This was a standard itinerary to Princess Cays, St. Thomas and St Maarten. Most people on this board have been there, done that, so I thought I would write more about the ship itself.

The Piazza is AMAZING. Princess has put a lot of money into the place and it shows. It is also money well spent in the sense the area was always busy with people watching, listening, participating, eating, drinking, reading, talking and strolling. It is the best laid out central atrium I have seen on any main cruise line. BUT as soon as you try to go back to your cabin you see the most glaring design flaws on this ship. There are 6 elevators but they are not linked together. To call the next elevator to go up from the Piazza you need to push 4 buttons. This makes the elevators very slow and inefficient. OK, no big deal, we are in our mid-50's and fully mobile, we can just take the stairs right? WRONG. The mid-ship stairs for passengers stop at deck 7. The actual stairways still exist but are crew only, so to go up from the piazza using stairs we need to go aft, up and forward to get to our midships cabin on deck 9. Or wait a very long time for an elevator after pushing 4 buttons and hoping for the best.

Princess Theatre has had a major overhaul to make it less effective. There are no small tables in the armrest to put your drink on. There are two less aisles so it is basically impossible for them to serve you a drink anyway unless you are close to the two remaining aisles. I am sure both of these decisions were made to try and add more seats, but it is too small for the larger ship. Popular events were full 30 minutes prior to the start time. By the end of day 4 the crowds were noticeable smaller, but I think that was because people had given up on even trying to get into the theatre rather than passengers not wanting to attend. Read more