This was our third cruise with Princess, the previous two having been to the Eastern and Western Caribbean and 7 days in length each. So this was our first "longer" cruise, and we booked it particularly because of the many sea days. All of the four of us friends who travel together really enjoy just cruising along and sitting out on our balconies, so we thought this would be a perfect one for us.

Getting there . . . We flew on points from Canada down to LA, and stayed at the Crowne Plaza at Redondo Beach for the 3 nights before embarkation (in part to be absolutely sure that our luggage would get on the ship with us!). It was a great hotel, conveniently located about halfway between the airport ($20 cab fare to the hotel) and the cruise ship terminal. We had fun walking along the board walk to the adjacent beaches, eating sea food (the outdoor restaurant where you can select your own crab and they steam it for you was fun!), and just sitting on the balcony overlooking the water and soaking up the sun—a nice change after 30 below weather! It turns out that the Crowne Plaza was also a hotel used by Princess but I didn't know that at the time I booked it. The funny thing was watching all the impatient passengers waiting for their transfer to the ship on embarkation day while we just jumped into a taxi and went. The porter told us we had made a wise decision as Princess had changed their procedure and were not counting the luggage properly that day and he was worried that some passengers might get to the ship sans luggage! We ended up in this big tent with a rather confused and crowded embarkation procedure, much less efficient that we had experienced previously in Fort Lauderdale. It seems there were two other cruise ships turning around that day and we got the tent as a result. The staff members were very pleasant and helpful, but later on the cruise I chatted with one man who said it took him 5 hours to get onboard. Everyone else commented that it didn't take them more than an hour, but this gentleman did not find our comments particularly helpful!

Cruising along . . . We found a lovely tray of canapes in our stateroom and were soon served a glass of champagne. It took rather a long time for the luggage to show up at our stateroom, and you could see that the ground personnel were rushing like mad to get all of the luggage onboard right up to the time we were due to leave port. So we were off, but soon hit some rough seas which didn't bother any of us but seemed to leave a lot of queasy folks around. One amusing thing was almost being thrown out of bed the second night by a wave hitting the boat, but it made a good story to tell! Read more