We have taken multiple cruises with Princess, Celebrity, & Royal C. Living in the Midwest always has us looking at winter temperature relief. We decided on a holiday cruise with kids directly after Christmas to experience New Years in the Caribbean for the first time. We have in excess of 5-7 cruises on each line and before reading this review, I would still honestly give Celebrity the edge in quality both in entertainment & food quality. Having reviewed some earlier Emerald Princess posts just prior to our trip had us very concerned with the quality of the ship and whether Princess has "downgraded".

While I'm sure some of the prior posts detailed major disappointments, we had a wonderful time. Emerald is certainly not new and not as large as others, but not a ship to avoid by any means. Princess hospitality was excellent. We had two adjacent balcony rooms, one for the well-behaved teens and one for my wife & myself. The room steward was excellent, efficient, and very friendly. Room temps were fine and the bathrooms worked perfectly which again was a problem stated in prior posts. The staff in general was great. Rooms were level 14 aft and very convenient to a pool, a single floor below the breakfast buffet, and in close proximity to a pool bar.

Ports were St. Kitts, Antigua, St. Thomas, & Gr Turks with 3 at sea days. We were upgraded to platinum status for this cruise with Princess with the standard return guests cocktail party, nice but nothing incredible and no appetizers like celebrity, but ok. The nice new perk was nightly special invite to happy hour in the lounge on 18th floor as platinum. Entertainment was ok and that's a bit generous. A musical disco show was great but short only about 35 minutes and I feel should have been twice that, they also has a great singer single guy with band one night. Great voice and rendition of "get my kicks on route 66" was outstanding. Read more