Caribbean Princess Review-6/5-6/12

Grab some coffee and a comfortable chair, this is a long one...

A little background first: This was our 14th cruise and our 2nd Princess, we were on Ocean Princess for a trans canal in 2002. We have sailed Carnival and RCCL, are 48 & 47 years old and traveled with 6 adult family members.

We arrived 2 days prior to cruise day and stayed at the Marriott Marina. We stayed at the Marriott a couple of years ago, loved the convenient location and having the water taxi right on the property. We spent the day before the cruise riding the water taxi to Ft. Lauderdale Beach and Los Olas Riverfront. We had dinner at 15th Street Fisheries, which was excellent. Since we come from the San Francisco Bay Area we are spoiled with some of the best food in the world and don’t often find restaurants in tourist areas that make us go wow, but this one did. We each ordered something different and each dish was unique, inventive and delicious. It was a nice relaxing way to begin our vacation, by the time we boarded the ship I was already in vacation mode.

Embarkation Day – After a nice breakfast and a walk to the edge of Marriott’s property to get a peek at our ship we packed up our belongings, called the bell desk and caught the 11am complimentary shuttle to the pier. The pier was already busy with arrivals and some of the later departures. The porters were right there to unload the shuttle, receive their well-earned tips (I love not having to touch the luggage if I don’t have to) and direct us to the line that was already formed by approximately 200 people. The doors opened promptly at 11:30am. We walked across the terminal and found our deck designated check-in counter and chose the NON express line since it was half the length of the express line. We waited no more than 10 minutes in line, were processed within 5 minutes and it would have been only 2 minutes, I kid you not, the big delay was only due to our agent assisting another agent LOL. You just gotta love on-line documents. There were only a couple of people in front of us in the x-ray line, then up the escalator, smile for the camera, up the ramp, another smile for our cruise card photo and OH BOY on to the ship. I looked at my watch and it was 11:50am.

We went directly to our cabin which was the renowned E730 directly above Club Fusion. The extra balcony space was wonderful and the cabin was set up very efficiently. I immediately got on the phone to the concierge to make a standing reservation in the Palm Dining Room. We had been waitlisted and only got to #117 prior to the cruise and prefer the same table and wait staff every evening. I was in the phone queue for approximately 20 minutes, the phone does have speakerphone so I was able to unpack my carryon etc. while waiting. Once my call was answered I had no problem getting a standing 8:15 for a table of eight. Our room steward Isaac, the best we’ve ever had so far, introduced himself shortly after our arrival. He asked what our dining time was, did we have any special requests and was there anything that he could do for us to make our cruise special. We were off to a fantastic start, I’m not a demanding person but I loved knowing Isaac was very much about customer service.

We have a ritual, like many others, when first boarding a ship. We stop at the pool bar, buy a cocktail for me and a coke card for hubby. We start at the highest point of the ship and with camera in hand explore and snap a picture or two while the rooms are virtually empty. We walk one end of the ship to the other, go down a deck and work our way back. I found the décor really lovely, understated but rich at the same time. There’s a lot of wood used on this ship which gives it warmth. The floor plans were a bit confusing to me with not all decks accessible both forward and aft. Since we were on the 8th deck, we had to go down to the 7th deck and go to midship in order to get to the 6th deck rather than just going down 2 decks. My dh caught on right away but I found myself retracing my steps on numerous occasions to get where I needed to go. There are many nooks and crannies on board also. It wasn’t until the last day that I discovered a shop with an entrance across from Sterlings. When entering that area from the atrium I had always gone left, never right so never realized it was there. It was actually fun since I’d browsed the other shops a number of times during the week and this was uncharted territory!

After our little tour we went back to our cabin to chill-out a bit and were pleasantly surprised when our luggage arrived at 3pm. I was unpacked and luggage stored before muster! Muster was promptly at 4pm with our station in Club Fusion of course. Muster was painless and we weren’t required to go to our lifeboat locations so got to stay in the nice air conditioning. We had arranged to meet our Cruise Critic friends at the Outrigger bar at the aft pool. This is a really good place for a get-together; there was enough room, not many other people there and a bar at your fingertips. I enjoyed meeting all the friends I’d been posting with for months. This is where we watched sail away just a bit after 5pm.

Kurt – Thanks again for the webpage, I’ll email you the group pics for posting and Chuck – Thanks for the name tags, I don’t know how we would have known who was who without them. Larry & Amy – It was nice running in to you, seems we saw you quite often, we must have been on the same path during the cruise. Rich & Kirsty – what can I say, but GREEN WITH ENVY! Thanks for the Milky Bars, 3 packs of the buttons got me free wine from Fort Lauderdale to Las Vegas. Thom gave the flight attendant the packs to share and wallah, cocktails!!! Thanks for sharing your birthday with us! PrincessDi – Met Cindy and Jude, saw Steven and Michael who were sitting back observing all of us crazy people. Debs, Mark, Kevin nice meeting you guys, glad the clothing choices worked out! To those I’ve forgotten, my apologies, it was a bit of a whirlwind when we met, I’m so glad we had the turnout that we did.

We went to the casino for a bit once it opened that first night. We had received letters after our Conquest cruise that my dh had $300 and I had $50 cash coming based on our play and membership in Oceans Player Club. I’d heard that Princess’ casino personnel weren’t really too pleased with the system when acquired by Carnival so I had emailed OPC for confirmation and went armed with a reply email stating they would be honored aboard Princess. Not only did we not get any opposition, the casino manager had been looking forward to meeting us since he had been informed prior to the cruise that we would be aboard. So right from the get go, we were $350 ahead. Good thing, the slots were pretty tight folks. I was the heavy one this time but dh did well at the tables playing blackjack and 3 card poker and was able to subsidize me.

Dining - We checked in with the Maître’d at 8:15 and our table for 8 was ready. We had the same table every night and the only difference between PC dining with a standing reservation and traditional seating was no singing by the waiters. I thought I might miss having little shows, but didn’t miss it a bit. Our assistant waiter was especially good, remembering who had coffee, tea or none; who was a vegetarian, who drank red or white wine etc. We enjoyed ourselves at dinner, the food was generally very good with a few disappointments but hey I figure if I don’t most of my entrée I deserve two desserts right? We celebrated our 20th anniversary and my brother-in-laws 50th birthday with rousing renditions of Hoppy Annibershury and Hoppy Burseday respectively. After the first two nights we just waved to the Maitre’d as we passed by on our way to our table. There were never more than a couple of people in line and that was only on the two formal nights. The nightmares of PC dining have obviously been rectified. We ate both breakfast and lunch at Horizon Court. The salad bar was a favorite of mine. It was one of the best I’ve seen aboard a ship. There was a lot of variety and everything was very fresh. The food was good for both breakfast and lunch although it got old by the end of the week. No fault of Princess, just how it goes after 3 meals a day on board a ship. That being said I don’t know what else they could have served, breakfast consisted of every breakfast food known to man and lunches changed every day. I think it’s more about toning down flavors to appeal to the masses. We tend to go heavier to the garlic, onion, pepper flavors, which doesn’t work when feeding 3,000. My hubby loved the pizza! We didn’t eat at Caribe Café other than a snack now and again however my in-laws feasted on the crab & lobster a time or two prior to dinner and were very impressed. We did not eat at Sabatini’s or Sterling.

Both Sunday and Monday are sea days with Sunday being the first formal night. I called Monday afternoon for tickets to Tuesdays 10:30 Movie Under the Stars and they were already sold out so get your tickets early. After dinner on Tuesday we noticed that around show time there were empty seats and asked one of the ushers if there were people who cancelled. He said to wait about five minutes until the start of the movie and he’d let us in. Although we couldn’t find two chaise lounges together we stood off to the side until the usher brought us some chairs. It was a really cool experience and think it will be a big hit on the Princess ships. There is something special about lying out in the nice warm breeze under the stars watching a movie. If any of you remember drive-ins with grass you could lay a blanket out on, the feeling is similar with the exception of comfy chairs. The clarity of the screen and the sound system are really great. They also had “no-ticket” events of concerts and sing along Wizard of Oz. The movie was really the only entertainment we went to during the week. We did go to the Captain’s cocktail party which blew my mind a bit. Having late dining we went to the second party expecting to meet/see the Captain and officers. Instead they showed a video of the first party, very weird.

Ports
St. Thomas – Since we’d been to St. Thomas a number of times we decided to take the ferry to St. John and hike the Lind Point trail to Honeymoon Beach. We wanted to take the 9am ferry from Charlotte Amalie since we weren’t in any big hurry and had all day to do the hike, swim and ferry back. We specifically told the van driver that we wanted to take this ferry and needed to be dropped off in town. No problem, she said it would be $3. When we finally filled the van and started off she said we’ll go to Red Hook then to Sapphire Beach. We piped in AFTER you drop us off in town. She then tried to tell us that going from Red Hook was the only way to go that time-wise it was faster and dollar for dollar would work out about the same. We knew this but had chosen to take the Charlotte Amalie ferry and insisted she take us downtown. She continued to argue until she realized she was going to have a mutiny, there were 6 of us after all, and if she insisted on not stopping and dropping us in Red Hook she wasn’t going to get paid. She begrudgingly took us to town. This is the only time we’ve ever had a problem with a driver. We walked down to where the ferries were lined up for their morning runs only to find out the Cruz Bay ferry leaves from in front of the open-air craft market at the other end of town. After two sea days and many meals, the walk was good for us! We found the trail head with no problem behind the National Park Visitor’s Center and began our journey. I’m glad I had taken the map as there were a couple of places with forks in the path that had us disagreeing which way we should go. The path wasn’t as groomed as much as I thought it would be but would not be a challenge for anyone who is looking for moderate exercise. It was really a nice hike, 1.2 miles to Honeymoon Beach, and well worth the trip. The beach is beautiful, we found some semi-shaded area and enjoyed cooling off in the water. There are no facilities, so make sure you take water if you do this hike. We debated about going back the way we came or hiking further to Caneel Beach and grabbing a cab back to Cruz Bay at the resort entrance which is what we did. It was another .5 mile to where the cabs were waiting. Once in town, we stopped and had a snack of conch fritters and cold beer…yum. We caught the ferry back to Charlotte Amalie to do some shopping before returning to the ship.

St. Maarten – Again, we’ve been to St. Maarten numerous times so we decided to go to Orient Beach and back to Philipsburg for some shopping. We grabbed a cab between 7:30 and 8:00 and were literally the first ones on the beach. It was nice with the exception that the umbrella guys didn’t get to the beach until 9:30ish and being a bright and sunny day we were frying by the time they got it together, I have the peeling forehead to prove it. We’d arranged for our driver to come back for us at noon which was perfect timing. It was hot in Philipsburg as we walked down the boardwalk so we walked back a few streets from the main drag and popped in and out of the less frequented stores. In fact found a neighborhood grocery where we stocked up for the 50th birthday party we were having in our cabin for my brother-in-law prior to dinner.

Princess Cays – We’d never been to a private island on any of our cruises so were curious what the experience would be like. The tendering process went well although I’d gone early to get tender tickets without dh and was told that you can only get one ticket per person and once you were ticketed you had to sit in the Princess Theatre. You couldn’t even leave to go to the restroom. I returned later, around 10, with hubby in tow, were given our tickets and shown to seats where we waited to be called. We weren’t there five minutes before we went to the tender. By the way they never asked for the tender ticket. Upon arriving at the island we went to the right of the tender pier which is a smaller section of beach and had no problem finding shade. Around 11:30 it got really crowded, reminded me of Waikiki Beach. I did a little shopping from the local vendors and we tendered back around 1:00. I doubt we’d do another itinerary with a private island unless the other ports were attractive.

Disembarkation – This was the smoothest, quickest disembarkation ever. Originally they had given us one of the later groups. With our flight time being 11:20am I changed them at the pursers desk for earlier ones and ended up in the 3rd group. We went to breakfast at 7:30 and our color was called before our breakfast was served. When we went to the luggage area ours were the only bags left in that group, there they were standing all alone. It was great! Immigration was conducted after disembarking and was a breeze too. We were at the airport a little after 9am.

Misc. – I can’t say enough about our room steward Isaac. I’m planning on writing a letter to Princess because he was that good. He seemed to know the exact moment when he could service our cabin even though our schedule changed day to day. We never caught him in the cabin even though we’d return for some forgotten item a bit after we’d left. He was often in the hallway and always had a smile and a good morning/afternoon/evening. We had a towel animal every day (I thought this was more of a Carnival tradition) and on our anniversary he made two hearts and two swans on our bed and had stood the cards we had exchanged as part of the arrangement. The next morning he made a ship out of towels and handmade a sign with the Princess logo and Love Boat written on it. It was very touching. He then called my husband Captain of the love boat after that. Silly little things I know, but it made the trip very special for us.

We had two straight chairs, two reclining chairs with cushions and a table on our balcony. There were plenty of hangers, must have been 20-25 in the ample closet. We did hear the “beat’ from Club Fusion but it ended every night promptly at 1am. It did not disturb our sleep or annoy us. If you generally go to sleep early and/or need quiet this is not the cabin for you. We did feel substantially more vibration on the ship and especially in the aft section than on any other ship. As rolling and vibration, along with that lovely sound of the wake, lull me to sleep this wasn’t a problem either.

The dining room was very cold each evening. Our table was just off the lobby and smoke was drawn in constantly during our meal. If you are sensitive to smoke request a table further in to the dining room.

Have I totally put you to sleep? If you are not totally comatose by now and you have any specific questions, please feel free to ask.

Sharon

Elation 05/98
Paradise 04/99
Destiny 10/99
Inspiration 05/00
Enchantment of the Seas 10/00
Rhapsody of the Seas 03/01
Carnival Spirit 05/01
Grandeur of the Seas 11/01
Ocean Princess 04/02
Jubilee 09/02
Carnival Conquest 03/03
Serenade of the Seas 11/03
Rhapsody of the Seas 02/04-Daughter's Wedding

Caribbean Princess 06/04

<marquee>SUNSHINE DAYDREAM...GOIN' WHERE THE CLIMATE SUITS MY CLOTHES</marquee>

Holy detail, Batman. Great! We loved that salad bar too. Big salads everyday for lunch. I wish there was such a salad bar around home with that selection.

All the best!

Jay & Karen Turner
Mount Hope, Ontario

Westerdam 12/93
Statendam 10/95
Zenith 05/96
Westerdam 05/97
Norway 10/97
Westerdam 10/98
Sun Princess 10/99
Volendam 10/00
Volendam 10/01
Century 10/02
Zuiderdam 05/03
Caribbean Princess 05/04

[This message was edited by jturner901 on 06-14-04 at 06:26 AM.]

Glad you enjoyed your cruise. Was the port side the right side for a view of St Thomas and St Martin?

Thanks for the review!

Is E730 an aft cabin? We have B753 reserved for 11/13. I guess we are several decks above where you were, and will not hear Club Fusion.

Gloria

Grand Princess, Eastern, April 2001
Grand Princess, Western,April 2002
Regal to Hawaii, April 5-20, 2004
Caribbean Princess, Eastern, Nov 13-20, 2004

Great Review, Sharon. We so much enjoyed meeting you and Thom. We also had a fantastic time and I will be posting my review hopefully late this afternoon.

Livetotravel, we were on the port side which gave us a great view of St. Thomas; however, in St. Maarten our view was totally blocked by the Carnival Triumph ship.

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on Caribbean Princess June 5, 2004

Larry

FABULOUS REVIEW! Thanks very much. We are also at the Marriot Marina. What is the fee for the water taxi to the beach?

Caribbean Princess July 3 2004

livtotravel - Larry is correct in St. Thomas you'll view Charlotte Amalie and St. Maarten, assuming Triumph is there, will be all you see. Had a great time watching the Triumph passengers run for the ship when it blew it's horn though LOL.

Gloria - E730 is the last cabin on the port side on deck 8. You will not hear Club Fusion since Baja deck is deck 11.

stoneharborlady - The water taxi is $5 for a one day pass. If you go to the Ft. Lauderdale Visitors and Convention webpage there's a link for "free stuff", where there is a coupon you can print and if you stay 2 nights at participating hotels they'll give you a one day pass for free. We just hopped on and off all day long, it was great!

Sharon

Elation 05/98
Paradise 04/99
Destiny 10/99
Inspiration 05/00
Enchantment of the Seas 10/00
Rhapsody of the Seas 03/01
Carnival Spirit 05/01
Grandeur of the Seas 11/01
Ocean Princess 04/02
Jubilee 09/02
Carnival Conquest 03/03
Serenade of the Seas 11/03
Rhapsody of the Seas 02/04-Daughter's Wedding

Caribbean Princess 06/04

<marquee>SUNSHINE DAYDREAM...GOIN' WHERE THE CLIMATE SUITS MY CLOTHES</marquee>

Sharon

You are awesome. What a great review. I am sorry Mark and I didn't run into you more often. It was such a pleasure visiting with you and my husband always likes talking about baseball so it was great for him to be able to talk with your husband as well. Our experience was a great deal like yours....kinda funny actually. Boarding the ship was sooooooo easy. We arrived at 2:30 and we were onboard at 2:50. Completely amazing. We were in E205 on the ship right above the princess theater...so we experienced the beat of the shows a bit too. Except thank God it ended at 11:30. Our steward was amazing as well.... Jose was his name... WE had an entire zoo of towel animals..... I collected them each day and took a final picture of them on the last sail. Pretty cute. Never had a problem with finding a table for dinner. WE were always there at 6 or 6:30 and never had to wait. Most of the time we had a table for 4 since we met up with a fun couple from New Hampshire. We did the buffet thing the first night because "Mark" didn't want to change. :0) The lobster and crab were sooooooo good. The shells were already cracked and all you did was pull the meat out. WE stopped there twice in one night. The rest of the time we ate in the dining area. WEll.... I went to the last dining by myself can you guess why? Yep...."mark" didn't want to change. :0) It was still fun even though I was by myself. I just didn't want to miss the final love boat dessert. I got really hooked on them so hooked on them I had it almost every night along with what was actually on the menu. 2 desserts every night just at dinner. What a pig. Good thing I didn't know I could have had the love boat delivered to my room. Let's not forget the after dinner drinks in the pretty little shot glasses. I now own a complete set of 6. Those were yummy and that reminds me....We are still looking for the Mai tai recipe. I finally emailed princess for their recipe. I need to float around in our pool with one in hand. [img]http://messages.cruisecritic.com/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

Mark and I took a private daysail in ST. Thomas aboard the Alaunt sailboat with Captain Ron and his wife Sharon. WE sailed to St. John and saw the most amazing fish including sea turtles, stingrays, beracuda, and lots of others. We were served cocktails and the most incredible lunch. WE spent the day sailing and snorkling and made it back in plenty of time. Captain Ron and Sharon are very special and we would highly recommend them.

ST. Marteen.... we hit Orient Beach. Mark did the jet ski thing and had a ball. I people watched and had a ball. We only saw a couple of naked bottoms,which actually shouldn't have been naked, but for the most part everyone else had their clothes on. Never saw Larry. WEll at least I hope he wasn't one of the naked men we saw from behind. [img]http://messages.cruisecritic.com/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]
WE shopped for about an hour and I bought a new digital camera and a handpainted bottle of rum and two koozies. Thats it.

Sharon... I am like you. Didn't really care for the Cays that much. We weren't too impressed. Mark played volleyball and I people watched and picked up a few seashells but for the most part we were only there about 2 hours and went back to the boat and laid out by the Spa Pool. A nice place to just relax.

We didn't go to the princess theater except to see Surge. He was hilarious. We saw him, the magician and the other comedian I think his name was Scott. They were soooo funny.

WE loved the Movie under the stars. WE made reservations for the first movie. Starsky and Hutch and then tried to for Calender girls and it was booked. We, too, went anyway....and they had plenty of empty chairs for us. Very neat being under the stars watching the movie.

WE absolutely loved Deep Blue the band. Very good. Princess Idol was good most of the time but still had the few folks that always think they can sing. (not so much)

Mark worked out in the Spa. He loved the facility. I attended Line dancing class. Saw Larry once.... he got busted for trying to sneak out and was made to stay. [img]http://messages.cruisecritic.com/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img] After that class I never saw him again. [img]http://messages.cruisecritic.com/infopop/emoticons/icon_frown.gif[/img]

Mark and I both booked a massage. It was very relaxing. I loved the chairs you were seated in afterward. Very comfortable. Then I found the shower. The big shower. Never again did I take a shower in our room. Just took a few things to the spa and showered there. More room and could take my time and not worry about steaming up the entire cabin. Very nice.

WE took tons of pictures with our own camera and with the professionals onboard. Since Mark was dressed up a few times...... I took lots of pictures and he was thrilled. But hey... he cleans up nice and I wanted it documented. It's not very often that I get to see him in anything but Adidas attire. He's pretty handsome in that stuff but when you get him dressed up.... wow!!!

The day we left was so easy. WEll getting off the ship was easy. We had orginally booked our flight for 5:30 but as soon as we docked we called Delta and booked an earlier flight out. Mark told the bursers office and got us right off. It cost us 25.00 bucks with Delta but it beats sitting in Ft. Lauderdale airport forever. Wow......what a mess that was. We had to show our Ids to get in the airport, to stand in line and then to stand in line again, to yet stand in line again and then again to walk through the gate....yadee yadee blah blah blah....... That was a little crazy. Lot's of disgruntled passengers. Kinda little hectic.

Finally we made it home. Had to fly to orlanda then to dallas then into oklahoma. Round about way to get home but we did it. We miss the CP and would love be there now. How bout you guys?

It's official, I am addicted to these posts, my dh, keeps asking me, who are you writing to now?? Loved the review, it was wonderfully written. We are in cabin E729, does that have a great big balcony too. Did anyone check out the kids programs??? Thanks so much for the time you took to write the review, it is very much appriceated, 10/09/04 here we come sheila

Teach, we just got back too, and my kids (15 and 17) loved the teen center. They made a ton of friends and we hardly ever saw them. The kids staffers are very good.

Kim
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Caribbean Princess - June 5, 2004

WOW! You guys are big on the details. Great reviews. DW and I are still debating what to do on St. Maarten and St. Thomas, so your reviews were appreciated.

If any of you happened to save your Patters, Menus, Kids' Patters, or any misc. papers that might be of interest, I would LOVe to add the to my site.

The link is below, and thanks in advance.

Again, GREAT reviews.

JON

[url="http://www.geocities.com/pattersandmenus"]www.geocities.com/pattersandmenus[/url]

Golden Princess Southern Caribbean-7/11/04
[url="http://messages.cruisecritic.com/2/OpenTopic?a=tpc&s=927093444&f=4763056957&m=4253085267"]Click to go to the ROLL CALL![/url]

Big Red Boat-1993
Celebrity Zenith-1993

Awesome review, loved the detail! [img]http://messages.cruisecritic.com/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

Thanks for sharing!

Thanks for the long reviews very informative!

John

Millenium 11/03
Caribbean Princess [img]http://escati.linkopp.net/cgi-bin/countdown.cgi?trgb=000000&srgb=00ff00&prgb=191970&cdt=2004;7;17;17;0;00&timezone=GMT-0500[/img]

Great review, thank you for all the good tips

A bad day at sea is better than a good day at work
27 cruises since 1964 -Proud member of O.A.T.C.

Queen Mary 2 Maiden Caribbean Voyage 1/31/2004
Zuiderdam 3/27/2004
Caribbean Princess 8/28/04

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Carnival Miracle from Tampa 11/7/04
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Thank you soo much for the reviews! Whenever I read good ones, I print them out and save them until it gets closer to my cruise so then I have this huge 'book' of cruise reviews full of great tips and good stories...always gets the group pretty excited [img]http://messages.cruisecritic.com/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

By the way, that was a really smart idea about the whole speakerphone thing!

Days till Caribbean Princess 12/4/04
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Hi debs, I'd love the Mai Tai recipe, I was addicted to the large ones every afternoon. I even commented to a workmate today that it was time for my Mai Tai!!!

teach - bad news E729 doesn't have the bigger balcony...good news it's on the opposite side of the ship so you shouldn't be bothered by Club Fusion noise. E730 is directly above the stage [img]http://messages.cruisecritic.com/infopop/emoticons/icon_eek.gif[/img].

mandie-such a great idea to print out the reviews to consolidate all the tips. Reading reviews is how I usually decide what to do in port.

Glad everyone is enjoying our reviews as much as we enjoyed experiencing it!

Sharon

Elation 05/98
Paradise 04/99
Destiny 10/99
Inspiration 05/00
Enchantment of the Seas 10/00
Rhapsody of the Seas 03/01
Carnival Spirit 05/01
Grandeur of the Seas 11/01
Ocean Princess 04/02
Jubilee 09/02
Carnival Conquest 03/03
Serenade of the Seas 11/03
Rhapsody of the Seas 02/04-Daughter's Wedding

Caribbean Princess 06/04

<marquee>SUNSHINE DAYDREAM...GOIN' WHERE THE CLIMATE SUITS MY CLOTHES</marquee>

Sharon;

Do you know the website for the FLL visitor's site as I'd like to get the free Water taxi coupon. We will be in FLL in August and can't wait.
Thanks.

Lisa

If you are sailing on the Caribbean Princess August 21, come post on the following roll call thread:
[url="http://messages.cruisecritic.com/2/OpenTopic?a=tpc&s=927093444&f=4763056957&m=108109851&r=296106412#296106412"]http://messages.cruisecritic.com/2/OpenTopic?a=tpc&s=927093444&f=4763056957&m=108109851&r=296106412#296106412[/url]

Caribbean Princess 08/21/2004
Dawn Princess Repositioning Pacific Coastal Cruise 05/07/2004
Carnival Ecstasy January 2004
Carnival Ecstasy April 2003
Star Princess (Mexican Riviera) Christmas 2002
Royal Caribbean January 2000
NCL Windstar(Alaska) August 1995

Was the lobster and crab the first night in the Cafe' Caribe? Also, does anyone have the menus (I use that term loosely) for all nights in the Cafe' Caribe.

I've read they have different items each night and was wondering if I could find out ahead of time so I can make the right choice between the dining room and the Cafe' Caribe.

I love seafood!!!! [img]http://messages.cruisecritic.com/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

Go Miami Hurricanes! Good luck in Omaha!!!

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9/25/04 Caribbean Princess

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12/5/04 Radiance of the Seas

Costa Allegra 94, Costa Victoria 96, Horizon 99, Splendor of the Seas 99, Norweigan Star 02

Lisa here you go, actually the whole site is pretty good for info

[url="http://www.sunny.org/offers/index.cfm?action=ride"]Water Taxi Coupon[/url]

Also, here's the schedule/routes:

[url="http://watertaxi.com/FortLauderdale/FLLHome.Asp"]Water Taxi Website[/url]

Gaynors - I know they had lobster and crab on the formal nights and I believe they did have it the first night. When you board wander back to Caribe and ask one of the waiters, they should be able to guide you.

Sharon

Elation 05/98
Paradise 04/99
Destiny 10/99
Inspiration 05/00
Enchantment of the Seas 10/00
Rhapsody of the Seas 03/01
Carnival Spirit 05/01
Grandeur of the Seas 11/01
Ocean Princess 04/02
Jubilee 09/02
Carnival Conquest 03/03
Serenade of the Seas 11/03
Rhapsody of the Seas 02/04-Daughter's Wedding

Caribbean Princess 06/04

<marquee>SUNSHINE DAYDREAM...GOIN' WHERE THE CLIMATE SUITS MY CLOTHES</marquee>

We always asked the Caribe Cafe manager in the morning ( he stands between Horizon and Caribe in a suit overseeing things, can't miss him) what was for dinner up there so we could decide. We ate there on the 2nd formal night because they had lobster, crab legs, shrimp, etc. etc. On the other nights we did PC in the Coral or Palm. We never had to wait on a table the whole week.

Kim
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Caribbean Princess - June 5, 2004

Thanks for the tips on the seafood...

I know where I'll be... Yum...Yum...

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9/25/04 Caribbean Princess

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12/5/04 Radiance of the Seas

Costa Allegra 94, Costa Victoria 96, Horizon 99, Splendor of the Seas 99, Norweigan Star 02

when you ate in Cafe Caribe on the 2nd formal night was anybody dressed formally?

Bill

[img]http://home.comcast.net/~w.coleman43/1a.jpg[/img]


[url="http://home.comcast.net/~w.coleman43"]Caribbean Princess Eastern Caribbean cruise page[/url]

I walked through the Cafe Caribe on both formal nights and the dress was anything between smart casual and shorts and t-shirts. I beleive this restaraunt was designed to be an alternative to having to dress formally on formal nights!

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on Caribbean Princess June 5, 2004

Larry

Thank you for your very thorough review. We always stay at the Marriott Marina hotel and love it, and the convenience of the water taxi. We tried 15th Street Fisheries for dinner this past January and thought it was fabulous!

I just have one question...why were you so deadset on taking the ferry from Charlotte Amalie? It is much quicker and less expensive taking it from Red Hook. We always take it back to Charlotte Amalie when we return from St. John to make it more convenient to be dropped right off by the shopping. But going over to St. John we always take it from Red Hook. Just wondered....

[email="caribbeanqueen3@comcast.net"]caribbeanqueen3@comcast.net[/email]

Great review, hopefully someday I'll cruise on the Caribbean Princess, even though I am enamored with the Golden. Anyway, you did not mention anything about the entertainment. How were the shows? How was the cruise director Graham?

*Alicia*

Golden Princess 4/10/04
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