We were very pleasantly surprised by the charter flight with Thomas Cook airlines from Manchester to Barbados. Friendly flight staff, food edible, loads of leg room, entertainment worked. On landing at Barbados buses were waiting to take us directly to the ship where embarkation was quick and painless.

Compared to other Princess ships we have been on, Sea Princess is a little past the first flush of childhood but is well kept - painting and varnishing a regular feature -, clean and spruce throughout the passenger areas, with Princesses' usual multi-nations mix of friendly smiling staff. Our cabin was slightly smaller than we had expected but with a nice little balcony from where we basked in 30 plus (Celsius, that is high eighties Farenheit) temperatures watching the sun go down and thinking of all those poor ****s freezing back home. Germans call it schadenfreude.

We opted for anytime dining. Princess do splendid afternoon teas, so we miss out lunch (must be able to squeeze into penguin mode outfit for that last formal night) and go for anytime-dining dinner around 8 or 8.30. Sometimes we had to queue, sometimes not. Food was very good with a reasonable choice, our only moan that sometimes we had to wait for a devil of a long time for a waiter to take our order. Read more