Review of Island Princess Hawaii 2/10/07-2/25/07 By Terry Burdette We are in our 40's, and did this cruise in February 05. We like it so much we did it again!

Embarkation: Embarkation was delayed until 5pm as they were thoroughly cleaning and sanitizing the ship due to the Noro virus. On Thursday, 2/8, our travel agent called and emailed us, Princess called us, and other cc members passed this info on to us, so we were very informed of this. However, we had to bring our rental car back by noon. I called the 800 # Princess provided, to see if we could drop our luggage off at the pier, even if we could not board, and they said yes. They did not say anything about arrangements for the passengers waiting (and I didn't think to ask). We returned the car, took their shuttle (Enterprise) to the pier and dropped off our luggage. The ship was docked at pier 91, and they had a big tent set up in front of it (piers 92 and 93 use the terminal building). We made arrangements with friends that live in San Pedro to pick us up and go to a nearby restaurant. After we handed our bags over to the porter, he said we could check in at the big tent, but we couldn't get on the ship yet. We checked in, and since we were the only ones checking in at that time, it took 2 minutes. The Princess people then told us they had busses to take passengers to the Doubletree Hotel to wait until 5pm when they would start the embarkation. That was the first we heard of these arrangements, but stuck to our original plan of meeting our friends. Some of the other CC members went there with us, and we all had a great lunch and walked around Ports of Call until 5pm. We heard afterwards that people were not real pleased with the Doubletree situation, but we'll leave it for them to review. Suffice it to say that it's an area where better communication would have helped. When we got back to the tent at 5pm, they gave us boarding cards, bottled water and chips, and we waited on folding chairs until they called us to board, about 15 minutes. I think the elite pax were called first to board, our group was second. Getting through security took another 10 minutes or so, and when we got to our cabin, our luggage was already there. That was a nice surprise. Off to have cocktails and dinner with a couple of CC friends and I think we sailed about 7:30pm.

Accommodations: We had a balcony cabin, A616. Our room steward was Roleen, and he was very good. We had our travel agent request an egg-crate mattress pad on the bed, and it was on. We asked him for robes and ice. There seemed to be a delay for ice on the whole ship, due to the cleaning. I guess it took a while for the icemakers to gear up. Throughout the whole cruise, he brought us whatever we asked for, and was very pleasant. Our balcony was covered, and we had 2 chairs and a table. You could look down on the Baja deck and Caribe deck balconies as they were only partially covered. The bathroom was very compact, with a shower (no tub), and we brought an over the door organizer with clear pockets to keep our toiletries in so the 3 little shelves were not cluttered. Our bed had the duvet on it, with no top sheet, which I thought was a little weird, but it was very comfy! We did not have to request other pillows as the ones we had were fine. We brought a power strip as the outlet by the desk only had 2 receptacles. It had the three holes so we did not need an adapter (3 prong to 2 prong). There is a single outlet in the bathroom but I think you had to have a plug with the same size prongs. The hair dryer was adequate, and I have thick hair. We had a large closet to hang things in, and it had a shelf above the rod. Another closet had shelves, one shelf had a safe on it. The life jackets took up the top shelf. Midway through the cruise the safe wouldn't open (yes, we put in the same code we'd used all week), so we had to call for someone to open it. Two drawers in each nightstand, and two drawers in the right side of the desk. Plus storage under the bed for the suitcases. Quite a bit of storage for those of us that overpack. The only thing I wish we had brought was a doorstop, to keep the sliding door open (and a couple extra for our neighbors' doors). Read more