Life on the Caribbean Princess

Caribbean Princess

For those of you interested in cruising, we wanted to provide a quick review of our cruise ship experience. This was a very port-intensive cruise, so we spent relatively little time on board, but to be honest, the Caribbean Princess was a mixed experience.

Typical buffet meal

Pros

Excellent customer service from the Ship's Front Desk – went above and beyond to accommodate us

Best buffet food of any ship we have ever sailed on

Outstanding meal at the specialty restaurant called "The Crown Grill" 

The "head-banger" stateroom

Cons

Stateroom was horrible – we had a small stateroom with two closed-up extra beds (for children, we think) that hung on the sides of the walls and jutted 9 inches or so out into the room, making the room claustrophobic, plus those damn beds were real headbangers (just ask Frank who smacked his head on them almost every day!). Will definitely AVOID rooms like this from now on!  Unless you need extra beds for your kids and want to go on-the-cheap, stay away from those side beds.

Anytime Dining was a mess – we couldn’t get a table without a reservation and even those with reservations were waiting long periods of time (we gave up and usually ate at the buffet)

The Entertainment Theater was much too small – people arrived an hour before in order to get seats, we stopped even trying.  Only small saving was that there are multiple shows; but even that was hard to gauge for the least-crowded showing.

And finally, here are some stats on the cruise and the cruise ship.  During our time aboard "The Caribbean Princess," it was commanded by Captain Mario Ciruzzi, an Italian-born citizen from the south of Italy.  Our cruise started from the port of New York City and ended up in the port of Quebec City for a cruise distance of about 2269 statute miles, stopping at 7 ports (we had to skip Charlottetown on Prince Edward Island because of high winds).  Bummer, because Frank's old work buddy (Paul Ehret) had introduced Frank to Prince Edward Island (PEI) mussels years ago, and we were both anxious to get the really good ones from PEI when we stopped there. However, the scrumptious little buggers were not to be had on PEI.  We did manage to scarf down some PEI mussels on the ship that night - mmmmmmmmmm!  Thank you Paul.  Great experience.

The cruise ship Caribbean Princess moored in Bar Harbor

About the Caribbean Princess (CP): The CP is a 113,561 gross ton vessel registered in Hamilton, Bermuda.  It comes in with a length of 947 feet and a breadth of 118 feet.  The Princess holds a max number of 3573 passengers, and a max number of crew members at 1227.

Here's a final little ditty that may interest our travelers who don't already know this.  The word Quebec is a French pronunciation when visiting Quebec City.  The French there (which are the vast majority of the city) call it "ke-BEK" City, not kwi-BEK City, the way an American says it.  It's the French way!!  This gets even more complicated, because the British in and around Quebec City call it "Cue-BEK" City, and Americans say it the way Americans pronounce a word that begins with the letters "Qu".  Yes, 3 totally different ways to pronounce Quebec City, depending on your nationality!

Overall, we really had a wonderful time on the cruise, but we did want to give you an honest assessment of our ship.

Thanks for traveling with us!