First things first. I hate cruises. Seriously, I subscribe to the “happy wife, happy life” adage. Ok, it helps that there were 20 other friends on this trip with us. But I wouldn’t have gone except that 1) she wanted to go, and 2) we had a ton of friends with us. I have this hatred of huge crowds – cattle car crowds. This is our second cruise together. The first was about 10 years ago to Alaska, on Princess. The Alaska part was great. The ship/Princess part, not so much. Food sucked. Massive quantities of (fill in the name of your local cafeteria here) food. Everyone is old. I’m old, but I’m talking about OLD. So anyway…

The ship holds around 2500 passengers. Way too big for me. Here’s the problem: The bigger the ship, the more there is to do. The smaller the ship, the smaller the crowds. So, really, here’s how it came out: Better than I feared, not as well as I’d hoped. We had 22 in our group: 3 penthouse suites (2 at the bow, one at the stern), 7 mini-suites, 2 balconies. None were in the Haven, an exclusive part of the ship with just a few staterooms. If you can afford it, it probably completely changes the cruise.

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