Grand Princess: Sanitation Record & Health Report

Grand Princess has been doing laps since 1998, which in cruise ship years makes her old enough to have opinions about the earlier, less Instagram-friendly Princess fleet. The 2025 refurbishment clearly wasn't just a fresh coat of paint on the buffet, though, because the numbers tell a story of a ship that's still trying: three CDC inspections logged, and a latest score of 93. That's a comfortably passing grade on paper, but stack it against the 162 ships we track, where the average latest score is 96.7 and the median is a lofty 98, and Grand Princess is sitting closer to the back of the class than the front. Worse, the trajectory is the part that should make Princess loyalists twitch a little: the inspection history reads 95, then a near-perfect 99, then back down to 93 — a score trend we're flagging as declining, not exactly the direction you want to see on a ship carrying over 2,600 passengers a sailing.

Here's the twist that keeps this from being a full pile-on: the galley is apparently a different operation entirely, pulling a food safety score of 100.0 and earning the "Spotless Galley" badge. So whatever's dragging the overall inspection numbers down, it isn't what's happening on your plate — someone in that kitchen is running a tighter ship than the ship itself. We don't have reliable outbreak data to weigh in on here (CDC's outbreak records are currently unreachable), so we're not going to pretend we know one way or the other on that front — just flagging that it's an open question rather than a clean bill of health.

Who it's for: Sydney and Brisbane-based cruisers who want a mid-sized, well-traveled ship without flying to the other side of the world to board one — Grand Princess is clearly leaning into the Australian market with 35 combined sailings out of those two ports, plus a handful from Los Angeles for the diehards. If you're the type who cares more about a decent-sized ship at 107,517 tons with a manageable 2,602 passengers than chasing the newest mega-ship, this is a reasonable pick, and that Spotless Galley rating should ease any dinner-table anxiety. Who should skip it: anyone who obsesses over inspection trend lines the way some people obsess over stock charts. A 93 isn't a failure, but a slide from 99 to 93 on a ship's most recent inspection, sitting well below the fleet median of 98, is the kind of number that deserves a raised eyebrow rather than a shrug — especially from a nearly three-decade-old hull that just got refurbished and should, in theory, be showing its best face right now.