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Grand Princess Review

3.5 / 5.0
1,602 reviews

Cruising the Canaries - but perhaps too late in the year?

Review for Canary Islands Cruise on Grand Princess
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CraftyEC
2-5 Cruises • Age 60s

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Cabin

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Sail Date: Oct 2012
Cabin: Balcony

We took advantage of a 'stay and park' package at a Holiday Inn in Southampton to allow us to drive 270 miles to the port the day before, which was a good decision. The room was fine and a meal there (too tired to venture further) was satisfactory, if a bit pricey.

This package included a taxi to the docks, and embarkation was fairly efficient, if a little slow because of delays in the security area - no surprise to those of us who had lived through the Olympics security arrangements debacle to hear that G4S were responsible for this! The whole procedure was late in starting (about 40 mins) and was stopped for a while to allow catch-up. Despite this, the dining room stopped serving lunch at 1:20 (I doubt more than a few dozen passengers were aboard by 1:00) and we had to go to Horizon Court, but it wasn't too frenetic as boarding was steady rather than rushed.

We had specifically chosen our Caribe midships stateroom, and were very happy with the position. We got less use than we had anticipated from our balcony, but that was the fault of the weather and not Princess! It was interesting to see the infamous 'painted floor' on the balcony, but this was less ugly than I had anticipated, and we didn't have any problems with slipping when it was (fairly frequently) wet. The furniture consisted of a fairly small, but not tiny, white table and two adjustable loungers with foot stools underneath. While not luxurious, I didn't find mine too uncomfortable to read / lounge on.

Cabin Review

Balcony

Cabin BA

Caribe C329: a great location, just forward of midships with the great part-covered larger balcony with reasonable furniture. The only issue we had was while sailing through a storm in the Bay of Biscay it was very noisy - something 'upstairs' above our bathroom was banging very loudly. It went on most of the night, until the storm abated, so although it sounded like a heavy door swinging back and forward it wasn't (we were under another cabin and our steward checked with his colleague on the next deck up) There were no other problems with the cabin, plenty of bathroom storage, the clothing cabinet has tiny shelves, but we coped OK. The shelf in the shower is minute, no room for soap plus shampoos and conditioner, so I was pleased that I'd brought a really cheap 'over-the-door' organiser which I could reach from the shower.

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