My husband and I are Elite level passengers on Princess. I am a travel agent and originally booked a starboard balcony cabin for this cruise but the cruise became available to me as a free cruise for having attained Commodore status through the Princess Academy; so we took the free cabin which was an inside cabin on Aloha deck. We were located in an ideal position to take full advantage of the deck and adult only pool at the back of the deck. It was like having a huge private deck of our own. I had originally booked the starboard balcony for viewing the icebergs and rounding the horn. As it turned out when we rounded Cape Horn the view was from port side cabins and we watched from our friend's mini-suite balcony. We viewed the fiords and icebergs from Skywalkers. We had 4 days pre-cruise in Buenos Aires where we stayed at the cE Design Hotel. It is a small boutique hotel that we booked through the Tablet Hotel site. The hotel is located in the Recoleta district of the city and it was an ideal place to stay. We did not use the services of any tour guides in Buenos Aires. We instead followed several of Frommer's walking itineraries either walking from our hotel or taking a cab to the starting point of our walk for the day. We did early check-in at the PanAmericano Hotel and were very glad that we were not staying there because of its location, My husband and I sailed on the Star a few years ago when it did the Baltic itinerary so we were already familiar with the ship. We were very fortunate to have an excellent cabin steward named Dennis. He was the best we have ever had in meeting our needs and anticipating our requests.

Dining: Originally we signed up for anytime dining but having read about the "lines" I requested to be wait listed for second seating. We received a call from the Headwaiter when we boarded to ask what our preference was regarding table size and time and were assigned a table in Portofino's (one of the anytime dining rooms). We had excellent service and walked right into the dining room to our table each night breezing by the waiting passengers. We ate most meals in the dining room avoiding the buffets. We ate breakfast at the buffet twice because of early shore excursions. Shore Excursions: We did not do any Princess shore excursions; we had pre-arranged excursions set in most ports. In Montevideo we had an all day tour arranged through Marta email msmtaiz@hotmail.com. We had a city tour and even though it was Sunday were able (early) to get into the government building that was closed later in the day. We also went to the Bouza vineyard for a tour and tasting. In Stanley we took the $10.00 bus to Gypsy Cove. We were very fortunate to see the Magellenic penguins close up. There were many going in and out of burrows and which were next to the trail. A ranger on duty walked my husband down to the bottom of one of the cliffs to see some newly hatched birds. In Puerto Montt we had an all day tour with GV Tours. It was a very complete tour at a very reasonable price. We missed Ushuaia because of strong winds. In Punta Arenas we went to Seno Otway (early before many of the tour busses). our trip was arranged through Francesca email francesca_rhcp@hotmail.com. Again an excellent tour at a very reasonable price. Our tour and transfer from Valparaiso was arranged through Carla (info@chileabout.com). Our guide, bus for 10 of us were waiting upon our arrival. We toured Vina del Mar and Valparaiso before being dropped at our respective hotels.

Entertainment: We went to two production shows which were not impressive. The Gaucho brought back for a repeat show was terrible. There was a guest vocalist , Phippa who was excellent as were the musicians playing around the ship. Maurizio had the ship rocking where ever he played. As messy as embarkation was the opposite was the case for disembarkation. I would recommend this itinerary as well as ship for this venue. The biggest disappointment on this cruise were the "scholarship" at sea lecturers. I did not find them to be interesting or to the point of the topics they were addressing. It would have been helpful to have had a naturalist onboard.