We were a family of 4 traveling in the same cabin due to an excellent deal offered to me by Princess for past passengers. Our family consisted of 50 & 41 yr old parents and two kids 19 & 12. This was my 8th cruise and 5th on Princess while the others were all on the first cruise. I chose this cruise due to the shorter itinerary and the great price as I was a little worried they may not end up being such avid cruisers as myself. I had been trying to convince her to take a cruise for a few years now but the Costa disaster and issues with some Carnival ships didn't help my cause. Being that we live in MN i offered up a cruise or a ski trip and she took the bait and agreed to the cruise...

Embarkation: We traveled to Florida early to spend a few days with family and then drove to the Port midday on Saturday. The traffic to enter the port was quite bad but once thru parking was easy. Once in line I was a bit surprised at how long the line was as it was the worst I have ever seen for Princess. The staff seem a bit frazzled and unorganized and started changing the line which benefitted us but seemed very unfair to some who had been in line longer than us. I questioned if they truly wanted us (and many others) to basically cut the line and they just pushed us thru. Once inside the process was much better and more up to Princess' standards.

Cabin: We were in a Mini-Suite towards the aft section of the Dolphin Deck. Overall a pretty nice room and although a bit tight for the four of us it was comfortable enough. The room had a queen sized bed, a sofa bed and a dropdown bed that was set up for us at night. Nobody had any problems with the comfort levels although it was really a pain to get to the balcony when the sofabed was set up at night so I put the coffee table on the balcony to free up space. The balcony had two lounge chairs and a small table with plenty of room to spare. The room also had two TV'S which was nice but very strange if you want to watch two different programs since they are situated right next to each other and just angled in slightly different directions. The bathroom was pretty nice with a tub and storage was probably about average. Our room steward "Ferdie" was absolutley awesome and went out of his way to get to know us and try to make our cruise better. I tipped him extra the first and last day which he seemed to really appreciate and he kept our room loaded with new towel animals, chocolates, etc every night. Read more