Sun Princess: The First Ship Designed Around Being Noticed

Choosing among them

The count matters more than the categories: 2,157 staterooms is the most Princess has ever put on one hull, and the Medallion is what keeps that number from feeling like a corridor of strangers — your door releases as you reach it, and anything orderable can be sent to wherever you and your key-shaped disc happen to be standing.

Our standing advice on this ship: pick your cabin by position rather than by prestige. On a vessel this long, living three decks from the Piazza and living half a ship from it are genuinely different holidays.

The suite question, reframed

Here is the quiet radicalism Princess sells: the premium feeling is not locked behind suite doors. Plus and Premier are buyable from any stateroom — the interior guest's drink arrives at the deck chair exactly as fast as the suite guest's, which is the whole un-rationing argument of the brand in one sentence.

So spend up for space and quiet if space and quiet are what you want — but if what you're really buying is being looked after, on this ship that comes off a package price, not a cabin category.

The eating

Scale bought range: more places to eat than on any earlier Princess ship, from the multi-room main dining down to the casual venues that Plus's two included meals seem tailor-made for, with Premier removing the specialty-dining meter altogether.

OceanNow is the sleeper amenity here. On 177,882 gross tons the nearest venue can be a genuine walk; ordering food and drink to wherever you already are is what turns her size from a tax into a luxury.

The evenings

When the sun drops, the Dome converts from pool terrace to performance space, and the Piazza under its suspended sphere becomes the living room of the ship — Princess kept its centre social rather than commercial, and on this hull the centre is three decks of glass.

The honest arithmetic: the theatre did not grow at the same rate as the manifest. Reserve early, arrive early, or note that Premier's reserved production-show seating earns its keep on this ship more than on any smaller one.

What the original gets right

• The class original — first fully glazed dome afloat, the suspended-sphere Piazza, and the template every later Sphere ship copies
• The first Princess hull designed around the Medallion rather than retrofitted with it
• Serious modern machinery: dual-fuel LNG with two 20.5 MW ABB Azipods
• 2,157 staterooms of range, with the attention perks buyable from the cheapest of them

What honesty requires we add

• 4,300 guests is a crowd, however clever the software — travellers who chose Princess to avoid mega-ships should look at the older classes
• The Dome holds about 250 people; the arithmetic of scarcity applies to the ship's best room
• The whole experience assumes an app, a charged phone and shared location — keep your phone in the safe and the magic thins
• First-of-class hulls carry flagship fares, and she is no exception