This was my eighth cruise overall (my wife's seventh), but our first with Princess. I used Marriott Rewards points to book the cruise, but chose the Coral Princess because of the 10-day itinerary to the Panama Canal. Very few cruise lines -- I believe Princess and Holland America are the only two -- do partial Panama Canal transits and because my wife could not get two weeks off of work, we could only do a 10-day cruise. The dates for this itinerary were ideal in that my wife only needed to take five vacation days.

After previous sailings with Royal Caribbean, Carnival and NCL, I was eager to see what Princess had to offer and we were not disappointed. This was a tremendous cruise, from the service, food, staff and ship. While the Coral is not large -- it only holds 1900 passengers -- it did offer plenty of amenities. I would say the decor is a little more classical. The NCL Pearl, which we sailed in 2008, had a more modern look, but the food wasn't as good as what we had on the Coral Princess.

We started by flying down to Fort Lauderdale the night before the cruise. We booked the Fairfield Inn since I could use Marriott points and they offer a free shuttle from FLL. We used their transportation service to the port the next day at a cost of $8. We also booked a return trip as well for $10. I was disappointed in ACE Tours (the transportation company) on the return since we waited nearly an hour for the van to pull up to the port. The driver told us at embarkation that they would have vans at the pier starting at 6 a.m., but it took several phone calls to finally get them to arrive. It might have had something to do with nine ships being in port that day, but at least the dispatcher could have offered a better explanation. Read more