Golden Princess Cruise

This year for my mom's 59th birthday we decided to chip in as siblings to treat her on a 5 day cruise. We left on Saturday Sept 21 and came back on Wed Sept 25. The cruise will take us to Ketchikan, Alaska. This is the first time I ever took a cruise so the minimum number of luggage is 1 per person with a 40 lb weight limit. The boarding started at 12:30pm and reading online you should be there 3 hours prior to the departure time which was 4:30pm. We got to the boarding location about 1:30pm that day and that day turned out to be the busiest day of the year. There was 3 cruise ships boarding of a total of 9,000 people. So it was awfully long waiting time. We waited about 3+hrs. The boat also left late around 6:30pm. Once we got on we decided to unpack and grab "lunch" Thank goodness I had a snack in the morning before boarding because we didn't eat till like 6pm for the whole day. We went straight for the international buffet which consisted of your basics: salad, fruit, soup, rice, pasta etc. It was mediocre the best thing I had that day was salad with honey Dijon sauce and pineapple. Everything else was meh. The room we shared between my 2 sibling was quite small but nevertheless it was clean and comfy. The tv was huge about a 40+ size lg tv. There was movies and regular viewing shows available which included my favourite: FOOD NETWORK!
We walked around to check out the area there was a couple of swimming pools: outdoors and in, hot tubs, outdoor and indoor theatres, human sized chess, basketball court, fitness gym, spa, etc. Everyday we had a schedule of activities we could do such as: fitness classes (paid and unpaid), salsa dancing, tai chi, line dancing, outdoor movies such as Dark Phoenix, Avengers etc. My usual routine on the cruise was wake up around 7-8am, go to the gym, run, shower, grab breakfast at the buffet, or at the fine dining area, go check out the activities, have lunch, check out more activities, have dinner, check out activities and then head to bed around 11-12pm. The boat was quite long and it was 16 floors so there is no shortage of walking. Food was better at the fine dining area. You can choose to reserve a time for your dinner seating or you can choose to do anytime dining which is what me and my family chose to do. Its more convenient that way the only issue is that you can only dine after 6:15pm. The quality of food is much better and nicely presented. You can order as much as you like and the service is friendlier. You don't have to dress up but you can do if you wanted nice pictures taken during the dinner service. One great thing that happened is that I didn't get sea sick. My little sister and mom did on the first day but taking gravel that day helped. And afterwards they were fine.
My final thoughts regarding cruises is first: you really have to embrace the activities on the boat or else you will get board easily. No my way of travelling I prefer to go sight seeing and being on land but its definitely a good experience to give it a try. The cruise was clean, comfortable and the people there were friendly. Besides the food everything was great. I had a great time at the art auction and I wished I had the money to spend to purchase the art that was shown.
Ketchikan, Alaska is very similar to BC with the mountains, the rain and the environment. The town was quite small you can literally go from one end of the area to the other side in 30 mins time. It was pouring rain that day when we had our stop so it wasn't very memorable but other wise its very small. I would recommend longer cruise times to fully experience Alaska probably about 7+ days.