I will keep this review as objective as possible and organized by category if you want to skip to a topic that you're interested in. Our overall experience was, unfortunately, on the low end of the scale.

Missed Ports of Call: The weather itself was no fault of Princess, but we were generally unlucky with a cold front in the area. There was moderate wind with accompanying waves/swells. The ship didn't leave Houston until the next day past our scheduled departure. The report from the bridge told us there were extremely high winds with gusts over 50, although they may have forgotten that passengers have access to reliable, real-time weather data on their mobile devices. My weather app told me that winds were 18 at the exact time the announcement was made. Someone else immediately checked another site that confirmed winds were 15-20 with slightly higher occasional gusts. While we appreciate safety considerations, we felt deceived. The Houston port may very well prove to be problematic for the cruise industry, even during minor weather episodes, but time will tell. A federal document easily found on the web indicates that the channel is relatively shallow, narrow, and extremely busy - even after being enlarged around 2005. It was clearly a problem for our particular sailing. After we finally got out of the Houston area, the cruise line proceeded to cancel both (yes, both!) of our exotic stops (Roatan and Belize). It was a major disappointment. We docked in Cozumel, which turned out to be fun for us. We then made an unscheduled stop at Costa Maya in lieu of the two missed stops. The bottom line is that we ended up with too many "at sea" days and only two stops. Since my family and I spent a lot of money on the cruise with three separate staterooms, I asked for very nominal and reasonable compensation due to the missed ports. I got a letter back from Princess customer relations denying my request and telling me, and I quote: "Carrier may, for any reason, without prior notice, cancel the cruise, deviate from the scheduled ports of call, route and timetable; call or omit to call at any port or place or cancel or modify any activity on or off the ship... shorten the cruise or substitute ships..." Wow! It's in the fine print and customers are basically at a big disadvantage as far as I can tell. I'm sending a copy of their letter to news outlets with a goal of increasing awareness for potential cruisers so that they truly understand what they're getting into when they book a cruise and click "I agree" on their contract. In case you're wondering, the new cruise passenger bill of rights seem to be very narrowly focused on mechanical problems, and appear to be heavily weighted in favor of the cruise industry, in my opinion.

The Ship: It is nice but not overly impressive. It's almost 10 years old and definitely shows signs of age and noticeable wear in certain areas. Some tables and chairs are downright embarrassing, for example. The moving walkway up to the sky lounge did not seem to be working at all, at least during the times when I visited. At least one hot tub seemed to be inoperable most of the time, which was a true shame given the colder than normal weather we had. There are some good features about the ship though, to be sure. I enjoyed the workout room, for example. Read more