We took the 7 day Canada/New England cruise on the Caribbean Princess from New York. This will be a little lengthy review because I want to cover everything and address frequent issues brought up by other reviewers. First off let me put this all in prospective. We are a couple with me being 41 and my partner 39 and this was our 5th cruise with Princess. This was a vacation so you should relax and enjoy. And know going in that not everything will go perfect.

New York: We took Amtrak from DC to NY very early on the morning of the cruise to give us plenty of time in case of issues. There were no issues and we arrived at Penn Station just before 9 am. We walked across the street and down a block to the Affinia Manhattan where we had a nice leisurely sit-down breakfast at Niles. Food & service wasn't bad and standard NY prices. The car service arrived a little early and we were off to the port by 1020. We managed to pass the new One World Trade Center and a couple other sites on the way to the port. The car service ran us $43 which included the tunnel toll verses the $25 for the cab after the cruise. So in the future , we will probably just use a taxi both ways as the trip was only 20 mins.

Embarkation: We arrived at the port at about 1040. The port entry was chaotic as departing passengers were still leaving so there was a little confusion as to where to drop us off. We took our bags over to the porters and they were loaded in the luggage crates. Don't forget to tip your porter. In the terminal, there was no line for security and we walked right though. We filled out our health questionnaires and proceeded to the check-in queue. We used the priority check-in where we had only 2 couples in line ahead of us. The standard check-in line had no wait at all at this time. After check-in we waiting in the priority lounge until boarding began. The wait wasn't too long and we started boarding about 1140. We were on the ship by 1200 so this was a quick and efficient check-in process. Read more