Princess cruises

Princess cruises are a subsidiary of one of the oldest players in the cruise ship game, P&O ferries, but they are currently owned by Carnival. The began when the entrepreneur Stanley McDonald had the wise idea to use an Alaskan cruiser, usually not used in the Winter months, in the summer months on a cruise from Los Angeles down to the Mexican Riviera. After noting how badly suited that Alaskan cruiser was for the tropical climate of Mexico, and with that ship lacking air-conditioning, Princess cruises ordered a purpose built ship. The resulting ship, the Italia, embodied many changes that would make the modern cruise ship what it is today: for example lifeboats mounted lower on the ship and engines shoved far to the back end of the boat.

These changes to the ship design allowed for much more space, both above deck with no lifeboats cluttering up deckspace, and below deck with more room for bigger cabins etc. That has all changed now with Princess cruises operated 17 or so ships around the world. Rather than just visiting Alaska, Los Angeles, and Mexico, the 17 ships now go to up to 350 ports on a huge variety of itineraries where the trip that you decide to take after weigh up the options could last anywhere between seven days to 107 days. Of course, it's entirely up to you how many days you want to be on the boat but it is of course smart to go for a little longer than a week in order to make the most of the amount of time that you spend travelling to the port, and the amount of time that it takes for you to become familiar with the ship and its habits.

While Princess cruises were born in the Sixties, they are a thoroughly modern brand these days with half of their ships launched in this very young new century and millennia. Princess cruises have many expansion plans and you'll have to watch this space to see what plans they have for expansion of on board activities. They have after all already proved incredible at being able to personalize every passenger's cruise to a degree that's likely enviable to their competitors. They also take a lot of effort to ensure that as many as possible of their cabins have balconies, which is of course exactly what their passengers want, and it's want will keep them coming back again and again.