the end, our luggage made it to the room in one piece. The bus took about 45 minutes to get to the ship and the check-in process was very smooth. In fact, we got on the ship so quickly, that we checked into our room and immediately bolted back off the ship to do some quick shopping for bottled water and snacks or our stateroom at the crew store next door to the port. My wife was ecstatic when she found that the crew store was stocked with Cadbury chocolates from the UK!

Ship - The Diamond Princess was the largest ship we had ever sailed on. We were a little concerned that it would seem too crowded, but overall the cruise seemed roomy and we never felt over-crowded. Our room was a nice size (did I mention we got a free upgrade to an Oceanview -- all that waitlist waiting paid off in the end). We were on deck 5 (Plaza) which meant we were right next to the Atrium, coffee bar, etc. We really liked the location except that the hallway reeked of cigarette smoke. The other thing we didn't like was that the Santa Fe restaurant where we usually ate dinner was on deck 6, but if we went up to deck 6 from our cabin, we had to walk through the casino which also reeked of smoke. Read more