I've been cruising since I was a senior in College (spring break cruise) and have been on several different lines. Most recently, I've taken several cruises with Celebrity and have become a loyal fan of their ships, service and itineraries. As my family lives in the metro-New York area and my father hates to fly, we were looking for a New York departure cruise to see the fall foliage in Canada and New England. After reviewing several options, we decided on the Caribbean Princess as the timing of the departure and the length of the sailing fit our needs. Also, our travel agent received notice about a Princess sale which we were able to take advantage of, thus allowing most of my family members to upgrade their rooms to mini-suites. Overall, we have a great trip; however, at the end of the day, I am still a Celebrity girl and am not certain how quickly I would book another Princess cruise.

Dining rooms/anytime dining option: In most sources, Celebrity and Princess are considered to be in a similar category in terms of price and level of service. My entire family noticed a striking difference in the level of service that was offered on the Princess ship. It's not that the quality of the staff of Celebrity was significantly better than that on the Caribbean Princess. Rather, it seemed that there was simply not enough staff on the Caribbean Princess to provide us with the level of service that my whole family has grown accustomed to with Celebrity. This was most noticeable in the dining rooms and during the evenings or the days at sea when all of the passengers were on board the ship. We had the anytime dining option as our travel agent was unable to get us a reservation in the traditional dining room. We always received excellent service from the wait staff in the Palm dining room; however, the wait staff always seemed harried, like they were running around all the time and under a great deal of pressure. On past cruises, there were times, particularly on formal nights when the dining room staff was noticeably busy; but they never seemed quite as panicked as they often did on our most recent cruise. I left the cruise with the impression that the dining room staff was simply not equipped to handle this anytime dining option and that as much as the cruise line would like to provide the passengers with more flexible eating options, that they were simply too many mouths to feed to have any kind of set-up except the traditional dining option.

On most nights, we were a group of 5, which is not really that large of a group. No matter how early we called for a dinner reservation, often 2 days in advance, we were never able to secure a reservation during "prime time dining hours" (i.e. between 6:30 and 7:30 PM). Rather we were always advised that due to the size of our party, we could secure a 6PM reservation or for anytime after 8PM. Of course, we always had the option of trying our luck at the "no reservations" line, but that often left us standing around for 30 minutes or longer, waiting for a table. The head waiter in charge of seating will provide you with a pager that notifies you when a table is ready which will allow you to leave the area immediately surrounding the dining room. Our rooms were in the aft of the ship and we normally ate in the Palm dining room. Due to the ship's layout, this meant having to go to another floor as there were no other public areas on the same floor that could be accessed without first travelling to another floor to walk forward. My dad uses a wheel chair or a walker and it would have been just too much effort to take the elevator up a floor, get us all situated with a cocktail to only go wait for another elevator when the table was ready for us. This often left us standing around in a smallish vestibule area, waiting for a table. Groups of 2 were typically seated more quickly, but part of the reason that our family likes to cruise is that large groups of us can pursue different activities, so it was rare for less than 3 of us to be eating at the same time. Truth be told, waiting seemed to be the theme of all of our meals. We often waited around for a table before the meal and once we were seated, we had to wait far longer between courses than I ever had to wait before on other cruise lines. On the last night on the ship, we actually had to wait 20 minutes for the waiter to come and take our orders, as he was running around getting plates and silverware as his station had not been replenished. He had the foresight to let us know that he was going to take a little bit of time to get set up, but 20 minutes is fairly extreme. My family felt that the wait staff was excellent, but that they had too many tables to service which were all on different schedules which lead us to wait around for a long time at meals. We were also less than impressed with the head waiters who managed the seating arrangements and worked the floor. On that same night that we waited for 20 minutes for our order to be taken, I was waiting to speak to the head waiter to request a table. I was standing at the his post while he spoke to another passenger in front of me. After he tersely told her that he couldn't promise her a table in the section of the dining room that she had requested, he simply walked away from me without even acknowledging my presence. Again, I understand that the staff was busy on that night, but never in my life has a service professional ever simply walked away from me, without saying a quick "I'll be right with you" or nodding in my direction, something to at least acknowledge me before moving on. I didn't quite know what to do with myself after that. Layout: We found the layout of the ship to be a bit odd as well. Like many ships, the galley and some of the dining rooms take up more than one floor on the ship, meaning that you can't necessarily walk across an entire floor which contains public areas. As I noted above, my father walks with a walker or uses a wheelchair. It was fairly complex for him to get around to certain areas of the ship as his room was in the aft part of the ship. If he needed to get to the forward or midship areas of the 5th or 6th floor, he would have to take the aft elevator to the 7th floor. He'd then cross the entirety of the 7th floor to get to the midship or forward elevators, then he'd take one of those elevators down another one or 2 floors to get where he was going. By the time he got to the second elevator bank, he'd often ask one of us, "which floor are we going to again," as it was a bit more of a production than necessary for him to get to certain public areas on the ship. Speaking of the public areas, all of the lounges, theaters, etc. struck me as not being quite big enough to handle all of the passengers that the ship could hold. Read more