Embarkation at Port Canaveral was done in under 45 mins start to finish, despite warnings of queues in previous weeks, although this sailing was half-full. Check-in staff were friendly and helpful, as were the crew on the ship who kept it spotless everywhere. (Disembarkation was equally easy, although not all our cases were present straightaway so we waited about 15 minutes.

The card activation machine said our card was already linked from when we checked in online, and the staff at guest relations helped us get our gold cards, matched with our Princess loyalty level (Gold level allows you one hour in the spa per cruise, which was a real treat for us as this is normally an expensive extra on other lines).

We were pleasantly surprised at the quality of the MDR food, which was significantly better than the poor effort on a 2-day taster cruise on Virtuosa in April. Chandra and Ethell in Waves were very helpful and made our evenings. Thanks to them pointing it out, we used our Premium drinks package to live on champagne for most of the week. Read more