Sky Princess

Sky Princess was handed over by Fincantieri at Monfalcone in October 2019 and named at Fort Lauderdale that December, which made her the last large Princess ship to enter service before the industry stopped for two years. She is the fourth of six Royal-class hulls, and the one where Princess quietly took a signature feature off the ship.

What the fourth hull changed

The Royal class began with Royal Princess in 2013 and runs through Regal, Majestic, Sky, Enchanted and Discovery. All six are the same 1,083-foot hull with the same three-deck Piazza at the middle of it, so the differences between them are a matter of what was built into the top decks and what has been swapped out since.

The visible one here is the SeaWalk. Royal, Regal and Majestic carry a glass-floored walkway cantilevered out over the side of the ship, and it is the thing people photograph. Sky does not have one. The space went instead to two Sky Suites, top-deck cabins with balconies that Princess claims are the largest at sea, wrapped around the corner of the superstructure with a view forward. Whether that is a gain depends entirely on whether you booked one.

She also carries Take Five, a small room given over to live jazz, a real programming choice rather than a rebranded lounge, and the sort of venue that tends to disappear from a ship the moment the accountants look at seat counts. Dining is three main rooms (Estrella, Cielo and Soleil) plus Sabatini’s, Crown Grill, Alfredo’s, and The Catch by Rudi, which took over the space occupied at delivery by Bistro Sur La Mer.

The 2023 drydock at Damen Verolme in Rotterdam was mostly technical: hull cleaning and painting, class survey, staterooms and public rooms refreshed, and an air lubrication system fitted, which blows a carpet of bubbles under the hull to cut friction. It is invisible from a passenger deck and it is the most consequential thing done to her since delivery.

Where she actually sails

Southampton, mainly. The large majority of her program on this site sails from there, which makes her one of Princess’s no-fly ships for the British market: Norway, the Baltic, the British Isles and the Mediterranean on runs that are usually a fortnight, with a handful of grand voyages stretching past six weeks.

In winter she crosses to Florida and works the Caribbean out of Fort Lauderdale and Port Canaveral on shorter itineraries. The median sailing across the whole program is fourteen nights, which is a long median, and it tells you what kind of passenger the ship is being sold to.

Who she suits

People who want a big, current, comfortable ship without the theme-park apparatus; there is no waterslide complex, no go-kart track, no ropes course. The Royal-class Piazza is the best atrium Princess has built, the Sanctuary is a genuinely quiet adults-only deck, and a two-week itinerary gives you time to use both.

She suits the Southampton market particularly well because you can drive to her.

She does not suit anyone chasing the newest thing: Sun Princess and Star Princess are larger, newer, LNG-powered, and organized around rooms this class does not have. She is also a lot of ship for a four-night sailing, and there are a few of those in the Florida season; the vessel will be the point, not the ports. And if you were coming for the SeaWalk, book Regal or Majestic instead.