Have sailed with Princess twice before on the Crown and the Sapphire. My wife and I have also sailed on Carnival, Celebrity, Holland America and RCL. We have not sailed on NCL yet but are going to try that next. We love to cruise and the ship is our destination. We do not care much about ports or itineraries. We live near the west coast so the primary considerations we use in booking a cruise are to find a west coast departure port with as many sea days as possible at a good value, just so you know where this review is coming from. People have different areas of importance to them on a cruise.

We sailed on the Grand Princess for 10 days from San Francisco 11/13/16-11/23/16. Grand Princess is going in to dry dock next month and needs some attention. There was water dripping (condensation from the air conditioning I was told) from the ceiling at various points throughout the ship. There were some seats in the theater, as well as the Vista lounge, that you could not sit in because you would be dripped on. Some of the other passengers complained to us of rusty balcony cabin doors that would not close properly. Even if you don't not spend a lot of time in your room, I can understand that if you are not happy with your room, it alters your perspective of the cruise.

We were happy with our room. We actually do spend a fair amount of time in our room and so this is even more important to us. We had an extended deluxe oceanview room on the Lido deck with floor to ceiling windows which provided a magnificent view. It was one of the largest oceanview cabins we have had (the category of cabin we most often choose). Even though we were on the same deck as the swimming pools, Horizon buffet and deck parties of various kinds, we were not disturbed by noise from that. However, there was a loud tapping type noise we heard on two of the mornings that was disturbing. The bathroom was tiny they usually are unless you have a suite. Storage space was not generous but was adequate. One problem we experienced was that we had a new pillow top mattress in our room. My understanding is they are going to be ordering these for all the rooms. It is a mistake. The pillow top goes down about an inch or so and then the bed is hard as concrete. My wife's hips were hurting from the bed and my back and legs were hurting as well. The room steward put an egg crate on the bed and that helped but I still could not describe the bed as being comfortable at all. Read more