Caribbean Princess

Caribbean Princess, delivered in 2004, was an enlarged evolution of Princess Cruises' Grand class. Where the original Grand Princess had thirteen guest decks, Caribbean Princess added an extra passenger deck, lifting her tonnage to 112,894 gross tons and expanding capacity to roughly 3,140 guests at double occupancy and about 3,600 at maximum, with a crew of around 1,200 and some 1,557 staterooms across seventeen decks, fifteen of them for guests. Built by Fincantieri at Monfalcone, she was floated out on 4 July 2003 at a reported cost of around US$500 million. Her hull dimensions closely tracked the Grand-class template at roughly 290 metres long, 36 metres in beam and an 8.5-metre draught, but the added deck made her visibly taller and more capacious than the class's founding ships. She was named to reflect her intended year-round deployment on Caribbean itineraries from Florida.

Caribbean Princess earned a lasting place in cruise history as the first ship to feature Movies Under the Stars, the giant poolside LED screen that Princess introduced aboard her in 2004. Paired with cushioned loungers, blankets and complimentary snacks for evening screenings, the concept proved so popular that it was rolled out fleetwide and widely imitated across the industry. The ship also carried forward the Grand-class design language, including a multi-deck central atrium in the Piazza lineage, specialty restaurants such as Sabatini's Italian dining and a steakhouse, and the extensive pool and entertainment spaces of the class; the adults-only Sanctuary retreat, pioneered on Crown Princess in 2006, was added in later refurbishment.

The ship was christened on 2 April 2004 in Fort Lauderdale, with actress Jill Whelan - familiar to audiences as Vicki Stubing from the television series The Love Boat, itself long associated with Princess Cruises - serving as godmother. Her maiden voyage followed on 3 April 2004 on a Caribbean itinerary. Registered in Hamilton, Bermuda, and owned within Carnival Corporation, she operated primarily from Fort Lauderdale on Caribbean sailings while also deploying seasonally to New York, the British Isles and northern Europe, the Mediterranean, and New England and Canada, before adding her first Alaska season from Vancouver in 2025.

Over her career Caribbean Princess experienced several notable incidents. A norovirus outbreak in January 2014 sickened roughly 200 people aboard, and in August 2016 the ship lost power in the Irish Sea and drifted for several hours before propulsion was restored. The vessel was also central to a significant marine-pollution case: investigators found that the ship had used a so-called "magic pipe" to bypass pollution-control equipment and discharge oily waste at sea, and in a 2016 settlement the parent company pleaded guilty and agreed to a US$40 million penalty, at the time the largest ever for deliberate vessel pollution.

Caribbean Princess remains in service with Princess Cruises, continuing to alternate Caribbean and North American itineraries with European seasons and, more recently, Alaska cruising. Two decades after her debut she is still notable as the ship that gave the industry the open-air poolside cinema, a feature that has since become an expected fixture aboard large modern cruise ships.