My wife & I were not overly impressed with this Royal Princess experience. It was an experience of some great moments, punctuated with some serious stuff ups. I'm generous to give an overall score of 6/10.
Value for money: 4/10. Unfortunatey from Australia, you pay premium prices for O/S holidays. Cruises are no exception, so you want decent value for the hard earned you have handed over. Unlike some previous cruises, we don't feel we got that on this cruise.
Embarkation (Brooklyn): 3/10. We arrived just prior to our allocated timeslot (2:00pm) and there was utter panic & confusion from the port staff. There was nothing that you could call a line, just a mass of bodies, looking for some form of direction and several port staff looking like they had lost control of the herd. Our tickets and pre-cruise PR from Princess indicated we had dedicated suite boarding, so I pushed through the thronging masses & headed for that line, but halfway there, was stopped by the port staff (trying to get some organisation of the masses). She viewed out tickets, looked a bit confused and instructed us to join what she called the check in line. After about an hour in line (as we were nearing the check-in desks) I noticed people with the same type of tickets as ours going to the suite line, so decided to check with the staff at the suites desk & was advised that yes, we should be in the suite check-in line. Aside from that, once at the desk, it was pretty quick & easy.