Sun Princess Review - April 19 - 28, 2004

Eastern Caribbean (10 Nights) from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida
Sailing Date: April 19, 2004
Ship: Sun Princess
Ports of Call: Princess Cay, St. Thomas, St. Martin, St. Vincent,
Barbados, and Antigua.

This was our 16th cruise with Princess. Our 41st cruise overall.

This was our second time aboard the Sun Princess. Our first sailing
was on October 19, 1996. The Sun Princess is a large ship at 77,000
tons, but no huge when compared to today's mega-ships. Although it had
been almost seven years since we were last sailing the ship is overall
in very good shape. Here are our impressions:

Embarking/Disembarking
Check in was the best we have EVER experienced. We arrived via Taxi
from our hotel (The Sheraton Yankee Clipper) at 12:30PM. There were
plenty of porters on hand to handle luggage Walked right through
Security and had no one at either the Platinum Desk or the Caribe
Desk, so we could have used either one. We used the Platinum Desk;
found that we are now Elite Members of the Captain's Club, more about
that later. Waited for one couple ahead of us at the Boarding Photo
spot, had our pic snapped and walked right on board. Total time, less
than 10 minutes.

Disembarking seemed to move much better than past experiences. Because
of any early flight out of Ft. Lauderdale, we were in Red Group #2,
which was called while we were still enjoying breakfast in the Regency
Dining Room. When we finished eating we returned to our stateroom for
a few minutes, picked up our hand luggage and proceeded ashore. When
we arrived in the baggage area, our bags were the only ones remaining
the Red area. That coupled with the fact that they are red and had
straps around them with our names as part of the design of the strap
made finding our stuff kind of easy. Customs lines were sort of long
both for passport check and exiting with baggage, but we were in our
cab to the airport by 9:30 AM with no rush at all. We had plenty of
time to make our 11:20 AM flight on Southwest. Ft. Lauderdale airport
was less hectic since we arrived back mid-week rather than during the
weekend rush.

Stateroom
We had an ocean view stateroom #304 on deck 9 (Caribe Deck). The room
was clean and well kept. The stateroom stewardess did a fine job. It
almost seemed as if she had ESP and knew when we came and went. We
never ran out of towels and always had ample ice & water. The
staterooms are nice size (about 160 sq ft) and have more than enough
storage space for clothes for 10 days. All of our suitcases fitted
under the bed for storage. We actually had a couple unused drawers!

Food
The Regency Restaurant is the main dining room for traditional dining.
We were seated at Table #166 which IMHO was in a perfect location for
conversation and no through traffic passing by.. There is also the
Horizon Court & The Grill. We ate all evening meals, in the Regency.
The quality and variety of food was excellent. The beef dishes were
all superb. The lobster was excellent. Overall, the food was the some
of best we can recall on recent cruises. Desserts and breads to me,
were great. We ate most breakfasts & lunches in either the Horizon
Court or Grill. Breakfast was very good, especially the omelet bar.
Lunch was generally quite nice with prepared to order hot sandwiches,
as well as a fine selection of other buffet items, the hot dogs &
burgers from the Grill were also very good. My only negative comment
is that the multiple serving lines which Princess uses on most of
their ships seem to cause congestions.

Shows
There were the usual mix of musical revues and guest entertainers. We
enjoy musical production shows and the three presented during the trip
were excellent. The guest entertainers were all quite good.. They also
had the usual audience participation shows (newlywed game, karaoke,
etc). The main show lounge had good sight lines and the seats were
comfortable. Seats tended to fill up early.

Entertainment
The Cruise Director, Janet Evans, and her staff worked really hard and
were very friendly & pleasant. The party band was very good. Their
music was very good, and they could play anything from country to rock
to Caribbean. The casino was not as big as on some ships, but it
never appeared too crowded. As Las Vegas residents this area had
little appeal for us.

Other
The pool areas were great. I enjoy the fresh water in Princess pools.
The exercise room was more than adequate for the amount of use it got.
Even though there were only a handful of stations for internet access,
they did not seem to be overused especially late at night.. This
probably had something to do with the .50 per minute charge! The
gift shops were well stocked and stayed open generally past 10 pm. The
photographers were around the ship but never intrusive. Announcements
over the ships intercom were kept at a minimum.

We enjoyed Brunch with the Captain on the last day at sea. This was a
very special event for Elite Members of the Captain's Club. There
were 44 of us on this sailing. Each couple received an autographed
picture take with the Captain at the conclusion of this event and were
escorted on a personal tour of the Kitchen by the Chief Chef

Ports of Call

Since we have visited most of these ports of call we tool excursions
on Barbados and Antigua. We did Harrison's Cave on Barbados and The
Best of Antigua including Nelson's Dockyard on Antigua.

Captain's Club

The Elite Member perks for those who have cruised at least 15 times
with Princess are the best in the industry. Along with all the
"normal" perks they include robes and slippers, a free stocked
refrigerator in your stateroom (stocked free only once), free laundry
and dry cleaning, free shoe shines, priority tender boarding, special
event that are truly special! They were outstanding enough that we
will have to consider Princess any time we consider future cruises.

Overall
We feel that The Sun Princess was an excellent cruise experience and
we give it a 9.8 on a scale of 10.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts about your recent Sun Princess cruise with
us, Ed. Much appreciated.