Princess Cruises' Star Princess has just wrapped up its first full year at sea, and it's been a busy one. The ship, delivered from Fincantieri's Monfalcone yard in Italy on September 26, 2025, welcomed its first guests just over a week later on an 11-night Western Mediterranean voyage roundtrip from Barcelona, calling in France, Italy, Spain and the UK.
The 175,500-ton vessel is the second in Princess' Sphere class and runs on LNG, making it one of the cleaner-powered big ships afloat. After a short Mediterranean run, it crossed the Atlantic in early November 2025 for its US debut — seven-night Caribbean cruises out of Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale. Things got appropriately starry there: Camila and Matthew McConaughey christened the ship on November 7, 2025, with Sheryl Crow performing at the ceremony.
Come spring, the ship headed west for its first Alaska season, part of Princess' largest-ever Alaska deployment. Sailing weeklong roundtrips from Seattle to Juneau, Ketchikan and beyond, it carried roughly 90,000 guests across more than 20 departures before the season closed in late September.
Now it's back to Florida. From late October 2026 the Star Princess runs four- to seven-night Caribbean and Bahamas cruises from Port Everglades through the 2026-27 winter. April 2027 brings a Panama Canal voyage, followed by a second Seattle-based Alaska summer.
For travellers, the takeaway is simple: the newest ship in the fleet has settled into a predictable rhythm — Florida winters, Alaska summers — with the Panama Canal as a one-off bonus in between. If you want the Sphere-class experience (think the dome-topped Sun deck spaces introduced on Sun Princess) without a transatlantic flight away from home ports, the shorter Caribbean and Bahamas sailings are an easy entry point, while the Seattle departures remain a convenient way to see Alaska without flying to Vancouver or Anchorage.
