This was our 9th cruise on Princess, and 12th overall.

We were going to be home alone at Christmas and decided to go on a cruise instead. We'd been to the Caribbean several times before, but not to the Canal. We selected this particular ship because of design details (see below) and prior experience with Princess.

I had been interested in traveling on this ship or its sister (Island Princess) since it was built. As noted elsewhere on Cruise Critic, the ship has a more favorable ratio of space to passengers than any other Princess ship and most other mass market cruise ships. I believe the Queen Mary 2 (which we have also sailed on) has a similar ratio. The extra room made the ship feel generally more spacious than others. The only exception was the theater, which was too small for the number of passengers, with only two main entrances (however, there were emergency exits). The ship has a promenade deck that fully encircles deck 7, a rarity in modern cruise ships, It was great for walking or running. Note that (very unfortunately) the Island Princess no longer has such a promenade deck, since Princess got greedy and replaced part of it with more cabins. Read more