When we were discussing our summer vacation plans, we decided that we would enjoy a cruise of the coast of Norway. We always try to go somewhere cool to escape the 115 degree heat at home. While we usually cruise on Holland America, further research lead us to a Princess cruise that not only cruised the coast of Norway but that also traveled north to the island of Spitsbergen, some 800 miles from the North Pole. While we have cruised on Holland America numerous times to Alaska, once to Canada/New England and once in the Baltic, we had only cruised on Princess once before and that was on another unique itinerary called the Top of the World Explorer onboard the Tahitian Princess. We decided that for the itinerary we would give Princess another try and booked the cruise on the Crown Princess.

The Crown Princess is the largest ship we have ever been on and it taught us one thing, we don't like large ships. The Crown holds approximately 3000 passengers and in the future we will try to book ships that hold 2000 or less. While we did enjoy our cruise very much, we still prefer Holland America and will likely cruise with them in the future. That being said, there were many excellent aspects of the Crown Princess and others that were not so good.

Embarkation: Our cruise began on June 29, 2013 with what was, for me, the most disorganized embarkation that I have ever experienced. I cannot say whether that fault lies with the Mayflower Terminal in Southampton or with Princess. While signs around quoted Princess' slogan of relax completely, we changed it to Queue Completely and had occasion to use it throughout the cruise. We waited in line to check in over an hour followed by another line for security and then just when we thought we would board the ship, the placed us in another room to wait 15 minutes or so before allowing us to board. We were pleased upon reaching our stateroom 525 on the Riviera Deck that our luggage was already there. Read more