I am writing to tell you about the cruise I just took on the Coral Princess on February 5th. This was the first time that I have taken a cruise on Princess Cruise Lines and was honestly looking forward to it. This was the 7th cruise in my life that I have been on. Anyway I can tell you that my experience was not a pleasant one. I traveled with 3 other people and there was supposed to be 2 in each cabin with adjoining balconies. We were originally assigned to cabins E708 and E710. When we got on the ship we soon discovered that we didn't have adjoining balconies. The ship's staff basically told us the ship was full, there really wasn't anything they could do but they would put us on a waiting list and maybe we would know something the next day but don't count on it. We asked them if we could switch with the people on either side of us and they said the cabins weren't the same so that was not an option. We took matters into our own hands and stood in the hall (about 2 1/2 hours) waiting for the folks on either side of our cabins to come to their room to ask them if we could switch with them. As luck had it, we did finally get a couple to do that with us. The rooms were the same after all. We ended up having to spend money to thank them to accommodate us however. The ship's staff didn't seem very happy that we did that. Next we were told by our Travel Agent that we would be able to divide the on board credit or credit card with the other party we were traveling with on the ship. The ship would not split up the credit card nor would they apply it to our bill unless we converted it to cash. They told us to go to the casino and get the cash but there would be a charge to do that. So to this day we still have the credit card and haven't used it.

We had many discussions with our travel agent about wanting to have the early dining slot of 5:30 and somehow we got assigned to "anytime dining"-we did finally get that changed but not without hassles with that too. I found the staff on the ship overall was pretty unfriendly, unaccommodating and in some cases unprofessional. The photographers were a joke. Most of the pics they took of me and my friends were not looking at the camera, not smiling or dumb poses. Out of all the pics that were taken, I only bought 1 picture. And also, I've never been on a cruise that the captain didn't come and take pics with you on one of the formal nights. As a matter of fact, I never saw the captain the whole 2 weeks. The cruise was obviously geared for a much older crowd (I just turned 50) because the daily activities were boring and the same. I cannot believe that the ship did not show the Olympics nor did they have some kind of event tied to "Fat Tuesday" on 2/16. One of the few things that we enjoyed on the ship was the "ship building from scraps" event on the last full day of the cruise. We followed the rules faithfully only to have the staff change them at the last minute. They did that with a number of the games we attempted to participate in. I was disappointed not too have towel creatures in my cabin (adults enjoy these too). The staff had a towel creature demonstration one of the days but we were not allowed to participate in attempting to put the creatures together ourselves nor was there a book to buy to show you how do to it at home (that was a first). I had a bartender put two drinks on my card by mistake and instead of him apologizing for the mistake, he laughed at me and starting serving another person leaving me to settle the issue myself. Of course since we switched cabins, our luggage tags got messed up when we were getting off the ship. You could tell the staff was dismayed about that cause he gave me around 40 blue tags for my luggage. We attempted to enjoy some of my or our kind of music with "DJ Seb" and no matter what we requested he didn't have it. Also apparently there was a webcam that our friends/family in the states could see us going thru the Panama Canal. It would have been nice to know that before we left so that we didn't have to pay to use their computers/internet to let them know.

The ports of call, however, were wonderful. We did not take a shore excursion in Cabo San Lucas-just walked around the city and enjoyed our first port in the warm weather taking in the sites. Acapulco was next and we did take a city tour there. We enjoyed that alot especially since we got out of the heart of downtown Acapulco which we found to be noisy, trashy and smelly (exhaust). The outskirts were beautiful. Huatulco was a quaint fishing town and it was a nice change from the big cities. Took a river raft tour there and enjoyed that. The rapids were not very challenging but it was nice being on the river and seeing all the wildlife. Puntarenas was very nice and here we did not take an excursion offered by Princess but went thru "Ricky Ricardo Tours". I recommend him very, very highly. For the price you would have paid Princess for the 4 hour zip line tour, we got the zip line plus an additional 4 hour private tour. We fed monkies, made drinks from sugarcane ourselves, went on boat safari tour, explored some of-the-road villages, saw a cashew tree, ate at a local restarant, took us to a bueatiful hotel for some awesome pics and drove around the city somemore. He also took us to a grocery store and pharmacy where we picked up some coffee for souveniers and some cold medicine which would have cost us a fortune elsewhere. Just google him if you're interested in using him. Anyway, next was Fuerte Amador. We took an arial tram/city tour there. I thought the city was beautiful and very clean. I was certainly impressed with Panama. On the Arial tram we saw a sloth, many pretty birds and a Tucan. The Panama Canal was fascinating in the beginning but kind of boring as they day progressed. It was a long day getting thru the canal. Cartegena was the next stop and this place had a lot of history. Took a city tour and boy you really need to. Alot to see in a very short time. This city was a great mix of very old historic buildings with the new modern skyscrapers. I would of liked to spend more time here. Aruba was the last stop and it was way too short. We did a snorkel trip here and it was okay-water was a little cold this time of year. Didn't see a lot of cool fish either. Anyway as soon as the snorkel trip was over we had to get back onto the ship. I will say it was nice seeing the beautiful blue carribean water again.