Our November 15th Southern Caribbean sailing on the Caribbean Princess was our 10th cruise and the second on Princess. Although not a perfect cruise, we were pleasantly surprised by the quality of this cruise in light of what it cost.

We has spent a week travelling in Puerto Rico beforehand and as a result we drove in to San Juan that day, arriving at the dock about 5pm. This meant that most of whatever check in "crush" had long since subsided, and we were on the ship in about 10 minutes-a great first impression. (Apparently we could have checked in as late as 9 pm, and that sort of flexibility is a great advantage it seems to me.)

First impressions of the ship were good-relatively new and well maintained. We had booked a balcony cabin for the first time in our cruising lives and were looking forward to that experience. Unfortunately a disappointment was soon encountered, as a number of adjacent cabins housed smokers (including cigar smokers). While sailing out of port and on numerous subsequent occasions during the cruise we (non smokers) were driven indoors in order to escape the fumes. As first time balcony cruisers we never even thought about the possibility of this being an issue, but we will next time. Hopefully if there is a next time on Princess they will have figured out how to separate the smokers and non smokers into port/starboard balcony cabins to ensure as much as possible that neither intrudes on the other in this respect. Read more