Ruby or Grand Princess?

[Coral]

You are obviously not in a wheelchair....I don't find the 500 additional pax a problem.

 

No, I am not. But I often travel with my mom who is visually impaired and has some other disabilities which requires us to use the elevator. Stairs would be too dangerous for her. We were on the Crown Princess for 18 days I believe, we waited often 15-20 plus minutes to just get in an aft elevator at dinner time almost every night. We have never had to do that on any regular Grand class ship, ever. We also had a ton of problems in the atrium and on Deck 7 just walking around as it was so crowded. My mom has a Seeing Eye dog and was often stepped on due to the crowding.

 

Believe me - I am well aware of issues with people with disabilities have.

[Putterdude]

No, I am not. But I often travel with my mom who is visually impaired and has some other disabilities which requires us to use the elevator. Stairs would be too dangerous for her. We were on the Crown Princess for 18 days I believe, we waited often 15-20 plus minutes to just get in an aft elevator at dinner time almost every night. We have never had to do that on any regular Grand class ship, ever. We also had a ton of problems in the atrium and on Deck 7 just walking around as it was so crowded. My mom has a Seeing Eye dog and was often stepped on due to the crowding.

 

Believe me - I am well aware of issues with people with disabilities have.

 

Our experience has been just the opposite on the Grand and Golden (yet to be on the Star) we have always had to wait 20 mins plus to get one of the two aft elevators ... DW is in a chair so no chance of walking. Never have had a problem getting around on the Ruby or Crown. So from our perspective given an early Grand class or a later edition of one....it will be the latter. Guess it comes down to different strokes....:)

[caribill]

We were on the Crown Princess for 18 days I believe, we waited often 15-20 plus minutes to just get in an aft elevator at dinner time almost every night.

 

Our experience has been just the opposite on the Grand and Golden (yet to be on the Star) we have always had to wait 20 mins plus to get one of the two aft elevators ...

 

 

Did you ever try getting an up elevator and then coming down on it? It might take much less than 20 minutes this way.

[Putterdude]

Did you ever try getting an up elevator and then coming down on it? It might take much less than 20 minutes this way.

 

We have done that occasionally but that tends to just lengthen the wait for others and we feel a bit like cheats....we prefer to overcome the design flaw by seeking out the maitre-d' and get a venue change. The maitre-d's that we have had to-date understand the problem and have always accommodated our request for a change.

[Coral]

Did you ever try getting an up elevator and then coming down on it? It might take much less than 20 minutes this way.

 

We tried in the beginning but stopped it. The elevators were stuffed to the max and we have a Seeing Eye dog who kept getting stepped on and we can't risk her getting hurt. I have never seen elevators so stuffed as we saw on the Crown. People kept pushing to get as many people into the elevator at one time. It then became apparent that these ships with 500 extra people were not for us. We were often 20 plus minutes late to dinner (we had a table for 2) and our Matride understood and said this was common on that ship due to the elevators.

 

If we went down to dinner early, we were also being stepped on as the space in front of the dining room was also wall to wall people until they opened the door.

[hubofhockey]

The Ruby doesn't have crowd problems. It's a beautiful ship too and newer than the Grand. Easy choice for me.

[CaribbeanIsland]

The Ruby doesn't have crowd problems. It's a beautiful ship too and newer than the Grand. Easy choice for me.

 

That was not our experience. We found the ship incredibly crowded.