Coral Princess

Coral Princess was designed around a hole in the ground in Central America. Chantiers de l’Atlantique delivered her in December 2002, and her hull is 106 feet across at the beam because the original Panama Canal locks are 110 feet wide. She and her sister Island Princess are the only two ships in the Princess fleet that fit. Mireya Moscoso, then President of Panama, christened her.

What Panamax cost and bought

The constraint is unforgiving. Every other Princess ship is at least 118 feet across; the Grand class simply cannot enter the original locks, and neither can anything larger. To stay under the limit, the naval architects made Coral narrow and long, nearly a thousand feet of ship on a beam a Royal-class hull exceeds by twenty feet, and accepted a smaller, more vertical vessel than the tonnage would suggest. At 91,627 tons she carries 2,000 guests; Ruby Princess, a quarter larger, carries half again as many.

What that buys is access. She can make a full transit of the canal: in one lock chamber at Gatún, up through the Culebra Cut, down at Miraflores, and out the other ocean. Since the Neopanamax locks opened in 2016 larger ships can cross too, but they cross through the new chambers, which is a different and less intimate thing. In the old locks the chamber wall is a few feet from the rail and the ship is pulled through by electric mules on a cog railway. That is what people come for, and it is the reason both these ships still exist in a fleet that has otherwise moved on to hulls three times the tonnage.

The turbine in the funnel

The Coral class was among the first cruise ships built around a combined diesel and gas-turbine plant. Two Wärtsilä diesel alternators sit low in the hull; a General Electric LM2500 gas turbine, of the type used in warships, sits high up in the funnel casing, where the exhaust ducting is short. Together they feed two 20,000 kW electric motors driving fixed-pitch propellers. The two cylinders standing on top of her funnel are a design flourish advertising the arrangement; Island Princess had hers taken off in 2015, so the funnel is the quickest way to tell the sisters apart from a pier.

Inside, she has a room her sister no longer does: the Universe Lounge, a multi-purpose theater with three revolving stages, which on Island Princess was demolished to make room for cabins. She also keeps four pools and a putting course on the top deck, and Bayou Cafe, a New Orleans-themed steakhouse that the Coral-class pair kept while the rest of the fleet moved to Crown Grill.

Where she actually sails

She has the most scattered program of any ship on this site. In the northern summer she is in Alaska, working out of Vancouver. In fall and winter she moves to the Panama Canal and the Caribbean out of Fort Lauderdale and Los Angeles. And she carries the long-haul voyages: sailings from Singapore, the South Pacific, and a world cruise that runs to 129 nights, which is the longest single itinerary offered here by a wide margin. The median booking is eighteen nights.

Who she suits

People buying a route. If the canal is the trip, this is one of two ships that can do it properly, and the second-best reason to sail her, the world cruise, is the same argument at greater length. Her size is an asset in Alaska too, where smaller ships get better berths.

She rewards passengers who like sea days and can entertain themselves. Two main dining rooms, one buffet, one theater, one second lounge, a casino, a library. That is the whole ship.

She is wrong for families looking for a big kids’ program, wrong for anyone who wants a new cabin, and wrong for anyone who has sailed Sun Princess and expects the same fittings. She is a 2002 ship without a major rebuild behind her, and it shows in the bathrooms and the corridors. Book her for where she goes.