This cruise was taken with our adult daughter to celebrate our 45th anniversary. We had connecting Mini-Suite Cabins on Lido Deck. This arrangement provided us with more total room than a suite with the added convenience of two separate bathrooms - a necessity when getting ready for early morning shore excursions. The balcony is rather small but functional although we didn't use it very much because of the quite low nightly temps and wind. Being on Lido allowed direct access to Horizon Court, which is where we ate the majority of our meals on Anytime Dining. We thoroughly enjoyed the cruise for its wonderful itinerary which ticked off a few bucket list items for us. We only did independent shore excursions which were wonderful so can't comment on Princess excursions. The Royal Princes is a very nice ship but I think we may prefer smaller ships. That being said, our overall impression of Royal Princess was good in spite of a few glitches. Herding 3,600 passengers around a vessel of that size and doing your best to keep them all happy is a daunting task so I applaud the Captain and crew on a job well done.

The Good: 1) Food and service in Horizon Court, Crown Grill and Sabatini's. Variety and quality of food in Horizon Court was a pleasant surprise and the servers were johnny-on-the-spot with beverages and other requests. 2) Entertainment was somewhat better than expected. Especially liked Kory Simon in Crooners and the Irish band and dancers. 3) Excellent lecture on D-Day invasion. I don't remember the name of the authority that conducted the lecture but he really knew his stuff and had effective visual aids. 4) Final disembarkation was reasonably smooth and on time (but see #3 below in "The not-so-good"). 5) Princess@Sea was helpful but needs to provide more detail on account activity and on-board activities. 6) Our cabin steward, Tito, was excellent.

The not-so-good: 1) Embarkation mass chaos - what happened to check-in and boarding by deck? If that’s not possible and practical then so state in the pre-cruise instructions. 2) Someone switched the luggage tag on our daughter’s bag at disembarkation. If her bag wasn’t so unique (frankly, quite ugly) we would have never found it in a sea of look-alike bags and when we did find it, it was about to be loaded on a Princess bus headed to Heathrow 3) Poor communication concerning disembarkation at ports of call. Sometimes deck 5, sometimes deck 6, sometimes fore only, sometimes fore and mid-ship, etc. 4) Poor communication about activities on the ship (not enough detail) - and why aren’t DR menus and announcements as well as stateroom account activity posted on the stateroom TV’s? 5) Error on our stateroom bill remains unresolved. 6) Daily statement of charges needs to provide more detail so one can verify the charges or at least provide a receipt at time of consumption to compare to your account later? 7) Daughter was treated rudely by clerk in jewelry store. OK, she wasn't exactly dressed like Ivanka but there's no excuse for treating any passenger with indifference or snobbishness. 8) Theater and other entertainment venues should be outfitted with Loop system for hearing impaired or at least provide assisted hearing devices. For us hearing-challenged passengers (and there are many of us) it’s frustrating to not be able to clearly hear and enjoy the entertainment. 9) Slow and indifferent service in the Dining Rooms. The service on Horizon Court was much better. 10) Long lines and wait times for return tenders from Guernsey and Edinburgh. 11) The cost of beverage packages is pretty ridiculous except for the coffee card. We'd have to be drunk all the time to make the all-inclusive package pay for itself for us. Would like to see something like the coffee card that provides a specified number of drinks for a discount. 12) Too much on-board up-selling. I realize they have to make money but goodness, do I need to be offered the wine tasting event at every meal? and finally, 13) On board Internet is way too slow and expensive. It took me 3 minutes to download a day's worth of emails.