A repositioning cruise from Fort Lauderdale to Vancouver B.C. has always been a bucket list item for my wife and I. After some investigation we decided to take the Coral Princess 19 Night Panama Canal Cruise. Our decision was based on a number of factors which included - an interesting itinerary, the cruise ending in our hometown of Vancouver, and finally, Princess providing us with the best possible price for this particular cruise. This would be our first Princess experience together since we have primarily cruised with Celebrity Cruise Lines. We found that our overall impression of this cruise was quite positive although we did come across some minor issues that we felt could use some refinement aboard this ship.

The category of cabin we had booked for this cruise was a balcony cabin on the Caribe Deck. The cabin size provided us with adequate space during the cruise but the bathroom was another issue. It was very small with little storage space and a shower that only a contortionist could appreciate. In the future I would give some serious consideration to booking a mini suite aboard a Princess ship, which upon observation, seemed to provide more space and storage especially in the bathroom. On the other hand we did appreciate the extremely comfortable and rejuvenating sleep provided by the custom-designed Princess bed. Our Cabin Steward was attentive and kept our cabin clean during our cruise. My only issue regarding the cabin was that our beds were turned down by the steward for the evening between 5:00PM and 6:00PM which I found to be too early as we typically ate dinner around 7:00 - 7:30 pm.

One of the positives we discovered aboard the Coral Princess was that each deck had a self-service laundry, including a couple of irons, which we found to be extremely useful, especially on a long voyage, which we have not found on any other ships on which we have travelled. Read more