Background: My husband and I are not frequent cruisers, mainly because we have never been all that happy with the cruise experience. I have been on 4 past cruises, hubby on 5, mostly Royal Caribbean and one on Celebrity a long time ago. Our RCCL cruises were with a group of friends on the older ships (Adventure and Explorer of the Seas) and I found the entire experience each time to be completely underwhelming. Our needs were fairly basic: new ship; not too large (no mega ship); not RCCL so we could try another line. Our main goal was escaping northeast winter, itinerary was secondary.

I am happy to say this was the cruise that made us see why people like cruising! It's just a matter of finding a ship you like. If they had added one more port it would have been even better.

Embarkation: Signage at the port was very good. Follow the directions provided on the Princess website as it's a very large port area. Had a very slow agent process us, and they had some issue that slowed embarkation, so overall took about an hour to get on. Room was ready when we boarded which was great to drop our things. Went to lunch in buffet which was not terribly crowded. Read more