The Royal Princess is a beautiful ship, but to big for our taste. Upon arrival in Southampton we were greeted with the information that boarding would be delayed while the ship was sanitized due to norovirus on the previous cruise. We were bused to a nearby mall to kill time until boarding could start. When we got to the mall, we found about 1500 people waiting on the first of many lines that day to get back to the ship, which they could still not board yet. When we returned to the ship later, we found a line about the length of the ship waiting on the dock to check in and board. This was the 2nd line of the day and took about an hour to get into the boarding building, before getting on line number 3 to first get your boarding documents. This was a terrible way to start a cruise.

Once on board, the luggage was very slow in arriving to the stateroom. We had organized a cruise critic meet & greet for our first sea day, which Princess provided space on the Horizon Terrace for, but refused to provide any beverages or snacks for, even though the M&G was after sailing from our first port and many people were thirsty and hungry. We worked our way around that by bringing food for the people out of the buffet and setting it up on tables and chairs. We had arranged private tours in most ports with other CC people who we had met on the roll call and that worked out very well and was considerably less costly than Princess tours, but we have found that to be the case on most cruise lines. The highlight tour was an all day tour of parts of Scotland, ending up in Edinburgh at the Royal Military Tattoo. This should be a must for everyone's bucket list if able while the Tattoo is on.

Food overall was good but we enjoyed the Symphony dining room better than the main dining room. Alfredo's for Pizza was a great lunch some days. Our cabin was a mini suite which was quite adequate in size. We did not use the balcony much as it was cool and windy most of the time. The various ports were interesting but we did skip Dublin and spent an extra day in Liverpool. The ship was constantly being sanitized where ever you turned. THe tables in the buffet were wiped down and left wet with sanitizer to dry after each use. There was a steward at each doorway and you washed your hands before entering any dining room or the buffet area, even if you were walking thru to get to another area. While this is a good procedure for health reasons, we were made to feel that the norovirus was our fault.