Our cruise departed on Sept 18, 2004. It was supposed to be 7 days to the Eastern Caribbean. Hurricane Jeanne caused an itinerary change to the Western Caribbean. My wife specifically did NOT want to go to Mexico or Jamaica. I contacted our travel agent when I saw the itinerary change and was told after she contacted Princess that I could lose 25% of my money if I cancelled now (I had the top travel insurance), or just go as they rerouted it. I told the travel agent what I thought of this, my main purpose was to go to St. Thomas which was now off the list of stops. Obviously, the complaint must have had some impact at Princess.

We had booked a mini-suite on the Dolphin deck. We were supposed to have Platinum check-in. When we arrived, there were two couples at the Platinum check-in table that were just taking forever. The Dolphin check-in had no one, so we went there. The woman was rude and told us that our room was changed. We weren't on Dolphin anymore. She didn't exactly come across as this was a good thing. We didn't realize until we got to the room that they changed us to a MUCH nicer room. They upgraded us to a Penthouse Suite, from the mini. This was on Riviera deck. The suite was fantastic, much better than I had anticipated. My wife an I laughed when the comedian and other people were picking on their rooms. Ours was quite large, and extremely nice. I have to say that it wiped out our hostility quickly. OK, we weren't going to the place we wanted to go, but damn it was comfortable. The perks were fantastic, came in real handy too. Free laundry and dry cleaning, free internet, plus a lot other goodies. The internet came in handy, especially since the hurricane was still a threat. Nice to check in on things. My job is in computers, so I tend to check in daily regardless of where I'm at. I figure 10 or 15 minutes a day isn't too much, doesn't spoil my vacation. The only negative thing about the room was the noise from above. We must have been below one of the buffet rooms. Heard table dragging and other loud noises quite a bit. We were so tired at the end of each day that it didn't matter, we crashed anyway. Wonder if Dolphin deck had the same noise issues.

This was our first cruise so we had no idea what to expect, or what to do. Really liked the Cruise Director and other staff. Food was excellent. I wouldn't say that the breakfast sucked like someone else here did, it was a buffet breakfast, I expect things to get a bit "down hill" from single servings. We usually ordered breakfast sent to our room, which was great, no problems and fresher than the buffet. Read more