I am in my late 30's and cruised to visit my boyfriend who is an employee on the CB. Unfortunately for me, being a single cruiser I must pay full fare plus another HALF just to see him once during his four month absence! He is not eligible for a family discount (as others are) because of his position and that he is in a shared berth cabin, so that definitely hurts! This was my 6th cruise with Princess, and second time on the CB. I flew from Vancouver, BC to Newark, NJ for the first time and chose to stay at an airport hotel with shuttle, the Wyndham Garden Hotel, Newark a/p. I took the airtrain to P4 after using the hotel phone being told they ran every 20 min's. Well I waited for 30 and finally one came with too many people and not enough space. Anyway, it was a very nice hotel and was able to shuttle back to the a/p in the A.M. to catch a Princess shuttle to the pier. Princess does not allow you to simply purchase a transfer to the pier in the morning without having come off of a flight. So I had to lie about a pretend flight I flew in on that morning in order to purchase the transfer which seems ridiculous to me! The only way for me to get from the west coast of Canada to the east coast of the U.S. by morning is to take a red eye and I wasn't going to do that with my migraines! Therefore, I picked a flight arriving at EWR at the time I wished to be picked up, pre-purchased my transfer through my T.A. (who is also my mom!) and found the Princess rep waiting for me by the arriving flight's carousel. Wasn't she surprised to see me when the flight hadn't even landed yet! :) The shuttle was not a large coach but a small van. We loaded up at the next terminal and were off to Brooklyn. I had researched flights into JFK and hotels in the area of the a/p & Brooklyn but found flying to EWR cheaper as were the hotels near the a/p. Being able to take the Princess shuttle for $35 to the pier also cut back on costs for me. Previously having worked on ships out of Manhattan I was disappointed to be so far from Manhattan but must admit the Brooklyn terminal is very nice and seemed very organized. I arrived at the pier about 1pm and nearly walked right up to the next available ticket counter, it was effortless.

Met my boyfriend at the gangway and we found our inside, mid-ship cabin on Caribe #508. The location itself was excellent but I would NOT recommend this exact cabin as it is located right next to that deck's crew galley/swinging door etc. All night and all morning we heard room service trays being dumped, ice machines running, lots of banging and talking. It was EXTREMELY loud! I sleep with ear plugs and I was still woken up to the noise banging around on the other side of my wall. The beds were AWFULLY hard. We both had sore backs for days but as we're late to bed, late to rise we rarely saw our cabin attendant Jenny, who I had warned of our silly sleep schedule and asked her not to wait around for us. If the sign was out, please come in, if not please don't worry about us! I had planned to ask for an egg crate but come mid-cruise I just didn't bother. When we did see Jenny she was always very happy and so accommodating. Lovely girl.

Again as an ex-employee I've seen my share of the Caribbean and was really only excited about Bermuda but of course, Bertha changed that as I'd expected prior to getting onboard. Very disappointing nonetheless but that's the way it goes. When I cruise we do not participate in a lot of the goings on onboard nor do we eat in the dining rooms. We ate everyday either in the Horizon Court/Caribe Cafe or we'd run up for burgers & pizza both of which were EXCELLENT, perhaps a little TOO convenient and tasty as we used them a lot. This time we actually used room service quite a bit too although unlike RCI you can't order off of the dining room menu which was a shame as we never saw the dining room. But we stuck to our favourites as I'm an extremely picky eater and the fancy stuff doesn't do it for me, but I was very happy with the sandwiches & chips. I must say though that those crappy little stick-like fries they served with the burgers & sandwiches up until the last day of the cruise were awful! Finally by day 9 we got the larger cut fries. Not sure what that was all about though. I've never really understood the 'anytime dining'. Anytime we went by to look there were lines of people waiting so it's not like you can just walk up and get seated whenever you feel like it. It seems it must be planned out and I guess for us, we couldn't be bothered. We also tried to make reservations at Chops the night before San Juan but were booked. We waited and called again 2 days later and were told it was booked up for the whole cruise but we'd be put on a wait-list, which we never did get called for. So we missed out on that too which I was very surprised at! I'm HOPING that had nothing to do with the fact he was a crew member but we did get some looks from other staff when we'd do something 'passenger-like'. That gets irritating at times. They think I'm cruising for free or at an extremely reduced rate when in fact I've paid a lot more than some to be there. Read more