The Emerald Princess

Name: Emerald Princess
* Line: Princess Cruises
* Built: 2006-2007
* Passengers: 3070
* Crew: 1200
* Weight: 113,000 gross tons
* Length: 952 feet

The Emerald Princess was a fine ship. Like most cruise ships these days, it's massive. You really can't appreciate how big these behemoths are until you're standing beside it.

Like most cruise ships its size it has all the amenities of a floating resort:
* Pool
* 3 dining rooms, 2 specialty restaurants and 2 buffets
* Multiple bars/lounges
* Virtual golf and mini golf
* Exercise facilities and spas
* Theatre (for movies and live shows)
* Casino
* Internet access
* Much more...

The food was good, but not spectacular. Dining room cuisine was on par with an above average banquet meal. The buffets are open almost 24 hours and are adequate. As for specialty restaurants, we only went to Sabatini's (Italian cuisine) and it was actually quite good. You have to pay a $20 per person cover charge but it was worth it.

Internet access was painfully slow and expensive. We didn't want to sign up to one of the available packages because we only occasionally used the Internet to check emails. The pay-as-you-go plan was 75 cents a minute, which adds up quickly when you are waiting for pages to load.

The service was good. Staff were friendly but sometimes seemed overwhelmed by the amount of passengers (especially in the dining room and buffets).

The layout of the public areas on the ship seemed slightly off to us. I'm not sure what it was exactly but it seemed that some areas required you to go down a level then up again from a different area of the ship to access the same floor. This left us feeling a little disoriented sometimes and scratching our heads to figure out how to get to a specific area. Not a big deal but we don't seem to recall the same experience on the Radiance of the Seas from Royal Caribbean.

Please feel free to leave comments and helpful suggestions for other travelers.

Back to Mediterranean Cruise Guide.

Other resources:
* Emerald Princess on Wikipedia