Sun Princess cruise ship: inside the exclusive Sanctuary Collection
The Sun Princess is the largest of ships from the cruise liner and has 2157 staterooms and 30 restaurants. But there is a way to still find your own space. We show you how to do it.
There’s a moment on every cruise when you find your “spot”. Sometimes it’s the restaurant serving the best steak on board. Sometimes it’s a tucked-away club chair near a window where the sun’s rays are angled just so, making it the perfect place to hide away with a book. For one fellow passenger on my voyage on the inaugural season of Sun Princess, the newest vessel in the Princess fleet, it is the evening a UB40 concert is projected on to the large screen over the pools. A woman, clearly a megafan of the 1980s Birmingham chart-toppers, sways to the gentle reggae and mouths every word for a full hour, waist-deep in water, champagne in hand, as the sun goes down. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more contented human.
My spot is a compact little bar that I often have almost to myself. Sun Princess’s tiny and tricky-to-find Cascade Bar on Deck 17 seats only about 20 people and serves the prettiest cocktail on board. Called Watering the Garden, it’s a Pimms-based drink jazzed up with lime and basil and served in a copper-coloured watering can, one of 200 new cocktails that have been specially designed for this ship. A waiter brings it to my table and pours it over a sphere of ice containing a suspended pansy. Most days, around sunset, I pop into Cascade, order my little watering can and gaze out the floor-to-ceiling windows at whichever slice of Mediterranean prettiness happens to be sliding past. Little rituals – they’re one of the great pleasures of life at sea.
There are plenty of spots worth investigating on Sun Princess, the first ship from Princess’s new Sphere Class to hit the seas. Twenty-one per cent bigger than its Royal Class predecessors, it also carries 17 per cent more guests across 2157 staterooms, for a total of 4300 cruisers. Those guests need a greater variety of places to eat, drink and be entertained than ever before, so Sun Princess has furnished them with a generous 30 restaurants and bars, with many making an appearance for the first time, including O’Malley’s Irish Pub and an ode to all things beef, The Butcher’s Block by Dario. Spread across 21 decks are also four huge entertainment arenas and a casino, five pools, nine hot tubs, four outdoor lounging areas and plenty of space for kids.
There is so much that over the eight days and seven nights I spend on board, sailing one of the ship’s first voyages from Athens to Barcelona, I seem to stumble across a new bit of ship every day. “If you ever find Umai Teppanyaki, let me know,” jokes the ship’s charismatic captain, Paolo Arrigo, of the ship’s labyrinthine layout. (For the record, I did find the Japanese eatery and had a fabulous time; it’s all chatty chefs sizzling up teriyaki, bursting into song and throwing bits of egg around for the pure sense of theatre.)
Surprises aren’t confined to the ship. Upon boarding in Athens (a stunningly efficient operation that gets me from taxi to a gin and tonic beside the central Piazza on Deck 8 in just under an hour), we’re informed that one of our port visits has been changed at the last minute. A planned stop at Kotor in the tiny Balkan nation of Montenegro has been scrapped in favour of a detour to the smaller town of Bar. “Operational reasons” is the official line, and later I hear something about a difficulty with tender access in Kotor for this vessel but in any case I’m thrilled. Give me a less-visited port over a popular one every time; it’s the perfect way to avoid the crowds.
I race off the ship as early as allowed at Bar and jump in a taxi to the UNESCO World Heritage-listed Stari Bar, or the Old Town, the largest archaeological site in the Balkans which dates back to around the 6th century. For a €5 ($8) entry fee I get the entire 6.5ha of ruins to myself. I wander into the 14th-century Saint Catherine’s Church, the 18th-century clock tower and the abandoned Turkish hammam, a throwback to the town’s lengthy Ottoman occupation. I follow with a snack of homemade cheese and spinach burek and pomegranate juice at the nearby Restaurant Kaldrma, as the Adriatic sun glints off tubs of roses and olive trees.
Corfu is another exceptional shore stop. In a tucked-away taverna, I feast on braised eggplant with feta, and sofrito, a traditional Corfu beef stew that was brought over by seafaring Venetians when they were the rulers of this Greek Island. With Greek Easter having landed only a couple of days beforehand, my feet crunch over shards of pottery, all that remain of the terracotta pots hurled in a celebratory fashion on to town squares from upstairs windows, a Corfiot tradition. “Someone gets donked on the head almost every year,” says a local friend who is showing me around.
Reboarding the ship and returning to my cream and caramel-toned Cabana Mini Suite on Deck 12 is a feat of elevator engineering, thanks to Sun Princess’s newly upgraded lift system that means guests now press the button for their floor before the lift arrives rather than once they step inside, resulting in far fewer stops. “It’s such an improvement,” remarks one Princess regular as we glide swiftly between decks. “My husband is on a mobility scooter and on one of the older ships he once got stuck waiting for a lift for three hours.” She pauses, raising a wry eyebrow. “I mean there was a bar right there so he had a great time. But still.”
Most of the time I take the stairs. Who needs a spin class or treadmill when you can trot up thousands of steps for incidental exercise? My favourite route is the curved glass-paned stairs between Deck 6 and Deck 8 in the midship, as this allows me to stickybeak at whatever is going on at the light-filled central Piazza, a feature of all Princess ships.
There’s almost always a game, show or dancing in progress in front of the shimmering faux waterfall or, just as intriguingly, a rehearsal for any of the above (I like watching lithe acrobats swing casually around on trapezes in their civvies when they’re in between performances). By the middle of the voyage I’ve added plenty of other favourite spots and dishes and drinks to my regular rotation: the very good ribeye and stilton burger at O’Malley’s (part of my $US85/$124 a day Princess Premier Package, though anyone can purchase it for an entirely reasonable $US10), congee for breakfast Horizons, and my top tip if you want a bit of seafront solitude, the handful of outdoor chairs and tables just outside the excellent Alfredo’s Pizzeria.
On the final night of the voyage I find the spot that is the highlight of my whole cruise: the hidden Spellbound By Magic Castle bar that forms part of the signature experience of the same name. No spoilers – it has to be seen to be believed – but let’s just say that for someone who has always found magic and magicians a touch cheesy, I am genuinely awestruck.
And with that final flourish of the magician’s cloth, it feels like I’ve ticked every box. I nailed that perfect cruise ship balance: the peace of a good drink in a hidden nook, the thrill of adventure and exploration and just a little sprinkle of magic.
Sun Princess Sanctuary Collection
Since launching Sun Princess, the cruise line has been looking to refine its offering with various shiny bells and whistles. It has raised the curtin on the exclusive Sanctuary Collection on the ship. The initiative gives upper-tier stateroom guests – in suites, designated mini-suites and premium deluxe balcony rooms – access to private dining as well as an oasis-like top-deck retreat.
Collection guests receive a number of inclusions in their fare, such as unlimited StarLink wi-fi for four devices, unlimited fitness classes, a premier drinks package, and two nights of specialty dining.
There’s movement on the restaurant front, too, with the Butcher’s Block by Dario heading to Deck 7 (in the former location of Crown Grill) and specialty restaurant Crown Grill moving to where the Reserve Collection Restaurant was formerly positioned, also on Deck 7. The new Sanctuary Restaurant, exclusive for all Sanctuary Collection passengers, will offer stunning ocean vistas from its home on Deck 8.
In the know
Sun Princess sails the seven-day Mediterranean with Greece and Italy itinerary from April to October in 2025, and April to September in 2026. The ship sails between Athens and Barcelona, with stops at Santorini, Kotor, Corfu and Sicily. From $2699 a person, twin share, in a balcony stateroom, based on a July 11, 2026 departure; Sanctuary mini suites from $6719 a person, twin-share, inclusive of Premier Package.
Alexandra Carlton was a guest of Princess Cruises.
