We are frequent Princess cruisers, with platinum status and 30 years of cruising experience on a variety of other cruise lines. Our cruise started off well on a beautiful Saturday in Brooklyn, NY with an easy embarkation. Our first day at sea was nice, allowing us time to explore the beautiful and newest Princess ship, The Regal Princess. Princess has expanded the atrium area with plenty of space for dance classes, seating for people watching plus the standard International Cafe and Alfredo's pizzeria. The new layout for Horizons was confusing; the layout where salads, sandwiches, soups and pastries were here there and everywhere. I had all I could do to find my spouse in between all the stations and then find a place to eat. The new handwashing stations at the entrance of Horizons were rarely used and unlike in the past, I saw little evidence of staff encouraging the use of the stations or of Purel.

Our cabin L103 was spacious and because we were in the absolute bow, we had a larger than average balcony, however the weather prevented us from using it most of the time. Our room steward was remiss in supplying us with extra pillows and we had to remind him. Our safe suddenly stopped working and we had to get a technician in to reset it.

In Nova Scotia we chose the hop-on-hop-off bus tour that included a trip to Peggy's Cove. A beautiful day with an opportunity to see a good deal of Halifax. Definitely worth the time and cost. The following port was St. Johns, New Brunswick. Already the weather was beginning to turn as it became increasingly cloudy and chilly. Again we chose the hop-on-hop-off tour which took us around the city and out to see the reversing rapids. There isn't as much to see here, but it gave us a chance to walk around, visit the indoor market and stop in to enjoy a yummy lobster roll at Billy's (near market). We even stopped in to the public library attached to the indoor mall to take advantage of the free wi-fi and check e-mails before returning to the ship. Read more