My sister and I had sailed 2 Princess cruises and before she passed I promised to take her daughter on a cruise. Since it was my niece's first cruise she had on compass to judge the trip on and she has a wonderful time. I, however, had sailed with Princess twice before and was able to compare this trip to past ones. The food on this trip was, for the most part, bland at best, with the exception of The Crown Grill, which was great. We had a very difficult time getting into the main dining room as I wasn't informed until day 4 that I would have to make a reservation very early in the morning to get an earlier time than 8:00 pm. I only dined there once because the food was terrible. Chicken dry and hard as shoe leather. The buffet was bland, the desserts tasteless. I was also flabbergasted that the buffet charges for soda! I didn't get a soda "package" because I don't drink very much soda and I recall soda being available in the buffed. Also, room service charged for juice after breakfast! Strange! The scheduling of events, shows, etc., was poorly planned. We has things we wanted to do/see but were unable because they started/ended at the same time as another thing we wanted to participate in. We had requested a birthday celebration package and never received it. Asked about it and was told to contact our room steward. We just said forget it. Overall, my niece and nephew had great shore excursion, horseback riding on the beach and swimming with dolphins, and they loved the drinks, especially the Dirty Banana, but they also thought the food was lacking. The Medallion, in my opinion, was a horrible thing to add to a cruise. I don't want to think about technology when I am on a vacation and they just shoved this thing down your throat. I hated it.