The overall cruise was great. This was our 7th cruise (5 with Princess and 2 with Celebrity). My wife and I feel the food on Princess is considerably better than on Celebrity. The Coral Princess ship is one of the smaller ships which was built specifically to go through the canal and as such there are a few disadvantages over the larger ships. We found that by selecting a dining time we were able to walk right in to our table while the "anytime diners" had to suffer long lines particularly for the early dining hours. Because of the smaller ship and dining facilities we were put in a 8 place table setting even though we requested a 2 place. The other drawback is you need to get to the show about a half a hour early in order to get a good seat. The shows however were well worth it. Even though these points might be considered inconvenient by some people the overall experience of the smaller ship is a great one. All of the staff working on the ship were excellent with one exception. The lady that worked the future booking, I believe her name was Bernadette, was a bit snippy and didn't want to devote much time to your questions. Oh well, you always get people like that no matter where you are. Nevertheless, everyone else was friendly and excellent to cruise with. We particularly liked our room attendant (Ray) and Christian and Roldolfo in the dining areas were excellent as well.

We liked the fact that twice a day there were happy hour prices in the bars as opposed to Celebrity that had none. The showers are small, but understandable considerably the limited space. We also liked the fact that on this cruise the people weren't always bugging us to purchase meals at the specialty restaurants, the spay treatments, etc. This too was unlike Celebrity that pestered us all the time.

If you have experienced a full transit through the Panama Canal we would certainly recommend it. It is essentially a once in a lifetime experience. Read more