My husband and I took our 15th cruise this past July. It was our 2nd with Princess. Our 1st was on the Crown Princess in October of 2006. While we hated the balconies on the mini-suites on the Crown Princess, it was a beautiful ship and for its passenger capacity (3100), it was very organized and very well run. We never knew there were that many passengers. It was because of this that we recommended Princess to our daughter and our son-in-law. As a gift, they decided to take us and my son-in-law's parents on the Caribbean Princess in July of this year. We were very excited, but apprehensive about going in July because of too many kids. We didn't worry too much though because our experience with the Crown Princess was that it was so well run and organized we expected the same thing on this ship. We were terribly disappointed.

The embarkation process was the best we ever encountered, but that's where our enthusiasm for the ship ended. Our rooms, while very clean and very well taken care of, were very small. My son-in-law had asked for the best (covered balconies) on the ship and they were very disappointed in the size of the rooms. The location however, was perfect (14th deck, toward the back of the ship). The adult pool was at the end of our hall, up 1 flight of stairs, and the cafe was right there also. It was very convenient. However, the ship was so overbooked (3622), that my husband and I had to get up at 6:00 in the morning to get a chair by the pool. It is very frustrating to get to a pool only to see chairs being saved for hours with no one there.

Our itinerary had been changed 1 week before we left and we were pretty upset. They had cut the hours we were to be on each island by as much as 8 hours. We were never given an explanation for this, but my son-in-law felt it was because of the fuel. If this were the reason, then they shouldn't have charged an "extra fuel supplement" on top of the fare. I felt it was very sneaky the way it was handled. Our 1st stop was Bermuda and, of course, because of the hurricane, it was canceled, which we understood completely (although my husband and I love rough waters). We assumed that because of this we would get more time in St. Thomas and Grand Turk, but this did not happen. We did get extra time in Puerto Rico, but that was it. Very disappointing itinerary. We had been in St. Thomas, and Puerto Rico before but this was our 1st time to Grand Turk - we were not impressed. We were told that where the ship anchors there are beaches, so, because of lack of time, we decided to forgo an excursion. Big mistake! The beaches were so rocky, in and out of the water, that you had to keep your shoes on if you wanted to be able to move at all. My husband actually cut his foot on a rock in the water. Read more