Pacific Princess was originally built for the Norwegian owned Flagship Cruises as their Sea Venture. Along with her near identical sister ship Island Venture; they were operated on weekly cruises out of New York - Bermuda. In April 1974, Sea Venture was berthed at Hamilton/Bermuda when she received a distress call from Cunards QE2. After unloading her passengers at Hamilton, she raced 280 miles southwest of Bermuda to the rescue. As QE2 had lost all power, her 1,648 passengers were transferred to Sea Venture before QE2 was put on tow to Bermuda.

Sea Venture and Island Venture were later bought by P&O to serve in their Princess Cruise division. Sea Venture was renamed Pacific Princess before being operated on cruises from the west coast of America - Alaska in summer and to the Caribbean via the Panama Canal in winter. In the mid 1970s, much of the TV series ‘Love Boat’ was filmed on board Pacific Princess making her the most famous cruise ship in the world.

For many years, Pacific Princess was one of the smallest and oldest cruise ships in the Princess fleet. She has 2 pools, 5 bars, fitness center, casino, 250 seat theatre, 238 outside and 67 inside cabins, can carry up to 650 passengers and a crew of 350.

Pacific Princess left the Princess fleet after her farewell season cruising the Bahamas in 2002 to be operated by the Spanish line Pullmantur. Under the name Pacific, she is currently operated by CVC in Brazil during the Southern summer and by Quail Cruises in Spain during the Northern Summer.

Princess Cruises operated Island Venture under the name Island Princess. This ship was sold to Hyundai Merchant Marine in 2000 to be operated between Pusan/South Korea and Kumkan/North Korea under the name Hyundai Pungak.Since 2003, this vessel has been sailing as Discovery under the care of the cruise company Voyages of Discovery (part of the All Leisure Group Plc) with cruises out of Harwich / England, as well as world wide cruises.