Island Princess Review
New Year's Panama Canal partial transit on the Island
Rating by category
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We flew into FLL the day before sailing. Coming from Chicago, we never trust the weather, especially in winter! We stayed at the Best Western Oceanside Inn. Very basic but decent price, nice location. Easy to get a taxi to the port. Embarkation was easy but we arrived too early and had to sit for a long time waiting for our group to be called. Once we got to the check-in desk, we had our cruise cards within minutes and were on the ship and in our cabin in a heartbeat. Luggage was in the cabin when we came back from the Muster Drill.
Our balcony cabin was spacious with plenty of room for our belongings. The smoke sensor is right outside the bathroom door and ours apparently was especially sensitive because twice we got a call from security because the sensor had gone off! My husband likes hot showers but opened the door too quickly afterwards, allowing too much steam to escape!
Our cabin steward, Abner, seemed to be nowhere and everywhere. We hardly ever saw him but our room would magically be clean by the time we returned from breakfast. We never had to ask for a thing because it was always taken care of before we thought we needed it!
Cabin Review
Balcony
Baja Deck, Cabin 237, starboard side. We wanted to be in a bump out section so we could see the entire length of the ship. Spacious. Nice balcony. We like the way Princess designs its cabins with the open closet creating a little hallway by the bathroom. We loved the location. 2 floors up to the Horizon Court for breakfast and the Lido deck pool. For the Panama Canal transit, we got up early in the morning and headed forward to "the secret deck" (on Baja) to watch the transit of the Gatun locks. One negative that drove us crazy. We noticed a constant "noise" like whooshing wind. Some times it would be quite loud. We could never figure out what it was. The water system? We could not quite pin point if the noise came from inside the cabin or outside in the hall but when we opened the cabin door, we did not hear anything. We thought maybe it was our forward location on a bump out that created this weird air flow but our friends were in a mid ship balcony on the other side in a recessed portion and heard the same noise. So, I guess it is the design fluke of this particular ship, as we have never heard noises on any of the other ships we've sailed. And, as mentioned above, our smoke detector outside the bathroom door was especially sensitive and did not like my husband opening the door to release excess steam right after he got out of the shower!