Caribbean Princess

Caribbean Princess is a Grand-class ship with a deck added. Fincantieri delivered her at Monfalcone in 2004, six years after Grand Princess set the pattern, and the change was straightforward: an additional level of accommodation known as the Riviera deck, which pushed her tonnage past her sisters and gave her the largest guest capacity in the Princess fleet, a title she held for nine years, until Royal Princess arrived in 2013.

Built for one ocean

The name was not marketing. She was designed for year-round Caribbean service, and Princess acted on that: unlike her Grand-class sisters, she was built without the sliding glass roof over the main pool. Why pay to carry a retractable roof around a sea that does not need one.

Twenty-two years later she spends her summers in Northern Europe. That is the single most useful thing to know about this ship. On a Baltic sailing in May, or off the Norwegian coast, the covered pool that Grand Princess and Crown Princess can close over is simply not there, and her top deck is an outdoor deck in whatever weather the day produces. It is a good ship badly matched to half of her own calendar, and no refit is going to fix it.

She did keep the thing Grand Princess lost. The Skywalkers nightclub (the handle-shaped structure cantilevered off the stern, high above the wake) is still on her, decks eighteen and nineteen. Princess cut Grand Princess’s off in 2011 for fuel economy. Whatever the accountants thought of it, it remains the best-sited room on this ship and one of the odder pieces of architecture at sea.

What the refits added

Three yard visits matter. A refit in spring 2017 spent a reported $8.2 million adding seven eating and drinking concepts (among them Crab Shack, Planks BBQ and the Good Spirits at Sea bar program) rebuilt the youth center as Camp Discovery, and cut eighty-seven connecting doors between staterooms, which is a family-market decision made in steel.

In 2019 she got the fleet’s first Reef Splash Zone, an interactive water playground and splash pool up on deck seventeen. She went back into drydock in 2024 for carpet, upholstery and technical systems, housekeeping rather than reinvention. She was also an early MedallionClass ship, following Regal Princess in the first wave in early 2018, so the wearable and the app work here as they do on the newer hulls.

What no refit touched is the 2004 specification underneath. The cabins are of their period (smaller than current standard, with tiered balconies low down that the deck above looks straight into), and only about fifty-six percent of staterooms have a balcony at all, against roughly eighty percent on the Royal class. On a fourteen-night itinerary that ratio is worth thinking about before you book an inside cabin.

Where she sails

Split roughly in half, with the larger share now in Europe.

Northern summers she works from Copenhagen and Southampton on Baltic, Norway and British Isles itineraries. Northern winters she is back where she was named for, running from Fort Lauderdale and Port Canaveral on eastern, western and southern Caribbean sailings, with a substantial block of Panama Canal transits and a few Canada and New England runs around the repositioning. Her sailings run seven to forty-nine nights, median fourteen, a longer average than most ships of her age and size sell, because the crossings and the Canal itineraries pull it up.

Who she suits

People buying the itinerary. Two weeks through the Panama Canal, or a Baltic loop with a real number of ports, on a ship that costs meaningfully less than a new one; that is the trade she offers and for a lot of travelers it is the right one. She suits families reasonably well for a ship of her age, thanks to the 2017 and 2019 work. She suits anyone who wants traditional Princess: a proper theater, the Piazza, Skywalkers at night, and no attempt at a theme park.

She does not suit anyone who will be unhappy in a 2004 cabin, and she really does not suit anyone booking a Northern European summer for the sun deck; bring a jacket and plan on indoor days, because there is no roof to close. She has also had norovirus outbreaks, including one in January 2014 that affected around two hundred people and another reported in May 2026 that affected about five percent of those on board; that is a hazard of any large ship but it is on her record more than once.