We took the same 10 day Mexican Riviera cruise this time last year only this year the route was slightly different and it was great to go to 2 new ports. Princess is consistently great at providing so much to do. You are almost spoiled for choice. We loved our OV cabin on the Plaza Deck because we were right by the forward bank of elevators and we walked straight through the art gallery to the Piazza every day which was a lot of fun. The International Cafe is a huge bonus on Princess where you pay only for specialty coffees but do not pay extra for any pastries or food.

The cruise director's team were phenomenal as usual and we enjoyed the interactive games like The Liar's Club and Are you smarter than a Cruise Staffer? We loved the activities being offered all the time all round the ship including ukelele lessons and the Princess POP choir and numerous trivia games that were well run with Powerpoint presentation. The shows were fabulous as were the entertainers. There were 2 comedians - one was side-splitingly funny and had the entire audience laughing for 1 hour straight. The other one used a lot of bathroom humour which we find distasteful and unnecessary. There was a magician with a his "magic" dog - so cute, and a mentalist who was incredible and our headliner act was Frankie Moreno and band from Las Vegas who literally rocked the house. The in-house shows were very well done with Stardust being our favourite.

Embarkation and disembarkation were both seamless and since our last embarkation experience on Carnival was so awful (2 1/2hrs in line and missing lunch altogether), it came as a pleasant and welcome surprise to be on board 20mins after arriving at the port because Princess organizes it beautifully. The food was great. We appreciate that the buffet is all in a contained area as our Carnival ship buffet was spread out all over the Lido deck and made it almost impossible to gather up hot food to eat. Our cabin steward was very accommodating fetching us anything we asked him for. We have sailed on the sister ship The Star and it was comforting to see a familiar layout on this ship. The spa staff were really great too. We spent a fair amount of time up there and everyone was amazing. Read more