Sailed out of San Francisco with a couple of rough days at sea (thank you cruisecritic reviewers for the fair warning) during the first couple of days. Weather changed from chilly to nice and warm when the seas calmed. The four sea days going over seemed long, but then a different port each day seemed pretty hectic.

Thanks to Princess' miscommunications about their excursions not being wheelchair accessible, we booked all excursions through directly through Roberts (one of the Princess contractors for excursions.) The Roberts excursions were all very professional with very knowledgeable drivers. Roberts' own excursions were on vehicles separate from those used for the Princess excursions, but the company was very accommodating. On Kauai, they did not have any minibuses with wheelchair lifts available (Princess booked them all, though Princess said that the wheelchair accessible excursions had been cancelled,) so to accommodate us, Roberts sent a 54 passenger coach with a baggage compartment for the wheelchair, even though there were only 19 people booked for the excursion.

The destination experts, Rowena and Brian Valdez were residents of the Big Island (and Las Vegas) and were able to provide good information about each port, and also on-board enrichment activities and entertainment. Naturalist Gloeta Massie provided mounds of information about wildlife, just as she did on our Princess cruise to Alaska two years earlier on the Grand. Additionally it seemed that Gloeta was only Princess employee, other than the room steward, that wasn't trying to sell us something at every opportunity. Read more