Husband and I have been on several cruises with various other cruise lines. This time we wanted to go Alaska and chose Princess (Ruby Princess) because of the itinerary, reviews, and info we had from friends and family. There were areas where I felt Princess did far better - primarily the food - flavors and freshness. There were a couple of areas that need great improvement - signage/directions throughout the ship, primarily related to embarkations, and overall friendliness and welcoming from the crew left much to be desired. Luckily, the passengers themselves were overall friendly people so that helped. The entertainment on board ranged from overly cheesy to unique and original. It really took sampling the various choices to figure out what was going to work for us -- sometimes like the buffet! Not sure why, but for some reason they refused to open the various breakfast stations in the morning early enough to accommodate the large crowds. Pretty frustrating to be crammed into one buffet station and have another nearby ready to open but not! The cruise director was an entertaining guy, but his group of three guys who did the smaller entertainment seemed to be in their own little worlds, somewhat bored with the routines already, frequently more interested in entertaining each other than the passengers .

Overall, like all our other cruises, they are generally as good as we make them. Because this was a once-in-a-lifetime for us, we made it great by meeting some amazing fellow passengers and seeing sights we will never see again.