My wife and I decided to go on our first cruise to celebrate our fifth anniversary, and after lots of research and investigation on the internet, we decided that Princess was the best for us. We are in our 30s, but are not big partiers or power drinkers, so we were looking for a line that was a little less nightclub and a little more focused on relaxation. We feel like we made a very good decision, and on the whole are happy with our first cruise experience. We will cruise again, but I don't know whether it will be with Princess or not. In some ways they did exceed our expectations, but in other ways they fell short.

We booked our cruise through an internet travel agency and flew into Fort Lauderdale having booked flights on our own. We stayed at the Courtyard Marriott Ft. Lauderdale Cruise Port (wonderful staff, highly recommended) the night before embarkation. We decided to wait until the afternoon to head to the cruise port to embark, and while we missed lunch on the ship, we were very happy with walking right up to check in at the terminal. Once on board, we immediately sought out our steward to make a couple specific requests for our room. Some - egg crate for the mattress, removal of drinks from the fridge, extra flat sheet for the bed - were done by the time we checked back into our room after the safety muster. However, some of our requests were not met. We never did receive bathrobes for our use despite multiple requests. I also requested distilled water (required for medical reasons), and was made to wait until after midnight that night (more than an hour after our second requests, and some nine hours after our initial request) before it was delivered.

This experience set the tone for our interaction with the staff on the ship over the course of the week - it was very hit and miss. We often had long waits before being served drinks in the Horizon food court, and this seemed to be the case regardless of what meal we were having. We found service in the main dining rooms to be very inconsistent as well. Sometimes service was exemplary, sometimes it was rather slow and not very welcoming. We chose Anytime dining, and didn't experience any problems with it except for the nights we forgot to make reservations for a two top (our problem, not theirs). Read more