This was our fourth transatlantic, our 20th cruise on the Princess Line and the third on the Island. During this 31 day repositioning we found the Island clean, though a little dated, with excellent always-with-a-smile service and the food selection tasty and varied the entire time. The entertainment was over and above the usual cruise fare, even at times world class. We always get a mini-suite, this time choosing C204, an elongated mini-suite without a balcony. The cabin window was large enough to always give us an adequate view but, of course, nothing like a full sliding glass door. There were a few times that I did miss the balcony but the extra room made up for what was lost. I will say we would never book this type cabin on any Caribbean cruises as we are heavy balcony users in warmer weather. The cabin was quiet and just a few feet away from an outside door leading to the front of the ship. Only a couple times during rough weather did I find a rope across the door entrance that denied access. Believe me this front ship area afforded a spectacular view when entering Venice’s canal way.

But it didn’t take us long to realize that this was not the same ship experience we had when taking the Island Princess through the Panama Canal, twice. This time we found crowded public spaces, overlapping events, that kept people waiting outside venues in large crowds if anything went long, and witnessed people in long lines trying to get into the anytime dining room. Fortunately, we opted this time for the traditional dining time slot, even though for some unknown reason every night, and I mean every night, our dinner took two hours, from beginning to end. When coming out of dining we would see long lines a floor down of people waiting to get into the anytime venue and talked to people over and over that were very unhappy about waiting, with a buzzer in hand, to be called for the anytime experience.

What we did observe, now that the large Universal Lounge has been taken out, was staff that had to constantly juggle limited venue options. An example was a speaker, in the Explorer Lounge, giving an excellent talk on WWII that was barely audible because of the bingo players signing up outside, not a few feet away. The cruise line has not only taken away an extremely large public space but has added an additional 100 cabins to the Island that was never in the initial configuration. The fabulous former fitness center has been moved to a unappealing windowless lower level that I ended up not using because of the smallness and lack of ambience. The Princess Theater, I guess, because of all the additional passengers has had all the side aisles removed which meant the nightly climbing over people to get to your seat routine. Read more