I know I'm really late in getting this posted, but I've recently returned from the Caribbean Princess 12 day cruise of Norway and Iceland, and thought I'd submit a review of both the ship and the itinerary. I'm fairly new to this board as well; I joined to get information about Princess and this cruise. So many folks here were so helpful, that I thought I might 'pay it forward' by writing this review. I hope it will help someone else looking for answers, as I was a few weeks ago.

Let me first put my review in context by giving you a bit of information about myself. I think that's important because we all view a cruise through our own lens. This was my 10th cruise, but my first with Princess. I'm a middle-aged (ouch; that hurt to write) woman who was traveling with a friend. (also a woman) So I really can't speak to the quality of programs for kids or how lively the DJ was at 2:45 AM or any of the other things we didn't do or weren't interested in. Neither of us purchased much of anything extra on board. We're not drinkers, we can live without the pricy specialty coffees or tea, and we don't see the logic of paying for food when there's great food in huge quantities being offered 24 hours a day for free. (well, you've already paid for it, but you know what I mean) Other than a little shopping on board ($10 for an evening bag--c'mon, who can resist??), my final bill had nothing extra except the excursions and the tips. And I realize that's not the same for everyone. But I can only write about the things that impacted myself or my friend, and I'm including the kind of information I was looking for myself when I joined this message board. We were on the Caribbean Princess, but I guess much of this would applicable to all the ships in the same classification.

We flew into Heathrow from JFK, and though the Princess folks were waiting for us, the transfer to the ship was long (just doing all the pickups in Heathrow took over an hour) but well-organized, and eventually we arrived at Southhampton. Our bags were taken from us in the airport and we didn't see them again until they were delivered to our room. The embarkation was smooth and very quick; I would say within 30 minutes of arriving at the ship terminal, we were processed, given all our documents, and in our staterooms. That gave us nearly all of the afternoon to explore the ship. My friend got her luggage around 4:00 PM; mine was delivered sometime between 5:00 and 7:00 P.M. Unfortunately, my suitcase had been damaged in transit from the airport, so that became the first test for Princess Customer Service. I went to Passenger Services and I'm pleased to say that it all worked out great. They offered to try and fix the suitcase on board, and in fact, that's just what they did. I got it back a couple of days before the cruise ended and it was completely repaired. I didn't have to navigate home with a broken suitcase, or fill out forms and wait for a check after the cruise. No muss, no fuss--and it made a great first impression on me. Read more