Princess Plusses

The last time I dissed Princess - today I praise them.

Once we stepped on board the Crown Princess it felt like all our troubles (and especially those involving getting to the ship) we lifted off our backs.

I cannot remember the last time I felt as relaxed as at the sailway party. We watched the ship begin to pull away from shore from our balcony, then headed up to the outdoor promenade deck to join hundreds of others as we sailed past Battery Park, the Statue of Liberty and under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge (barely). A band played Calypso songs, a little Jimmy Buffett and a host of other tunes to get people dancing and in the mood to escape...completely, as the cruise line says.

We stood there enjoying the ocean breeze and watching people hang up and turn off their cell phones as we sailed out of range. It was a pleasure to turn off the electronic anchor - I am one of those people who believes you can be too easy to reach.

The Crown Princess is a beautiful ship but huge beyond belief. At the time of our sailing we were told the ship was the fifth largest cruise ship in the world. It stretches 951 feet long and 118 feet wide, with room for more than 3,000 passengers and over 1,000 crew members in its 19 decks.

Wood panelling and polished brass are everywhere, and the town centre of this floating community is the three-deck 'piazza,' an open area for sitting with a glass of wine or a cup of coffee and dessert while listening to a string quartet or watching jugglers, acrobats or a food carving competition between the ship's chefs. Surrounding the piazza are a coffee bar, wine and sushi bar, lounges, a casino, duty free shops and some of the dining rooms.

We chose this particular cruise for the itinerary (NYC up to Halifax and back down the coast to NY). As we got closer to sailing day we became more comfortable with the idea of a big ship. We like most people but we also liked the idea we could be anonymous if we wanted. And we also felt that the bigger the ship, the more there was to do and the Crown Princess never let us down.

One of the main attractions to a cruise for a lot of people is fine dining, and the food is every bit as good as you may have heard. The Crown Princess offers three dining rooms, one with traditional cruise dining each night, where you sit at the same table at the same time with the same people. We chose Anytime Dining, where you come down when you're hungry and you can sit with others or by yourselves. The menu changes each night but the choices are identical in all three.

Including the dining rooms, the Crown Princess has 10 places to go if your feeling peckish. These range from two alternative restaurants (a steak-and-seafood grill and an Italian trattoria, somehow offering you more food and better service at a surcharge) to two buffets, a pizza and ice cream bar and a hamburger and hotdog grill.

Room service is there for you around the clock and Princess also features what they call Ultimate Balcony Dining (for a surcharge). For dinner you will get steak and/or lobster, soup, salad, appetizers, dessert, cocktails and a bottle of wine. Each course is delivered one-at-a-time by a waiter and a ship photographer will drop in to take a shot to remember the evening by. We opted for the ultimate balcony breakfast, with a half-bottle of champagne and enough pastries, hot dishes and fresh fruit to feed Luxembourg.

Ironically, neither of us gained any weight on board. It seemed like the only time we sat down was when we were eating. We walked and walked and walked around each of our ports of call and in the evenings we danced, played miniature golf or strolling the outdoor promenade. Even when we weren't doing anything 'physical,' we were burning calories walking from the wine tasting in one end of the ship to the theatre in the other end and, after that, going back to the top deck to watch a film or concert at "Movies Under the Stars" a 300-square-foot outdoor movie screen. And if you can make sure you use the stairs instead of the elevators wherever practical you can burn off yesterday's dessert.

There are those frequent cruise vacationers who say you lose the intimacy of a small ship on a giant vessel like the Crown Princess. For us, we enjoyed being in a big enough shipe where we could be anonymous if we wanted to but where there was no shortage of things for each of us to do from sunrise until way past sunset...

In closing, despite the way they botched our trip to the ship, we'll be sailing again next January on our first-ever winter vacation. It just happens that the Crown had the itinerary we wanted so it'll be like visiting an old friend again.