My wife and I are fairly experienced cruisers with about 15 cruises between us. However,this was our first Princess cruise. All of the others were on Carnival ships (except for one on Costa but that is a different story) and we enjoyed all of them. The main attraction here was the r/t itinerary to Hawaii and the ability to travel there with friends who don't fly. This was also our first voyage on the Island Princess.

Since we live in Southern California, the trip to San Pedro was just another trip on the 405. We did use Prime time Shuttle and, except for being a little late, they performed well and got us to the port in plenty of time.

Embarkation was a breeze. Our total wait time to check in was less than 20 minutes and we were on board within 35 minutes of arriving at the port. The use of the Princess website to do all the preliminaries made the whole process painless and very efficient. The embarkation staff was friendly, polite and as I mentioned, very efficient. Read more