The Cruise - My wife and I were on the 6/14 – 6/25 Star Princes Round trip from San Francisco to Ketchikan, Juneau, Skagway, Glacier Bay and Victoria. We are native Californians’ and live the SF Bay Area. This was my wife’s first cruise and my second. My first was over 42 years ago so I do consider this a first time trip.

Embarkation- After following several threads on the CC I was dreading the boarding procedures. To go a bit green for this trip we had a friend take us to a local BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) station with our two rolling suitcases and back packs. We got on just BART before 11:00am. We arrived in SF and rolled our luggage to the cruise terminal arriving about 11:50. I found a Princess rep who told us to load our luggage cart and then head into the terminal. We did just that and after doing our medical paper work, carry on X-Ray, metal detector, wine corkage payment we got in line. We waited all of 15 minutes and we on board by 12:30 and in our room by 12:35. I have spent longer times getting on airplanes than it took us to get to our room.

The Ship – We loved all the art work and how the ship was laid out. We spent a lot of time on the Promenade Deck doing our laps to try and offset some of the calories we consumed on the trip. I really enjoyed the Atrium area (Piazza) with the various music events. We loved the ship and all the crew members. We only took the elevators twice the whole cruise so I can’t speak to their speed. We visited Skywalkers during the day a couple of times. We did find the secret deck above the bridge and in front of the gym windows the last day. My biggest fear was feeling crowded on ship with over 2800 people on board. This never happened! I was totally amazed at how open the ship felt most of the trip. Read more