This was my seventh cruise – but the first with the whole family! My wife and I sailed on the Golden in March 2002 on this same itinerary (well, actually it was reversed, but the same ports of call), and enjoyed it so much, we decided to bring four children AND an 18 year old niece. Our travel agent, Ray at Lighthouse Travel, was able to convince the Princess powers-that-be to give us three cabins, even though we didn’t have a 21 year old to put into each. I thought this was only fair, since Princess didn’t offer any 3rd/4th passenger rate reductions. Hats off to Ray and Princess for this accommodation!

Our past cruises have been the Golden in March 2002 in the Eastern Caribbean, HAL Ryndam in 2000 to the Western Caribbean, Sea Princess in 1999 to the Western Caribbean, Sun Princess in 1997 to the Eastern Caribbean, NCL Norway in 1995 to the Western Caribbean (I think…), and the old NCL Starward way back in 1991 in the Southern Caribbean. As you can see, we’ve about worn out the Caribbean itinieraries!

With this many going, it made economic sense to drive to Ft. Lauderdale from our home in West Virginia. It is about a 14 and a half hour drive, not including stops for gas and food, so we drove to Daytona Beach on Friday, spent the night, and then drove the last four hours on Saturday morning. In all, it’s not a bad trip, and it is actually less nerve racking than hoping that flight delays don’t cause you to miss the boat! On the return trip, we drove straight home, arriving at 2:00 Sunday morning.

We arrived at the port at just about noon on Saturday, unloaded and parked the van, and were in line for only a few minutes. Unfortunately for the passengers behind us, traveling with 3 children who didn’t have passports or photo IDs, and checking into 3 cabins, took a while – the Princess rep on the phone said not to worry about photo IDs, since our names would be on their birth certificates and we had photo IDs – but the nice folks at the pier didn’t know about this, and would prefer photo IDs. Next time, we’ll have them!

So, after about 15 minutes of checking IDs and handing out cruise cards, we proceeded directly to the ship.

Having sailed on the Golden only 9 months earlier, it wasn’t too hard to find our way to our cabins on the port side of the ship, almost all the way to the front, on Dolphin deck. After dropping off our bags and meeting William our steward, we headed for the obligatory grazing at the Horizon Court buffet. William was a wonderful cabin steward, always letting us know who of our party was in their cabin or out and about (the teenage boys seemed to sleep a lot during the day).

Many things were the same as our last trip – Alistair Greener was still the cruise director, although his assistant was now Gavin, the illusionist Gaetano was performing on board, and even the captain, Bernard Warner, was still at the helm.

The kids wanted Coke stamps – now $22.50 with a large metal cup, or $20.00 for just the stamp. They used them a lot, and by the end of the week discovered that they could also get a Shirley Temple for free, which they then always got – whether they really liked them or not I don’t know, but it looked like an adult drink, and thus was much more fun.

By Sunday afternoon, the two youngest kids had lost their cruise cards. The pursers desk was more than helpful each time in replacing the cards, and giving us a receipt to take to the nearest bar for another Coke stamp. We bought the neck strap for each child – although I think it would be in Princess’ best interest to give them to child passengers for free – whomever found the lost cards could also get free Coke each week, since the bar staff never examines the card in the least. But, we paid the $2.95 per head to avoid the embarrassment of having to go back a third or fourth time to get another card.

We ate dinner in the dining room each night, but not all of the kids ate with us each night. We called for reservations by 4:00 or so, especially when all seven of us were eating together, and never had a problem getting right into the dining room at our scheduled time. We had wonderful service each night except for one. In the Bernini dining room on Deck 5, at Table No. 5, we experienced THE WORST waiter I have had or even seen on seven cruises – Santos from Portugal. Our 18 year old niece asked for a garden salad with honey mustard dressing, which she had eaten the night before. Santos then went on a 5 minute lecture about how she had a menu, and she could order things from the menu, but not things that were not on the menu. When she said “okay, I don’t want a salad” he then had to continue on explaining that certain dressings were in large containers and how they couldn’t just serve them any time, and that the only dressings available were those on the menu, etc. It was embarrassing for her, and put a damper on our entire dinner – formal Lobster night no less! I have never seen a waiter act this way – even if it wasn’t available, any other waiter would have said “I’m terribly sorry, but we don’t have honey mustard dressing available this evening. Is there something else I can get for you?” But Santos treated our niece like she was an idiot for even asking for something not on the menu. It was a real shock to everyone, after experience four previous nights of service where I believe the waiter would have gone back to the kitchen and MADE the dressing for her. Needless to say, we turned in three comment cards (one for each cabin) describing this horrific experience.

Otherwise, service was good, but not as good as it is with fixed time dining, which I noticed on our last cruise, in which we also had PC dining. Nothing compares with having one waiter who knows your likes and dislikes. This may also be partially due to the “automatic” tip system in place, but other than Santos, we never had bad service.

We took one Princess shore excursion – at St. Martin we went on the Pinnel Island snorkel tour. It was a nice bus ride and ferry ride over to the island, the group leader provided commentary and information about the island of St. Martin as we drove from the ship to Marigot on the French side, and then over to the island. As expected, a lot of the snorkeling area has been trampled down, or is covered with a thick layer of sand as a lot of snorkelers don’t understand that standing up isn’t part of snorkeling – it just stirs up a lot of sand. But at the outer edges of the snorkeling area, there were a lot of fish and coral life to look at. For $35, it wasn’t bad – a bus tour of St. Martin and a few hours on a private island snorkeling is about as good a bargain as you’ll find as far as shore excursions go.

St. Thomas was spent just around the ship at the Haversight Mall – no one from our group ventured much past that. I did go to the AT&T Internet building a little down the road from Haversight, to check my email and such. It’s a pretty good deal there at $2.00 for 15 minutes, and provides faster access than is available onboard the ship, which costs $.50 a minute.

The final stop was Princess Cays on Friday. Most of our group went over at about 10:00 and stayed until about the end of the day there – 2:00 or so. Princess has really done a good job of expanding the area… the beach to the right side of the tender dock is now populated with its own BBQ/dinning area and bar, and is less crowded overall than the left side. With ships the size of the Grand and Golden, I guess they had to do something. I can remember being crowded there when on just the Sea Princess. This time, it wasn’t too crowded, but there was a fairly long, though fast moving, line to get on the tender back to the ship at 2:00.

Disembarkation was the same as always – just remember to keep your proof of citizenship handy. They didn’t mention that in any of the onboard stuff – just have your cruise card and Customs form handy – so ours were in a suitcase. The INS guy asked where we were from, and where we were born, and let us through with that. Given the scrutiny before and after the cruise, and at St. Thomas, I think we’ll all have passports next time – plus that would be another reason to go ahead and take that Baltic cruise we’ve been dreaming of for a few years now!

One last little tip is to be sure to go ahead and put a $100 per person deposit down with the future cruise sales lady on board. Not only does that mean you don’t have to pay any more until the final payment is due, but you get $50 per person of that back as shipboard credit for outside cabins, and $25 for inside (which is a change – used to be $50 regardless). They also are more insistent that you book an actual cruise, instead of just getting a “temporary” booking number to convert later – but since we asked about 2004 European cruises, which aren’t in the system yet, we were able to get the generic booking number. We may even try out a New England / Canada cruise next summer – but are really interested in the Baltic cruise, if we can save up enough money to pay for one!

As usual, Princess Cruises provided us with a great vacation – and since everyone enjoyed it so much, I doubt that it will be just my wife and I alone in the future… we’ll probably always be family cruisers from now on.