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Princess Cruise Line

MS Sun Princess

Your Rating:
Reviewed by: N Hopf
Date of Trip: April 18, 2000
# previous cruises: 4
Itinerary: Transcanal

The Sun Princess is a comfortable ship. It is small enough to learn your way around quickly and large enough to offer many place to explore. The canal was fascinating but some of the stops were a disappointment. We travelled over Easter and Grenada was all but closed up except for one shop and some street vendors. Caracas was also disappointing. The tour we were interested was cancelled due to a hurricane (not Princess' fault), but we weren't interested in any other tours and were sort of warned about walking around the area on our own. We felt the stop should have been skipped and as it happens it is no longer part of the Canal itinerary. Ours was the last trip.

There was a walk around promenade, which comes in handy worrying off all the food you eat. The lounges were all comfortable and even though drinks were always offered you were comfortable saying no thanks. The pool area was usually crowded and if you don't get a seat early, you're not likely to get one, especially if you have an area you prefer sitting in or want to sit with your family. Casino was fine, we're not too interested in gambling, we may just take a pull on the slot machine while walking through. The game room was a nice quiet place to play a game with the family. The kids especially enjoyed the ping pong table on deck and prompted us to buy one for Christmas.

The food quality was very good in the dining room and the wait staff excellent. Our only disappointment was that we had cruised 2 years ago on Sun Princess and the menus were identical. I would have liked to have seen some different offerings. Seeing the menu the same year after year takes a little of the mystic out of cruising. The buffet food was good. Not great, but certainly a wide variety and always wonderful fresh fruit.

We had an inside cabin and it was quite adequate. We don't bother to book and pay more for an outside cabin, because we only change clothes and sleep in the cabin. Closet space was fine and the bathroom was also fine. A great feature offered by this ship is the in-room safe. We have cruised on other ships and had things stolen (or lost?) from the room. The safe is a great place to stow valuable and feel secure leaving your room. Our room on this trip was very quiet we were under other rooms and had no problems. On our previous trip on the Sun, we were below the Wheelhouse lounge and had music until they were done playing.

We enjoyed all the shows and tried to see most of them. If travelling with children we recommend the early shows and the comedians usually clean it up a little for the kids. Cruise staff was excellent and always friendly.

I personally could do with out the art auctions and bingo, but I love it when the offer games or games shows and wish there were more of them to attend. We also enjoy the pool and just relaxing in a deck chair with a good book. The tours are interesting, but if you've cruised before you done that. The kids (8 and 13) enjoyed the kids center though sometimes it was hard to get them to go because they were just as interested in the adult activities (pool, games, shows) My 8 year old used it most. The activities were well planned and lots of fun. My 13 year old was still a little young for the teen group and was sort of on the young side for the group that was there. She is less of a joiner and the unstructured environment made it harder for her to get enthused about the activities that sometimes didn't take place, since many of the teens just wanted to "hang". The ports we stopped at were St Thomas, okay if you like to shop, which I hesitate to do too much of for expensive things, Honestly you can get just as good a deal with a sale in the states and its a lot easier to return if there is a problem. I just feel like they are waiting for the tourists and if you are not well educated about the things you are looking at its difficult to know if it is old stock, seconds, counterfeit, etc.. St. Martin, interesting, we took a tour through the rain forest. Curacao, very nice island, we took a canoe safari. I was surprised we canoed in the ocean. Much to my daughter's dismay, the wind and current go a hold of us and we had to be rescued. How embarrassing. But the trip was fun there were swimming stops. Grenada, as I said it was Easter and much was closed. Caracas, as I said above a disappointing stop. The canal was fascinating and were were treated to a tropical rain storm, which delayed the ship a few hours getting into the last stop. Some people were disappointed who had tours in Acapulco, but I thought the storm wa very cool to watch and was worth the delay.

Our fellow passengers were very nice, I even met someone I used to work with about 20 years ago. Small world. Our table mates were very nice and we exchanged emails. We were a little disappointed in the seating assignments. We were a family of 4 travelling and asked for a table for 8 with the hopes of sitting with another family for the kids. We were seated at a table for 10 with 3 retired couples. They were wonderful people and we enjoyed their company, but I though the cruise line could have made more of an effort to place people together who might have more in common.