The Star Princess 15-day Hawaii cruise over Christmas and new year 2016-17 was completely full, as expected, and overall very good. Nice mini suite cabin in a quiet location on Dolphin deck, clean and well maintained, if however needing a bit of an update and renovation/refurbishment, like the rest of the Star Princess in general. All the standard facilities available, including pools, spa, gym, lots of choices for dining and bars. We had selected flexible dining, and tried the Horizon, Portofino, Capri, International Cafe, all very good, with the Portofino particularly standing out with its friendly, helpful and knowledgeable staff, quite accommodating for vegetarian diners. The coffees and doughnuts at International Cafe are outstanding. Generally good evening entertainment in the ship theatre, and wide range of choices for other activities during the days, especially the several days at sea on this itinerary.
We had prebooked all the excursions through the Princess online option, and four out of the five were excellent, one average (could have been better with improved transport and guide arrangements). I think the crew were caught unawares on the first arrival day in Hawaii when everyone had to queue up for two hours plus in the ship's corridors just to get onboard immigration done again as the ship had technically arrived from another country after the first stop in Ensenada, Mexico (maybe they should make this the last stop before returning to LA).
The onboard art auctions were generally good fun and educational, and are now run (on paper at least) by Princess Cruises themselves, not Park West like before, although the giveaways and gallery stationery are still in the name of the latter. A word of caution if you're attending an auction - be alert and listen out for your auction number in case it's called out erroneously as it's all conducted at some speed, I had to inform them immediately and also clarify later in the day at the gallery (to some resistance, I might add), just to ensure I was not billed for art I did not bid on. A very nice cruise ship on a beautiful Pacific route to Hawaii, great staff, service, dining, entertainment and facilities, the ship could do with an updating and renovation of some of the facilities.
Nice comfortable cabin, needs some renovation, refurbishing and updating, bathroom could be more spacious.