We based our decision to sail on the Golden out of New Orleans on three things  1.) The pricing was extremely reasonable. 2.) We wanted to sail with Princess, as we had never done so before, and 3) My time off was limited to the week of Christmas, and since we'd never sailed during the holidays, we thought we would give it a try. This was our 9th cruise, and we have visited Cayman, Jamaica and Cozumel several times before.

Embarkation  I won't go into great detail here for the simple reason the ship sailed out of the Poland St. Temporary Cruise Terminal in New Orleans, and this terminal isn't widely used; as a matter of fact, I don't see any sailings in the near future out of the terminal. We had no problems driving into the terminal, parking was painless, and we had the luggage unloaded and were onboard the ship is less than 35 minutes. Luck was with us timing wise, as after we boarded and were on our balcony, we were looking down onto a huge line that was barely moving.

Cabin  Our cabin was C316. We had originally booked a BF, Guaranteed balcony, so we were extremely pleased with the upgrade. I had requested the beds be pushed together, robes in the stateroom, and an egg crate mattress pad (All requested online on myprincess.com)  and everything was done as requested. We were very surprised at the large balconies on Caribe deck  much deeper than those below and above us. With four large chairs and table, we would have had ample room for four people. Read more