The ship leaves from the Brooklyn cruise port convenient to our home in Queens for round trip cruises avoiding need to fly. The Princess Regal is fairly new and very atractive. Embarkation and debarkation were a breeze since taxis can pull right up to the entrance to the arrival building and the porters take your luggage right there. Taxis are readily available at same site at debarkation time, much easier than the NYC Hudson river cruise port scene. Baggage handlers are readily available to assist if needed. This cruise to NE and Canada repeated the same ports we took ten years prior on the Caribbean Princesss, an older vessel. Our unspecified guaranteed veranda cabin turned out to be M726 on Miranda deck 15 located dead center on the ship's stern with a huge 100 sq ft veranda. The cabin is very roomy, the bathroom shower and sink compact but suitable for most people. Food was plentiful with excellent variety. We opted for full service in the MDR for breakfasts and dinners and the mostly delicious meals included prime rib, lobster tails, beef Wellington, jumbo shrimps, veal marsala, etc. We had a few lunches in the cafeteria where we just picked from some of the overwhelming number of choices. We only went to one evening show, a comedian who was very entertaining. Service everywhere on the ship was always good to excellent. Only the weather was uncooperative, generally rainy or misty with sun only in Bar Harbor and St. John. Newport was steady rain so we did not tender ashore, but Bar Harbor was delightful and we had the best warm lobster rolls and diabolic homemade potato chips in Testas (53 Main St) on this cruise. Boston's Faneuil Hall market area was a $15 cab ride and the lobster rolls in the historic Durgin Park restaurant were good but not great (DP is noted for their prime rib and steaks). The ship docks right next to the shopping and business areas in St. John and Halifax and you can walk a few blocks to shop and dine if not on a ship or private tour. In SJ, Steamers Lobster Co, 110 Water St is a few steps from the ship and its traditional cold lobster roll with fries was good. Halifax was a dismal day but the large enclosed market right next to the ship made shopping easy and ended the touring part of our cruise. We had excellent weather on our 2008 cruise except for St. John where it poured rain. We did all our sight seeing at that time as well as many land vacations to NE and Canada so these cruises are mainly to get away for a week the easy way. This cruise met that goal perfectly.