Writer Robin Fowler based this independent review on her seven-night Southern Caribbean cruise departing from San Juan, Puerto Rico.

These days, ship design seems almost anything but nautical, so it’s a pleasure to spend time in a paradise whose theme is water: Above it, below it, skimming across it… right down to the mermaid driving a team of seahorses across the top of the casino’s cashier cage and the colorful mosaic tile fish swimming up pillars around the pool. Blue-tinted windows run along the balconies like waves, and colors throughout the ship are dominated by shades of ocean blue and sand. With such port-intensive itineraries, it almost seems a shame that her 2,600 passengers don’t spend more time onboard this lovely ship.

Why Golden Princess?

• Nights to remember: With 12 bars and lounges and three large show rooms, you’ll find a variety of entertainment each night, from comedians and Vegas-style shows to karaoke, piano bar sing-alongs, dance parties, and passenger-participant game shows, and more.
• As you like it: Choose traditional dining at an assigned table during early or late seatings, or opt for Anytime Dining that lets you decide when, where, and with whom you have dinner, every night.
• A little romance: Get married at sea by the captain and invite all your friends, via webcam, as virtual guests.

Who should go
Golden Princess is best suited for energetic baby boomers who like to sightsee all day and enjoy the various entertainment options into the night. Public spaces for every interest almost ensure that everyone will enjoy their time onboard. A swim-against-the-current lap pool fits fitness enthusiasts, nightly parties in most bars and lounges satisfy the late-night crowd, an abundance of cabins with private balconies please passengers who want quiet time, and special deck and play areas keep teens and kids entertained.

Who shouldn’t go
The ship is big, and distances may be too much for mobility-impaired passengers (although the ship has plentiful amenities for the handicapped). Also, passengers who want more intimate sophistication might be happier on a smaller vessel.

Hits and misses

• Don’t miss: Skywalkers Nightclub, soaring 150 feet above the water, makes a great observation lounge by day and a lively disco after dark.
• Best part of the ship: With its retracting crystal dome and pleasing mosaic pillars, the Calypso Reef pool and hot tub area is a fabulous spot if you’ve had enough direct sun. An added bonus: Neptune Reef gets the best sun and sounds (live Caribbean music), so Calypso is often less crowded.
• Best experience: The Tropical Island Night deck party takes up four open decks on the back of the ship. It’s a festive night of dancing, streamers, and confetti. Who knew parents could dance like that?
• Best shipboard activities: The Scholarship@Sea enrichment program offers culinary arts, computer classes, dance lessons, digital photography, and even ceramics painting in a special studio. Some classes are free; others add a fee or charge for supplies.
• Needs improvement: One attraction of cruising has long been its all-inclusive nature, with a few exceptions (like alcoholic beverages). But charges for activities that once were free are increasingly creeping into the bill. Among extra charges on Golden Princess: $10 for the most popular fitness classes, $25 for most computer classes ($10 for kids and teens), and $10 for digital photography classes.
• Activities to skip: The “free makeovers” offered in the Lotus Spa turned out to be a product pitch for a $45 bronzer.

How to meet the captain
Purchase a special-occasion package and you’ll get a personal invitation from the captain to visit the bridge while the ship is in port. A more drastic suggestion: Get married onboard and he’ll conduct the rites. Otherwise, try to catch up with him at his party for repeat passengers or his welcome-aboard cocktail party on the first formal night.

Heard on the deck: “The ice-carving demonstration -- that’s just a chain saw on Lido Deck, isn’t it?”

The three main restaurants have identical menus and similar art deco-influenced décor. One restaurant is devoted to traditional assigned seating, while the two others are reserved for guests on the “personal choice anytime dining” plan. The only hitch to anytime dining: Passengers may have to wait as long as half an hour when too many guests arrive at once. But, like fine restaurants at home, guests can make reservations to avoid the wait and can even request a favorite waiter or table. They can also head to a specialty restaurant or to the Horizon Court Buffet (where dinner seating is always available).

Canaletto, Donatello, and Bernini (main dining rooms)
The identical menus in the three main dining rooms include 10 entrées (five specials and five always found on the menu), three appetizers, three soups, and a salad. Passengers can also order vegetarian and “dining light” options. Canaletto (with 504 place settings) is the restaurant reserved for passengers who have requested traditional seating, while Donatello and Bernini (each seating 486) are designated for “anytime dining.” The restaurants’ décors are inspired by a trio of Italian artists: Donatello, the 15th century sculptor; Bernini, the 17th century sculptor and architect; and Canaletto, the 18th century painter. On our cruise, Donatello was also open for breakfast, lunch, and tea, with open seating for all meals.

Sabatini’s Trattoria
The appetizers just keep coming. Served in a restaurant that mimics an Italian terrace at night, portions are scrumptious but small, so you’ll still have room for your main course. Seafood -- lobster, sea bass, scallops, or shrimp -- is the best bet. Chairs are too low for some passengers; ask for a pillow. Sabatini’s seats 90 by reservation only. The surcharge is $20 per person.

Desert Rose Sterling Steakhouse
This Southwestern-style steakhouse specializes in appetizers like quesadillas with brie and papaya. Popular entrées include succulent cuts of beef, and the raspberry crème brûlée is an excellent dessert choice. Desert Rose seats 92 and is the only restaurant on the ship with live music (a guitarist). The surcharge is $15 per person, and reservations are required.

Other dining options

• Horizon Court: The 24-hour buffet spins from breakfast to lunch to dinner and beyond with some especially tempting options, including a Bavarian Bierfest with German specialties and Oktoberfest beers.
• Poolside dining: Prego Pizzeria and Trident Hamburger Grill offer fast food poolside. The grill menu includes hamburgers, turkey burgers, and veggie burgers.
• Afternoon tea: Finger foods, petite desserts, coffee, and tea provide afternoon pick-me-ups.
• Room service: Room service is available around the clock with such options as croque monsieur (grilled ham and cheese), hamburgers, and fudge cake. For a pleasant wakeup call, hang an order for coffee and continental breakfast on the cabin door the night before.
• Special cravings: Promenade Lounge is a patisserie in the mornings and a wine-and-caviar bar in the afternoons and evenings. Sundaes, as you might guess, serves ice cream sundaes, floats, and shakes for a nominal charge on Lido Deck. (A shake, for example, is $3.75.)

Heard on the deck: “What’s the name of the restaurant where we’re eating dinner? Canaletto? Can-a-tuna?”

Best dining

• Dish: All of the many appetizers sent to your table at Sabatini’s are excellent, including fried brie, artichoke and shrimp, prosciutto, crab cakes, mussels, and caviar.
• Dessert: Floating Island consists of a dollop of meringue in warm vanilla sauce. Look for this yummy sugar rush at the Horizon Court lunch buffet.
• Restaurant: Live guitar music while dining on exquisitely prepared steaks makes Desert Rose a good choice for dinner.
• Food seminar: The executive chef and maître d’hotel banter as they prepare featured dishes from the line’s tabletop recipe book, “Courses: A Culinary Journey” ($28). It draws such a large crowd to the Princess Theater that close-up shots must be projected on overhead screens so that all can see. It’s followed by a whirlwind kitchen tour.

How to…

• Get a table for two: No worry if you chose traditional dining and can’t get an assigned table for two. Dining two by two can be easily reserved in Donatello, Bernini, Sabatini’s, and Desert Rose.
• Celebrate a birthday/anniversary: For an in-cabin surprise party, order canapés for $14, a veggie platter with cheese dip for $6, or guacamole dip with chips for $8. Special-occasion birthday and anniversary packages can be purchased in advance of the cruise, and flowers range from $5 for a single stem to $59 for a dozen roses.
• Change seating: Diners with traditional assigned seating can switch to anytime dining with 24 hours notice, but the reverse may not be possible if Canaletto Restaurant is fully booked. If you have questions or want changes, the dining room staff will be available at a table outside Sabatini’s Trattoria for four hours on the afternoon of embarkation day.
• Dress for formal night: Passengers dress for posterity in long gowns and cocktail dresses, tuxedos and suits, looking good for those formal night portraits. (You might as well pose as there’s no obligation to buy the photos.) Formal wear for both men and women can be rented onboard.
• Dress for casual night: “Smart casual” is defined as dresses, skirts, or slacks for ladies and pants and open-neck shirts for men. It’s always casual in the Horizon Court dinner buffet, even on formal nights.

Tips:

• The frozen cocktail demonstration is an excuse to get a free drink, so make sure you stand close to the mixing table, and look thirsty.
• Families who want to dine together are encouraged to choose anytime dining so kids don’t have to miss late afternoon or evening activities.
• For $25, the soda card allows unlimited fountain drinks during the cruise, including a souvenir mug. It’s a good price -- some ships charge as much as $45.
• If you can, avoid tables next to the many food stations scattered throughout the three main restaurants. The stations can get messy -- you might as well have a table next to the kitchen.

Heard on the deck: “Here’s the secret to my marriage: I don’t make dinner. I make reservations. We’re celebrating our 18th anniversary on this cruise.”

Of Golden’s 1,300 cabins, 928 have ocean views, and 80 percent of those have private balconies. An entire deck is devoted to minisuites. Larger suites range from 515 to 800 square feet. Two suites (family suites) are made of adjoining cabins, and can sleep up to 10. Most cabins are on the small side but are well-arranged with plenty of storage space. All cabins have refrigerators, safes, telephones, and hair dryers. Televisions show a few cable channels (including CNN and ESPN) and movies, plus shore excursion information. Beach towels are provided for use ashore (and please, say “no” if an islander approaches on a beach, claims to represent the ship, and offers to return a wet towel for you). Unless you simply want the natural light, skip cabins described as having obstructed views: Lifeboats fill the windows.

Cabins for guests with disabilities
Golden Princess has 28 cabins with wheelchair access (18 oceanview and 10 inside). All 28 have wheel-in showers, lowered closet railings and sinks, and closed-captioned movies. Kits are available with telephone amplifiers, visual smoke detectors, text telephones, and door-knock sensors. Elsewhere on the ship, show lounges have wheelchair seating and elevators have Braille call buttons. Service animals can be accommodated.

Tips:

• Gratuities are automatically added to your account at a rate of $10 per person, per day, but can be adjusted at your discretion.
• Laundry and dry-cleaning services are available, and there’s a coin-operated, self-service laundry on each cabin deck.

Public areas are abundant, spreading passengers over the ship in a way that avoids crowding. At night, the lounges stay busy with production shows, movies, comedians, game shows, and cabaret acts, and the shops stay open until 11:30 PM. Even after a long day ashore, you can bet that something will be going on that will tempt you to stay up.

Bars, lounges, and casino
Golden Princess will eventually be fitted with a 300-square-foot outdoor movie screen, but for now the big-screen movies are shown in the Broadway-style Princess Theater in the afternoons and some evenings. The theater is also the venue for everything from production shows to food seminars. Smaller production shows are held in the Vegas-style Vista Lounge -- it’s comfy with swivel chairs and leather sofas and doubles for activities like bingo. Skywalkers is a dazzling dance club soaring over the stern, with twinkling fiber optics and futuristic décor, while the Wheelhouse Bar incorporates nautical nostalgia. The Egyptian-themed, cabaret-style Explorers Lounge is used for game shows, comedy routines, and art auctions. Many decks are dotted with small bars like the Lobby Bar -- a good place to enjoy a cappuccino while you wait for friends. The Promenade Bar, near the boutiques, is often filled with men waiting for their shopping spouses.

The always popular Atlantis Casino has more than 250 slot machines, free table game lessons, and blackjack and slot tournaments. Gamblers can charge up to $1,500 in casino chips to their cabins each day, up to a maximum of $5,000 per cruise. There’s also an ATM in the casino.

Heard on the deck: “It’s Cruise Ship Psychology 101. Single men want to hook up but they don’t want it to last beyond the cruise. Single women are thinking in longer terms.”

Click to view a virtual tour

Swimming pools
There are five pools and nine hot tubs on Golden Princess. Two pools -- the aft Terrace Pool and the swim-against-the-current Lap Pool -- are reserved for adults only. The family-friendly Neptune’s Reef and Calypso Reef pools are gorgeously decorated in marine art, and Calypso’s retracting roof makes the pool usable during all types of weather. Both pools are adjacent to the 24-hour buffet and pizza and burger stations. A deck area and hot tub are reserved for teens, and a play area and splash pool are available for the younger kids.

Shows The large troupe of four singers and 15 dancers stays busy on this ship, offering three different production shows plus an encore performance of one of the shows on the last night of the cruise. One is a tribute to Broadway, the second a country music show, and the third is Caribbean Caliente, a nod to the tropics. All are performed in the three-story Princess Theater. The other nights feature guest performers, mostly singers and comedians.

Shore excursions
Order online in advance of your cruise if you fear a coveted excursion could sell out. The favorites are active options like ATV and four-wheel-drive adventures and sea kayaking. Once onboard, you can make reservations at the excursions desk or leave a request in a drop box.

Weddings and vow renewals
Weddings in the ship’s Hearts and Minds Chapel, which seats 36, can be transmitted via computer to virtual guests back home. The captain performs the rites at sea under the authority of the ship’s registry in Bermuda, and costs start at $2,200. Otherwise, wedding, honeymoon, anniversary, vow renewal, and other special-occasion packages range from $135 to $485 and can include a bottle of Dom Perignon, canapés delivered to your cabin, breakfast in bed, spa treatments, framed portraits, terry cloth bathrobes, and bridge tours.

Looking for…

• Quietest spot: The Chapter & Verse library and reading room is a good place to hide out, situated as it is in a quiet area low on the ship. It also has computer terminals and listening chairs for books on tape.
• Liveliest spot: The best place to look for action is the nightly dance party at Skywalkers Nightclub. Other passengers camp in the Explorers Lounge just to see what happens next.
• Most popular activity: Bingo in the Vista Lounge, slot tournaments in the Atlantis Casino, and the culinary demonstration in the Princess Theater all draw fine crowds, but the sail away parties at the Calypso Reef and Terrace pools are good places to dance away energy not consumed onshore.
• Best view: Skywalkers Nightclub has floor-to-ceiling windows high atop the back of the ship, offering terrific views of both sea and port.
• Best show: The ship’s singers and dancers celebrate Broadway in Words and Music, a production show on the first formal night of the week.
• Best drink: Passengers prefer many of the specialty drinks in Explorers Lounge. For just $3.95, options may include Tutankamen’s Tipple, made with Bailey’s, Frangelico, Kahlua, and cream; and the Columbus Cooler, with white rum, crème de banana, Galliano, pineapple juice, and orange juice.

Tips:

• The 24-hour Internet café has 25 computers, and private computer lessons are offered for $75.
• To get an overview of everything, participate in the ship’s tour on embarkation day.
• If you want to stay in touch with kids or friends in your party, walkie-talkies can be rented from the purser’s desk for $4 per unit, per day.
• Snorkel equipment -- even prescription masks -- can be rented or purchased. Divers can also rent wetsuits.
• Escorted golf tours are available, as are lessons and use of the golf simulator. Shoes and clubs can be rented for port golf excursions.

Spa and salon
The lovely Lotus Spa, along with its beauty shop and fitness center, wraps around a pleasant lap pool on Sun Deck. Watch for the manager’s specials on your favorite treatments, like the exotic lime and ginger salt glow and massage, usually $165 but sometimes on special for $99. Take the spa tour on embarkation day and register for a prize; you may win a discount on a spa treatment. In the beauty shop, look for the special restyle and blow dry for $50, which includes a scalp massage and nourishing hair treatment.

Fitness areas
There’s a full complement of exercise equipment, but the treadmills are so popular that they require a reservation. A golf simulator, nine-hole putting green, court for basketball or tennis, and jogging track are among other facilities for passengers who want to stay in shape. Some fitness classes are free (like “Abs to Die For”), while others are $10 (Yogalates, a cross between yoga and Pilates).

Good selections and even better prices are hallmarks of Princess shops. Fine and costume jewelry, makeup and fragrances, logo and island wear, and liquor and cigarettes are among the duty-free items sold on two levels of the ship’s atrium. There’s a permanent art gallery, and the auctions offer free champagne and works by artists like Peter Max, as most art auctions at sea do. But you won’t be subjected to silly gimmicks where the audience is exhorted to “trust the auctioneer” and bid blindly before the work is revealed, as is a practice on other lines.

Tips:

• A five-year guarantee is included for all fine jewelry purchased onboard.
• If you shop ashore at recommended merchants, Princess offers a 30-day guarantee, with some conditions.

Heard on the deck: “Shopping? You said my favorite word!”

Special programs are offered for kids ages 3-17, with activities including galley tours, scavenger hunts, and afternoon ice cream, with two special dinners (without parents) for each age group. The Fun Zone, for younger kids (3-7), has a play area that includes a whale-shaped splash pool. Adults aren’t allowed in Off Limits, the two-level teen center (for 13- to 17-year-olds) that includes a disco, video wall, karaoke machine, hot tub, and private deck area. Voyage of Discovery Virtual Reality Center is open to all ages (including adults) with games that range from 50¢ to $3 per play.

Tips:

• Day and evening youth events are free, but late-night babysitting, available from 10 PM to 1 AM, costs $5 per hour, per child.
• Parents and guardians of kids ages 3-12 are required to show government-issued photo identification when checking their children out of the youth program.

May through August, Golden Princess sails Western Europe itineraries from Southampton, England. After two months in Canada/New England, she’ll head to San Juan, Puerto Rico in late October, offering seven-night Southern Caribbean cruises throughout the winter.

• Cruise line - Princess
• Ship name - Golden Princess
• Type of cruise - Elegant Resort
• Total cabins - 1301
• Private balcony cabins - 707
• Decks - 18
• Total crew - 1200
• Passenger capacity - 2600
• Ship size - Large
• Officers nationality - British/Italian
• Year entered service - 2001
• Registry - Bermuda
• Tonnage - 109,000
• Ship length - 951