This was our first Princess cruise … but we are certain it will not be our last. We have cruised before with NCL, Celebrity, MSC, Holland America, P&O and Oceania, on various ships within their fleets, and although each one has had its good and bad aspects, for the overall cruise experience, this Princess cruise surpassed them all.

We booked this 11 nights cruise as part of a 3 week holiday. We had been to parts of Asia before, and wanted to see some places again, but as this was probably going to be our last adventure to this part of the World, we decided to splash out on business class flights with Emirates (which were excellent), good hotels in Dubai, Singapore and Hong Kong …. and a suite on the Sapphire Princess.

Prior to booking, we had read that the ship would be in dry dock for refurbishment in November 2017, so we were excited to be going on the ship after that time. However, the date of the refurbishment was put back several times during 2017 and is now scheduled for March 2018. We were a little apprehensive about the state of the ship after reading some of the reviews from other passengers, but we went with an open mind, and we have to say that we were pleasantly surprised. Yes, it does look a bit tired in places, and yes it could do with its overdue refurb, but in general there was nothing to complain about. I know we were in a suite and perhaps we didn’t see the parts that other reviews may have seen, but I can only tell it from my perspective. I should say that even in the suites, the mattresses do need replacing … ours was very lumpy and after a couple of ‘not so good’ nights sleep, our excellent cabin attendant Paul Jay, added a mattress topper to help in some way. Read more