This was our seventh Princess cruise and was most definitely one of the most memorable ones yet. We made our own air reservations and flew from Orlando to Gatwick two days prior to sailing from Southampton. Our one pre-cruise night was spent in Winchester and stayed at the Mecure-Wessex right next to the Winchester Cathedral. We had no problem finding the hotel once we arrived in Winchester and found the staff very friendly and helpful. The morning that we sailed we drove to Southampton arriving at the Queen Mary Terminal around 1030 hoping to drop the luggage off, return the rental car then return to be ready to check in. We were stopped as we arrived at the ship and told it was too early to drop luggage and that we could return after 1130. We arrived back at the ship for boarding a little after noon.

Embarkation - Once we arrived in the terminal the line for check in was quite large. I asked the Princess rep if there was a separate line for Platinum/Elite and thank goodness there was. Once in line we were checked in and on our way to our cabin about 30 minutes after arriving. We found our cabin and met our room steward Melchor who is the best room steward we have ever had. He was so attentive and took the time to do little things that made a big difference to us. He kept the cabin absolutely spotless the entire two weeks. Our cabin C744 is all the way aft and was as large as our full suite that we had on the Emerald Princess last year. The balcony was large considering the balconies on the Sea Princess are much smaller than most of the other ships. We loved the location being aft. We did experience more movement being aft than others did being more mid ship, but the view for us made up for it. There is also a lot of noise when the seas are big from the movement which actually is more of a shuddering noise that even woke me one night. We would definitely book the cabin again should we have the chance to sail on the Sea Princess again. After the muster drill our CC Group met up for the first time to finally get to meet prior to sail away. This was a special sail away for me, we were right up in the front of the ship as we sailed out of the Southampton harbor.

Itinerary - This was a northern transatlantic cruise with some very interesting ports. Read more