Caribbean Princess Review
Princess should abandon the Port of Houston
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Just finished a Christmas family cruise from Houston. I've read online the problems with the weather keeping the ship from leaving and returning to the port on time so I was expecting problems. After checking in my luggage I received an email from Princess saying due to weather the ship will no longer be leaving port on Saturday as planned but will now leave on Sunday and to board on Sunday instead of Saturday. So after arriving in Houston Friday night we are now a group of 12 deciding what to do with our unplanned rainy day in Houston. We arrange to get a rental car and add another hotel night to our airport hotel stay at the Doubletree Hobby airport (which I must say the Doubletree went out of their way to help us). After picking a movie to see we get another email from Princess saying the ship is now able to dock and we can board for the evening but it will not leave port until Sunday afternoon. We then cancel the hotel stay and rental car and head for the port. I must say the embarkation was very easy and we get to our room by 6:00 pm. We do not set sail until Sunday at 5:00pm and we receive notice that our itinerary will have to change and we exchange Roatan for Costa Maya. We did enjoy Costa maya but we were looking forward to Roatan as that was the only port we really wanted to see.
Because of the delay we end up with cold weather for the first 3 days of the cruise as well as cold weather for the last 2 days of the cruise. For compensation we are refunded one days cruise fare for ship board credit.
The ship itself is very average and as others have stated somewhat worn and dated interior. We had a balcony room on Caribe deck and enjoyed the large balcony as well as the connecting balconies to the rest of our family. I was expecting 4 chairs on the balcony but instead there were only two charges with foot rests and a table. If getting a balcony room I would highly recommend the caribe deck. The room was typical size but lacked a sofa (only one chair and desk chair). Not sure why princess doesn't have sofa like Royal uses.