I have taken a number of cruises over the years with Princess Cruises, ranging from their original Sea Princess and Island Princess in the 1980s, through to their larger Coral Princess and Dawn Princess right through to 2012. I am quite a fan of the line, as they consistently offer good service, excellent food, and modern ships with a traditional cruise experience. It was with this in mind that we wanted to try one of their smaller ships, as well as cruise in the Asian region. When the chance came up to join a segment of the Pacific Princess' world cruise from Sydney to Hong Kong, we jumped at the chance to sail on this smaller vessel in the region we wanted to.

Pacific Princess compares well to her fleetmates, and despite her smaller size (30,000GRT) she gives little away to her fleetmates in terms of facilities. The alternate restaurants, Sabatini's and Sterling Steakhouse are there, the pool area is spacious and the gym is almost the same size as her big sisters. Having sailed in 2012 on the Coral Princess, she felt very much like a condensed version of that ship. The main facility that we missed is the fully encircling Promenade Deck; Pacific Princess only offering two separate Promenades down each side of the ship, which do not link fore and aft. That said, a dedicated jogging track is provided at the top of the ship to compensate. Pacific Princess also has a very attractive and quite large observation lounge atop the ship (similar to the Crows Nests on HAL ships), which was a relatively under-used feature. We found this a great place to have pre-dinner drinks and watch the sun set.

Pacific Princess is a very comfortable ship, with a well designed layout. Being smaller in size, it never takes more than 5 minutes to get from anywhere to anywhere else, a refreshing change from the mega-ships! Decor throughout is very club-like, and we could always find a space wherever we wanted it. In fact, most of the time we wondered where the rest of the passengers were; this ship never felt crowded. Read more