Caribbean Princess Review
Rating by category
Additional details
First and foremost we chose this cruise because we simply needed a relaxing break. Cruise brochures and cruise-line web sites always over promise and fail to deliver and this cruise was no different. The trick is to realise this and to be adaptable no matter what happens as a vacation is supposed to be stress free.
Our original plan was to have our family with us including our 6 mth old grandson but Princess informed us a month ago that wouldn't be possible because the youngster hadn't had his covid jabs. After being told the policy wouldn't change our family members had no choice other than to cancel while we decided to go ahead. Then, a week or so before the cruise departed , the Princess policy did change and that would have allowed them to travel after all. It was too late by then but it was a disappointing situation for us all.
Overall, the cruise met our target of having a relaxing vacation and we are thankful for that. We enjoyed St Kitts and St Thomas and while we had high hopes for Grand Turk, it didn't live up to our hopes. C'est la vie.
Cabin Review
Balcony
Obstructed View Balcony.
We knew our view would be restricted and we were expecting a partly blocked view. A metal pillar of 2ft wide made the view "mostly blocked" but we didn't find it too bad after a while. The cabin was the usual bed, bathroom and desk. No sitting area.
Port Reviews
Fort Lauderdale (Port Everglades)
Living in Florida made this a simple journey for us. However, the signage at the Port was horrendous as was the long line to get through security. We've cruised from here several times and this was our worst experience to date as we tried to get to Pier 2, unload our luggage and park our car. On return, we found it ridiculous that there were no pay stations on each floor of the parking garage.
Grand Turk
Having never been to Grand Turk before we were looking forward to it. However, it was simply a port like a private island where the masses assembled and sat in the sun. Thankfully, a Carnival ship was about to leave as we arrived early afternoon otherwise the beach would have been horrendous.
TIP: Be extremely careful of the beach bums trying to charge you for a sun lounger. These are free and are not the $15 these crooks tried to charge us until we spoke to security.
St. Kitts (Port Zante)
Lovely destination we have been to before. We decided to do a ship tour (for the first time in many years) and thoroughly enjoyed the narrow gauge train ride around the island.
St. Thomas
We always enjoy our trip to St Thomas and this time we found a superb female taxi driver who took us around and showed us some things we hadn't seen before. Naturally we had to have a banana daiquiri at Mountain Top and another rum at Paradise Point...both places we had been to before!