The Caribbean Princess had many things to like, too many to list here. Each cruiser no doubt enjoyed a variety of outstanding things about this cruise.
But, in one person's opinion (mine), the ship was just too dang big. Too long....too high. Walking took up too much of my time on board. Sometimes to get where I wanted to go took up to 25 minutes depending on the elevators. My legs were aching when I got home. I don't even want to walk to my mailbox out front for a while, except I have to, LOL.
Secondly, the size of the ship had a direct bearing on time we spent in the island ports. The hours allocated weren't enough, in my estimation.
The maneuvering and time needed to get this behemoth safely out of the dock area necessitates ample daylight hours especially when there are three or four other ships plus smaller boat traffic in and around the port.
My island bus tour of St. Maarten and then wanting to eat lunch and then hit the extended shopping boulevard in Phillipsburg was a little pressure-filled for me. I kept looking at my watch as I knew it would take me and my loaded shopping bags 30 minutes to get back to the ship dock.........and then I'd have to stagger almost two football fields to the gangplank.
I've been on a lot of cruises where my ship pulled out of port at 6 PM, 9 PM, even midnight. We were in Cancun having a great shipboard fiesta to the tunes of a mariachi band and cheered at the rails when the ship pulled out at the witching hour. There was no pressure.
I really don't want to sail 2000 miles to spend a few short hours in port.
Finally, IMO, the vastness of these super-ships is not conducive to the sociability of small groups such as ours. On previous voyages, we could always find some members of our group in the breakfast or lunch buffet, or on deck, or in the shops, or in a lounge, or wherever. We could sit, have a chat or drink, or just say hi. On this ship with its four different breakfast and lunch eateries and with its just plain huge territory, these chance encounters were virtually nil. Good thing we all got together at dinner for some togetherness.
I really think that the greedy rush to build these mega-ships will rather quickly come back to bite the cruise lines in their sterns. But that's another story.
I personally found my cabin and the dinner service at our tables to be top-notch, the best I ever had on any cruise. I loved my cabin. It was clean, gobs of storage, and I used my balcony a lot.
Breakfast and lunch buffets were extremely varied, with most of the food quite tasty.
I gave the evening dinners served a seven-out-of-ten. Fish entrees were excellent, beef rated only a three. Again, just my opinion.
I was on the Princess line 20 years ago. They couldn't do bakery then, and they still can't. I never did find any bread and dinner rolls that were actually tasty. I had room service breakfast one morning and threw the so-called "danish" right into the wastebasket. Unedible.
Doughnuts and other fry cakes at breakfast were abominable. Don't even mention their cake desserts.
I put a suggestion on the post-cruise form we filled out, "Hire German, Dutch or French bread/pastry chefs for your ships, PLEASE!" (Holland America has the best bread and pastry of all lines, BTW).
The fellowship on these freeper cruises is always unbelievable and the real piece d' resistance. I'd eat hardtack for seven nights straight just to be on a voyage with freeper shipmates.
(......well, maybe not SEVEN nights, but you get my drift, LOL)
Other critiques welcome, guys and gals.
Bahama Mama (your Pillsbury cruise gal)
Don't know if it's true or not but our cabin boy showed us a handicaped balcony cabin a couple down from ours and said that next time, get one of these, they are the same price.
It was at least 1/3 larger and the bathroom was at least 6x8 with a 5x5 shower!.