Princess Cruises
Princess Cruises grows bigger and younger year by year: by 2007 Princess Cruises will have nine ships put into service since 2001. Seven of those nine new ships are more than 110,000 tons in size, and together just that group can carry somewhere in the range of 20,000 passengers and 9,000 crew. In 2003 the line added Pacific Princess and Tahitian Princess, newly repolished gems purchased from the assets of much-loved but very bankrupt Renaissance Cruises.
Princess Cruises, of course, is the cruise line that made its name as the home of the "Love Boat." Today Princess sails to six continents and calls at more than 260 ports around the world. Princess owns a big piece of Alaska, too, dispatching at least six cruise ships to those waters and operating four riverside wilderness lodges, a fleet of deluxe motor coaches, and an armada of Midnight Sun Express luxury railcars.
Love Boat aside, Princess Cruises actually offers a pretty refined experience, with continental cuisine and a mostly Italian dining room staff. There are sushi restaurants on all ships in the fleet during lunch hours, and you can expect a full regime of parties, games, and other cruise entertainment.
Princess Cruises operates the 353-room Denali Princess Wilderness Lodge just outside Denali National Park in Alaska. Princess Cruises also owns the Kenai Princess Wilderness Lodge, the Mount McKinley Princess Wilderness Lodge, and the Fairbanks Princess Lodge. Princess Cruises also has the eighty-four room Copper River Princess Wilderness Lodge on land bordering Wrangell-Saint Elias National Park and Preserve in south-central Alaska. Public areas include a signature two-story Great Room featuring a stone fireplace, 25-foot ceilings, and stunning views of awe-inspiring Mounts Wrangell, Drum, and Blackburn. Tours include an opportunity to fly over Wrangell-Saint Elias National Park en route to the historic towns of McCarthy and Kennicott. A guide takes participants on a tour of main street Kennicott and tells the incredible story of this mining boomtown. Princess Cruises calls at over 250 ports worldwide on greater than 150 cruise itineraries ranging from a week to over two months. Destinations on all seven continents include Africa, Alaska, Antarctica, Asia, Australia/New Zealand, Canada/New England, the Caribbean, Europe, Hawaii, India, Mexican Riviera, Panama Canal, South America, and South Pacific Tahiti/French Polynesia. In the Caribbean, Princess Cruises dispatches six ships including the Caribbean Princess, which sails her namesake waters year-round. There are eleven itineraries that visit twenty-five ports in the western, eastern, and southern Caribbean. Vessels sail from Fort Lauderdale, San Juan, and Galveston.
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