Our 7 day 2002 cruise took us to 4 ports of
call. Although 2 ports were repeats from last year, each port was
awesome. After months of rainy gloomy weather, there just isn't anything
like white sand beaches, warm water, lots of sun, and a few drinks.
This was our 4th cruise, each one
on a different cruise line. "Houston, we've found our
cruise line." Princess Cruises is the one for us. The ship
offered 6 restaurants, 4 pools, countless hot tubs, full fledged arcade, 2
theatres, virtual golf, 9 hole miniature golf, and so many bars and lounges
that I lost track.
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Here's Karen wasting time on deck waiting for her scheduled treadmill
appointment. |
Best Dining Ever
Unlike our other 3 cruise lines,
Princess offers traditional dining as well as "Personal
Choice" dining. With traditional dining, you select whether you
want to have dinner served every night at either 6 PM or 8:30 PM. You
eat dinner at the same time and table every night. Your alternative is
the buffet or a restaurant at
port. You choose your
seating prior to the cruise.
Personal Choice dining has you eat dinner
whenever you want! With Personal Choice
dining, you go eat at any one of 4 restaurants. Of course, the buffet
and a port restaurant is
an option. We obviously loved
the Personal Choice dining option.
The one thing that we missed by not
selecting traditional dining was the opportunity to share the cruise with a group
of people every night at dinner. We have fond memories of our first 3
cruises because we either cruised with family or met really fun people at our
dinner table that we got to know over the course of the cruise.
Nevertheless, the freedom of Personal Choice dining is preferred. No
need to run back from the port because dinner is at 6 PM. No need to
wait for dinner until 8:30 PM.
Most Laughs Ever
Something else we really enjoyed
was the entertainment. Although we enjoyed some of the entertainment on
our earlier cruises, at times it was rather bland and old. Princess's entertainment was fresh and awesome every night. The comedian
was on 3 times and we laughed hysterically each night.
Of course if you didn't like the
entertainment in one theatre, you could always go to the second theatre where
either another live show was going on, or a recently released movie.
Best Cruise Ever
This was the best cruise yet! We keep
saying that every year, but it is true. We cruised out of Ft. Lauderdale
on the Grand Princess. We had 2 days at sea and 4 ports:
