My family(12 of us) returned last week(01/12/08) from a Southern Caribbean cruise on the Crown Princess out of San Juan. This was only our second cruise so it was natural to compare this with our first cruise, Carnival Miracle in the Western Caribbean. Overall we liked the Carnival cruise better.

The "on-line" check in still required about 1.5 hours of standing in various lines before boarding the ship. The first line was about 45 minutes of standing on the sidewalk making your way to the pier. Standing in the warm sun felt good, but I thought the process would go quicker. The ship looked huge moored at the pier. Once on board the passage ways were narrower than the Miracle.

The room(balcony on Aloha deck) was smaller that anticipated. There was plenty of closet space, but the living area was smallish. The balcony had a small metal table and 2 metal chairs. The balcony floor had hard rubber mats which were uncomfortable on bare feet. We looked down on the balconies below us(no privacy for those guests) and I noticed those balconies had lounge chairs. I asked our steward if we could get a couple of those chairs and was told we could not. So the metal chairs had to do. Read more