The reason we chose this cruise was because of timing - were limited to travelling Feb 15th week due to work restrictions. My husband and I travelled with our best friends - another couple in their 50's. We had cruised out of San Juan two years ago on a Royal Caribbean cruise and thoroughly enjoyed it so decided to try Princess, again, out of San Juan.

What we liked about Princess: We really enjoyed the Anytime Dining. We had originally signed up for Traditional dining but found the 6pm time slot was too rushed. We enjoyed the flexibility to dine when we were ready - also the flexibility for the 4 of us to eat alone or sit at a larger table and meet other people was terrific! We also liked being able to bring 2 bottles of wine on board to enjoy in our stateroom. We had a beautiful balcony stateroom on Deck 14 - Riviera. On a positive note, we were only 1 floor down from the pool deck and Horizon court where we had breakfast....on a negative note, we were awakened every morn at 6am by the sound of deck chairs being dragged across the floor - which was above our heads so next cruise we'll ensure our state room is not under a busy area. It was nice having room service delivered for breakfast although eggs were not on the menu as they were on Royal Caribbean. We found the prices for buckets of beer, drinks very reasonable. Our cabin steward, Sonny worked very hard and always welcomed us with a pleasant smile. We didn't like having our gratuities added directly to our bill - would have preferred to pay those staff members we felt deserved a tip the $$ instead of Princess deciding how our gratuties were split - we did give Sonny an extra tip because he definitely made our vacation! We found the staff at breakfast would rather avoid eye contact than bring you a coffee or juice - seemed to stand around talking to each other and weren't overly friendly. Food - we thoroughly enjoyed our lobster dinner but other than that found the food to be less desirable than what we experienced on Royal Caribbean. They seemed to have "theme nights" i.e. Italian night, German night. Don't get me wrong, it was definitely good but just not the same standard as RC. Also, the dining rooms had low ceilings - 1 level - whereas RC had 2-level beautiful wide open diningrooms. The last evening of our cruise for dining was uneventful - on RC we had the parade of waiters carrying baked alaskans while the guests flung their napkins in the air and clapped - on this cruise you wouldn't even know it was our last night - they did nothing - and my meal which was a turkey dinner was horrid - so a bit of a "downer" to end the vacation as far as the food goes.

Disembarking: When we disembarked the ship in San Juan, we chose not to book the $59 per person San Juan tour through the ship but instead had no problem finding a driver who charged us $20 per person for 1/2 a day as our flight didn't depart until 5:15pm - we toured an old fort, city hall, stopped for pictures and then had 2 hours to shop in San Juan before heading to the airport. Our luggage was safely stowed in the back of the van. There were 14 other people in the mini van with us so saved $$ to travel with a group. Read more