Caribbean Princess Review Week of 11-06-04

My husband and I embarked the Caribbean Princess for a 7 night Eastern Caribbean cruise on November 6. It was our fourth cruise on a Princess Grand-Class ship and our 26th cruise overall. We have previously cruised with Celebrity, RCCL, NCL, Costa, HAL, Carnival, Premier, Commodore. We have spent the most time on Celebrity but once we started with Princess on the Grand, we have quickly sailed with them 3 more times. We like the formality of Celebrity and the flexibility of Princess - so we tend to favor those two lines the most.

To give you some perspective, we are semi-retired, in our late 50's and 60's and have recently moved back to the Chicago area from Naples, FL after living there for 10 years. While living in FL we cruised 3-5 times a year since it was so easy to get to the port and we were able to go at the last minute. We had many enjoyable experiences doing that. This time we had to fly and worry about weather etc. I booked the air on Spirit - all went well and it was a pleasure to fly with them to get to Fort Lauderdale. We had the first flight out in the morning the day of the cruise and were on time landing in FLL. Coming home, we had a 6pm flight. We didn't have to worry about disembarking, but the Fort Lauderdale airport is just not set up for a lot of people waiting there for flights. The next time, we will arrange to stay a few days in Florida after the cruise and then fly back to Chicago. Read more