We are a 65 and 74 year old couple that have done many cruises. Only once before on Princess many years ago, and we've done 9 Celebrity cruises, 1 NCL, 1 Costa, several RCCL, Windstar, Azamara and a Uniworld river cruise.

It is necessary (in fairness) to share that this was our first large ship in about 5 years- we have been doing Azamara and Windstar which are both substantially smaller than the Caribbean Princess. However, we got a great price on this and decided we needed to get out of the rainy Pacific Northwest. Overall we're glad we did it but will probably return to smaller ships- just personal preference.

We flew into Houston from Portland, OR the day before the ship sailed. Our travel agent told us that unless we booked the Princess hotel or were arriving day of embarkation they wouldn't let us use their transfers. So we stayed elsewhere (Holiday Inn Express and Suites- I'll do a TripAdvisor review on that) and gave Princess the information as if we were flying in that day. Talked with Princess transfer representative and she said travel agent was wrong- they don't care where you stay, just get to the airport in time for the transfer. Read more