Grand Princess

Grand Princess was the largest and most expensive passenger ship ever built when Fincantieri delivered her from Monfalcone in 1998, at 107,517 tons and around $450 million. She was also, at 118 feet across, too wide for the original Panama Canal locks, a deliberate decision at the time and a fairly startling one. She is now approaching thirty, the Royal and Sphere classes have followed her, and the honest question about her is not what she was but what she is like today.

What the years have done

She has been rebuilt more than most. The famous detail is the spoiler, the handle-shaped Skywalkers nightclub cantilevered off the stern, which was the ship’s signature for thirteen years and was cut off in the May 2011 drydock, the most extensive in Princess’s history. It went because it made her sit bow-high and cost fuel; taking it off improved economy by three to four percent. Aesthetically it was a loss. Practically it was right.

The same program retrofitted the two things that make her feel like a modern Princess ship rather than a 1990s one: the Piazza, which turned a dead three-deck atrium into the social center of the ship, and The Sanctuary, the adults-only sun deck aft. Later work added the Crown Grill steakhouse. She went back into dry dock at the Vigor yard in Portland, Oregon for a fortnight in April and May of 2025, hull cleaning, classification and safety survey, engine work, and a refresh of stateroom bedding and the Horizon Court buffet. The most useful part of that program was the least glamorous: automatic doors and ramps added to public venues to make an old ship easier to move around.

What no refit fixes is the bones. The cabins are 1998 cabins: smaller than current standard, with less storage and fewer sockets, and the balconies on the lower categories are tiered so the deck above sees straight down into yours. Corridors are narrower than you will remember from a newer ship. There is no LNG, no medallion-era slickness on every deck, and the whole vessel is quieter and more conventional than the marketing for the new Sphere-class ships. None of that is a defect. It is simply a ship built to a different specification, kept in good order.

Where she goes

Two seasons, and they are both good ones.

Northern summers she runs Alaska out of Vancouver on the Voyage of the Glaciers: seven nights one way between Vancouver and Whittier, or fourteen and fifteen nights as a round trip. That itinerary is Princess’s best product and it is glacier-facing rather than ship-facing, which suits an older hull perfectly: you are outside on deck looking at ice.

From October she crosses to Australia and works out of Sydney and Brisbane through the southern summer, short getaways of a few nights, New Zealand runs of a fortnight, and full circumnavigations of Australia that call at Melbourne, Adelaide and Fremantle rather than starting there. Between the two hemispheres she sells a 79-night Circle Pacific, better than 23,000 nautical miles by way of the South Pacific, Hawaii, Japan and Alaska, crossing the equator and the date line twice. It is far and away the longest itinerary on this site.

Who she suits

People booking the itinerary rather than the ship, which, for Alaska and for a month around Australia, is the right way around. She is also usually the cheapest way onto those routes, and the age of the hull is exactly why. Repeat Princess passengers who find the newest ships overbuilt tend to like her. So do people who want traditional dining, a promenade deck you can walk all the way around, and a theater rather than an aerial-acrobatics venue.

She does not suit anyone whose vacation is decided by the cabin or the waterslide. If you have sailed Sun Princess and expect the same fittings you will notice every one of the twenty-eight years. Families with young children will find less for them here than on almost any newer ship. Book her for Glacier Bay and for a month working around Australia; do not book her expecting a new ship at an old price.