I have been on approx. 15 cruises before and this was my first Princess cruise. I was looking forward to it since I hadn't done one before. To get right to the punch line, my wife and I had a great time. This was our second trip to Alaska. The scenery as always was beautiful.. The ship, not as much. I am by no means a cruise snob. Take this from an everyday Joe who enjoys traveling without putting too much expectations on the experience. My issue with the ship was that it felt dated. I know they put it into dry dock in 2015. One of the things they did was add the room we stayed in. We were in room F724 (Fiesta Deck) at the rear of the ship. Not a bad location. Right across from the Gym (which made my wife happy). Don't worry, you will not hear any noise from the Gym. No big problems with this location. Room was fairly modern since it was just added. Bathroom and TV were bigger than the ones in our friends room which was a balcony room on Deck 9 (D210). The thing that got me was that it seems they have redone some of the decks (lighting, carpeting, etc.) but not all of them. Some of the decks that hadn't been redone had a slight musty odor to them. If its in dry dock, why not redo all of them?

They also cut off the front third of the jogging deck to add more balcony rooms (corporate greed i expect). For some reason, I found this annoying because I have always liked to walk around the jogging deck in the AM before breakfast. The other thing I found was that there was not really a open area that gave me the feeling of truly being outside in the open. I know they have the outdoor areas but most of them are surrounded by the big window shields. There is no big open public Aft area or pool like on most ships. The open Aft area is called the sanctuary and it cost money to lay out there. There is a solarium on Deck 14 (enclosed) which is nice, but it again takes away from the feeling of being outside.

On another note, the food was excellent. As always, there were some misses but they were few and far between. The biggest disappointment in the food department was the desserts. More misses than hits in our opinion. The presentation on each was beautiful but a lot just lacked flavor. Not the end of the world because by the time you got to desserts, you were usually stuffed from all of the other good food. I did feel the Horizon Court buffet area was a bit small compared to a lot of the other cruises I have been on so not as many food choices. Read more