May 10, 2014 - Embarkation

We all woke up around 10AM and started getting ready. Rachel and I had gotten a lot of sleep (which maybe made up for my lack of sleep the night before?) since we slept well in the car. All I can say is THANK GOODNESS we did not do anything ridiculous and try to cram five adults into one stateroom, because that would have been absolutely miserable. It is quite a challenge for five adults to share one bathroom (sure, maybe the split bath on the Disney ship would have helped, but it still would have been uncomfortably tight quarters).

We weren't ready to go until after noon. Now, I had scheduled Max, Rachel, and myself for a Port Arrival Time of 12:15 PM. However, by the time I told my dad to schedule his, the soonest available was 1:00 PM. So we figured that 1:00 PM for all of us wouldn't be a problem.

But before we could board the cruise ship, we needed to make a run to the liquor store. I had read in Disney's FAQs that you can take on alcohol in a carry-on size bag if you are 21 and older, which is unheard of on all other mass-market cruise lines (most now allow you to bring one bottle of wine or champagne per adult). I have no idea how many times my dad or Max asked, "So are you sure we can bring on alcohol?" YES! Yes, I'm sure!!! *Update: DCL has since revised its alcohol policy.

Rachel asked Siri (on the iPhone) for the nearest liquor store.... and she took us to an Aldi Market. Which didn't sell alcohol. So we moved on... and luckily found a liquor store right past the port. We bought some vodka and rum for mixers and headed on to the port.

This is my personal reflection on decisions that I am happy I made and things that I wish I had done differently on my March 15, 2014 sailing on the Carnival Breeze 8-Day Southern Caribbean cruise out of Miami.  Please note that these are my own opinions, and I am in no way affiliated with any cruise line.  I also understand that every person on each ship sailing has a completely different experience, as well as values for what makes a good cruise vacation.

Glad I Did / Glad I Did Not

I'm glad that I did not buy Faster to the Fun.  Faster to the Fun is a package that Carnival sells for $50 per cabin.  You can purchase it online where you buy excursions, and note that although it is listed as $50 per person, only one person per cabin needs to purchase in order to get everyone in your cabin the benefits.  Benefits include priority check-in and express boarding on embarkation day (after VIFP Club Platinum & Diamond members), stateroom ready as soon as you board, express luggage to your room on embarkation day, express guest services (dedicated phone number and line), priority main dining room and specialty dining reservations, tender priority (at tender ports), debarkation priority.  There is limited FTTF availability, and we didn't book the cruise soon enough to be able to purchase the package.  However, I saw little benefit for our cruise.  It actually turned out that priority boarding was delayed for our cruise, and I heard reports from other people that the standard line was actually moving quicker.  None of our ports were tender ports, so there was no advantage there.  We didn't eat at a specialty restaurant (but they sent me an invitation to my room for Fahrenheit 555 with a reservation, anyway).  And our assigned debarkation time was fine for us.  If we wanted to leave later, we could have just left later.  Faster to the Fun just isn't something that I think we needed or would have really benefited from for this sailing.

For Christmas 2012, we sailed the Panama Canal on the Island Princess.  When booking this cruise, we chose to chance our luck and booked guarantee (GTY) staterooms.  This means that we booked a GTY stateroom for the lowest category cabin we wanted sail in - in our case, this was an ocean view cabin.  Because we booked guarantee, we didn't get to choose the location of our stateroom, but allowed the cruise line to assign our cabin for us.  By doing this, we saved a little bit of money on our stateroom and were guaranteed to be in at least the category that we booked, and we'd be upgraded if there was availability in a higher level.

Hello, everyone!

I'm Victoria. I'm a junior architecture major, travel and tourism minor at Clemson University. I recently got back from my first Princess cruise on the Island Princess. I've now completed two photo reviews on past Royal Caribbean cruises and wanted to continue the tradition here on the Princess board!

I'll go ahead and warn you - my reviews are very pictorial. I rarely write long posts with no photos. I often rely on photographs to tell my story. So if you're hoping for a long, written review, this probably isn't for you. I also take the course of several days, sometimes weeks, to write my reviews, so if you'd like to follow along, go ahead and subscribe! However, I am moving to Italy for the semester January 6th, so I'm going to try my hardest to finish it by then. If for some (perhaps probable) reason that I do not finish by that time, then my review is probably going to be more drawn out than I wish.

Perhaps you'll find this helpful if you're considering a Panama Canal cruise, are a somewhat loyal Royal who's thinking of trying Princess, or are just need of a good cruise fix. I look forward to sharing my cruise with all of you!

All aboard!!!


I chose this cruise because of the itinerary. I really wanted to go through the Panama Canal, and Princess's roundtrip partial transit seemed like a great way to do it. I was excited to try a new cruiseline and entered with an open mind.