Hello there msjamesbond007 and =welcome
ABOARD!!! Sure hope you stick around and post often!
I have cruised on both the Diamond and the Island Princess. While I enjoyed my Island Princess cruise I much preferred my 2 cruises on the Diamond! That ship just seems to have a wonderful and inexplicable ambiance to it that I like very much.
We did enjoy the Island, which is somewhat smaller (but still far from being small).
I guess our biggest complaints with her were:
1. The food....it was okay but there were a couple of dishes that were really bad and nothing terribly memorable at all on the 9 day cruise. This of course is very subjective and since chefs and waiters change all the time it might be quite different if we sailed on her today.
2. The smoking....particularly on the Promenade deck. There is a smoking room (Churchill Lounge) right off of Crooner's Bar. The smell of smoke emanted out of this Lounge all day, every day and was very noticable from the Princess Theater aft to Sabatini's Restaurant ( where the smell of garlic took over :grin)
3. The staff on our cruise seemed to be a very tired and unhappy lot
! They had just returned from a series of Hawaii cruises and maybe they just preferred Hawaii to Alaska. Who could blame them? :grin
What we did really like:
1. The decor and layout of the ship. She is quite beautiful.
2. Our cabin...a mini suite on Dolphin Deck
3. The location of our mini suite....Aft. While we had our own lovely balcony we would often slip to the large quiet balcony that is at the aft of Dolphin Deck (no aft cabins on this ship), It was a wonderful vantage point for viewing our arrival and departure from San Francisco. We were almost always the only ones there!
While I haven't cruised as long as 18 days I'm pretty sure you will love it :grin ! There is nothing like hitting day 8 and saying to yourself, "If we were on a 7 night cruise we would be getting off today!" You will be able to double that pleasure come day 15!!
Have fun planning your cruise!
