Typical Princess Passenger age?

[PenguinLife]

I was just wondering what in your experience is the typical Princess cruise passenger age? I ask because we have only been on Princess once about 18 months ago for a 7 day cruise and found the average age on board to be surprisingly high. I am 45 and felt like I was almost the youngest person onboard that was not there as part of a multi-generational family trip. To give just a single example one night at dinner we were seated with 2 other couples, the first couple had been married for 55 years, the other had only been together for 45 years, but they were both on the second marriage. By contrast last fall did an Alaskan cruise on Holland America which seems to have a certain geriatric reputation online, and I was somewhat surprised to find the average age on board was far closer to mine that what we experienced on Princess.

[paul929207]

Princess offers a wide range of itineraries and cruise lengths. The age ranges will vary greatly. So it would help to get an idea where and when you are looking to sail and the length you are considering

[Thrak]

A "generality" would be that longer cruises tend to have more of the older passengers while shorter cruises may have a greater percentage of younger people. Likewise, cruises during the school year have fewer younger people as people with children have a harder time cruising during those times.

 

Having only sailed three times and each time out of SF I have found passengers to be "mostly" in my age range. Some younger and some older. I'm 61.

 

Cruising out of FLL or somewhere like that with the Caribbean itineraries I would expect more young people. Cruising out of SF or LA I would expect more young people going to Mexico than to Alaska.

 

It's a fair question but tough to answer with any certainty...

[TM]

Typical age will depend upon the destination and the length of the cruise as well as time of year. We did a Canada/New England cruise when I had just turned 50 and there were maybe a dozen folks on the cruise that were under 50. On our first Caribbean cruise in 1992 with Princess our dinner mates the first night were mid-eighties for 1 couple and 70s for the other couple. We were 40. Nothing in common so we switched seating. But ended up with a couple in their mid-sixties who were OK and another couple who were early 70s who were absolutely fantastic and we thoroughly enjoyed their company. We've done Alaska in the summer and have found most folks younger than us. Every cruise is different. You can do the same itinerary 2 weeks in a row and have a very different mix of ages. We typically don't see a lot of children on Princess, but then we normally cruise in the fall when they are back in school. Quite frankly we've never really worried about the mix of ages.

[shredie]

Take a cruise to Alaska in the summer and there will be families with kids all over the ship.

[PghCruiseGrrrl]

I am midthirties and I normally cruise with my mother who is late fifties. There are a lot of people on scooters, but there are very few children. I would rather deal with people of a more mature age running over my feet with their motorized wheelchairs then little anklebiters screaming beside the pool.

[shredie]

I am midthirties and I normally cruise with my mother who is late fifties. There are a lot of people on scooters, but there are very few children. I would rather deal with people of a more mature age running over my feet with their motorized wheelchairs then little anklebiters screaming beside the pool.

 

Dear me. I guess you were never an "ankle biter"? There will be children on certain itineraries, mostly in the summer months and around the holidays in the fall/winter. These tend to be cruises that attract families. Yes, you will also find some people in scooters, but most are not rude and running over feet. If you want to hear the stereotypes of the passengers, I guess this is the place to do it. However, as others have said, there is no "typical" age on a Princess ship, and everything depends on the time of year and the itinerary.

[PrincessLuver]

I was just wondering what in your experience is the typical Princess cruise passenger age? I ask because we have only been on Princess once about 18 months ago for a 7 day cruise and found the average age on board to be surprisingly high. I am 45 and felt like I was almost the youngest person onboard that was not there as part of a multi-generational family trip. To give just a single example one night at dinner we were seated with 2 other couples, the first couple had been married for 55 years, the other had only been together for 45 years, but they were both on the second marriage. By contrast last fall did an Alaskan cruise on Holland America which seems to have a certain geriatric reputation online, and I was somewhat surprised to find the average age on board was far closer to mine that what we experienced on Princess.

 

Our experience is similar to yours. I think that Princess has an older and very loyal following compared to some cruise lines like Carnival and Royal Caribbean. Just for the record I am part of the over 50 crowd.

 

We have done quite a few cruises and I have never really been on a Princess cruise when I felt that the average age was even close to under 50...

string quartets in the atrium everyday do not exactly say "hey...let's get down!" :D

[Cruisin' Chick]

I am midthirties and I normally cruise with my mother who is late fifties. There are a lot of people on scooters, but there are very few children. I would rather deal with people of a more mature age running over my feet with their motorized wheelchairs then little anklebiters screaming beside the pool.

 

A couple of cruises ago we did the holiday time RT to Hawaii (the second of three times we did this itinerary at almost the same time frame) and there were many "mature" types, but also very young kids. I was 56 on that cruise and our 13-year-old was in the teen group for the first time on a cruise. She did comment that there were a few seniors who approached the teens and started harassing them. One was even complaining about my girl's hair (she dyes it orange). My hubby and I witnessed some man who may have been in his 60s approached a couple of preteen boys in the pool area and started yelling at the kids. Now, we don't know if there was anything that happened before this to cause this behavior but if not, all I can think of is this man had a problem sharing a ship with young'ums.

 

We shared a table a couple of times with a nice woman who said she was a retired school principal. She said she was appalled at the behavior of some of her peers (she said she didn't notice any misbehaving kids). the second time we ate with her, she mentioned that one of these scooter types ran over her foot in an elevator and she felt this person wasn't even trying to be considerate of others.

 

So it wasn't just our perception of two in our 50s and a teen.

 

Only on one of my 11 cruises have I seen misbehaving kids -- and they were all from the same extended family with parents who spent all the time they could in the casinos. On that cruise, Princess had hired some young 20-year olds to work as youth security. One of them told us that he had approached one of the adults in that extended family about better supervising their kids (since they weren't making sure the kids were participating in the kids' programs) and the guy actually told him that he was on vacation. So the security guy told him that one is never on vacation from being a parent.

[Crzn-Life]

We were on the Caribbean Princess for cruises on 9/1 (5-day) and 9/6 (7-day) and these were short cruises. Many of the passengers appeared to be senior seniors! There were also some younger folks with toddlers. But by and large it was an older group.

 

Frankly we didn't expect that on these short cruises that the average age would be as high as it was. One thinks of short cruises as having younger passengers but it certainly wasn't the case with these cruises. Also the number of elites was quite high. Would you believe that the most traveled passengers had over 1800 nights and #'s 2 & 3 had around 1300 each! :eek: They were also doing several b2b's. We did meet several younger couples in their 30's and 40's taking advantage of the short cruises but they were in the minority.

 

The point of this is that you just don't know anymore. I think that on the short cruises that are highly discounted and sailing out of Ft. Lauderdale, you are going to see the average age go up because they are targeting Florida residents and by and large, it's an older group. The Alaska cruises tend to get a younger group but there are still a lot of older folks.

 

I think the only time you can count on having a younger passenger demographic is on holiday cruises and spring break when more families are traveling and many of these 3-generation groups.

[PghCruiseGrrrl]

Dear me. I guess you were never an "ankle biter"? There will be children on certain itineraries, mostly in the summer months and around the holidays in the fall/winter. These tend to be cruises that attract families. Yes, you will also find some people in scooters, but most are not rude and running over feet. If you want to hear the stereotypes of the passengers, I guess this is the place to do it. However, as others have said, there is no "typical" age on a Princess ship, and everything depends on the time of year and the itinerary.

 

I agree, most people in scooters are polite, but I have had my feet flattened on occasion by accident. I don't have a problem with children in theory, I just prefer them to be polite and well behaved. Yes, they can run around and play and make joyful noise in my presence, I won't mind. However, children whose parents have no control over them that throw themselves down on the deck screaming at the top of their lungs for no good reason, or children whose parents think it is okay to allow them to run around bothering everyone in the adults only area, I quickly loose patience with. Those are the children I refer to as anklebiters, and I hope I never fell into that category.

[smslms]

To preface my reply let me say that I am 70 and my wife is 60. We cruise primarily on Princess and HAL, with a few other lines thrown in periodically. Overall I would say the average age is older on HAL than Princess, but not necessarily by very much.

 

As stated by others a lot depends on the itinerary and length of cruise. Cruises to exotic locales for longer periods of time tend to attract an older crowd. I have been retired for a long time and travel to relax, have fun and soak up new experiences, sometimes with old friends and sometimes new friends. At dinner I really don't care if we're seated with Methuselah or a 5 year old, as long as they're well behaved. About the only thing that get's my goat is rude behaviour and I've found that there is no age limit governing rudeness.

 

Another thing to consider is that us older folk make good trivia companions ( as long as we don't doze off and forget the question):D

[Working 2 Cruise]

If you have to ask...

[PenguinLife]

Maybe my experience on Princess last time was a bit of a fluke, both cruises in question were in the off season, a year ago this week for Alaska (end of Alaska cruise season, and caught an early winter storm), and mid Feb of last year for the Princess cruise to Roatan, Belize and Cozumel. So certainly during the school year for each, and both cruises did seem to have a similar number of school age kids, the Princess one may have even had more as there were a number of 3 generation families aboard as well as grandparents with grand kids. From the description in the replies so far I do think we had an unusually older crowd on Princess that week, once you exclude the families, just from casual observation I would guess at least half the passengers were over 70, and of the rest most were probably over 60, where 50 and younger (again excluding those families) probably accounted for 10 percent. All of our other cruises have been on Carnival what has a distinctly younger and perhaps rowdier crowd.

 

p.s. I just wanted to clarify that I did not really mind this, just found it somewhat surprising, although the lack of age diversity did tend to make me feel that dinner time conversations were often a bit difficult.

Edited September 17, 2014 by PenguinLife

[Loonbeam]

I wish I could find it again, there was a great article that did analysis of lines by age weighted by cruise days. If I recall, Princess was in the middle of the pack (51? 52?) Disney the youngest and HAL the oldest.

 

Of course, as noted, on a ship by ship basis it will vary based on itinerary and time of year. In the canal, I'd say there were a lot of folks in our age group (40s) in October. I'm expecting an older crowd in New England this year.

[capriccio]

We have done quite a few cruises and I have never really been on a Princess cruise when I felt that the average age was even close to under 50...

:D

 

We were on a 5 day/4 day B2B on the Ruby last February out of FLL. The first was a Saturday - Thursday 5 day cruise where the average age was probably in the late 50s/early 60s. The second 4 day cruise (Thursday - Monday) had a much younger average age - lots of folks in their 20s and 30s in addition to many more school age kids. Everyone - regardless of age - seemed to be having a great time.

 

I do remember looking at the cabin name tags on the 2nd trip in the section our steward serviced (suite and mini-suites) and only seeing 1 elite and 2 platinums and the rest were gold and blue (mostly blue). It would seem (base on this incredibly small sample size :D) that the shorter Caribbean cruisers are attracting lots of new and younger cruisers.

[yyjguy]

Holland passengers are a bunch of 60 year olds, travelling with their parents! Princess tends to younger!!

[seacruise9]

Hi,

 

Of course the average age varies by time of year, length of cruise, and cruising region. However, Princess cruises seem to appeal to a wide variety of ages. I recently turned 50 and have noticed plenty of passengers in my age range as well as younger and older passengers. In my experience, the Princess passengers generally are younger than the Holland America or Cunard passengers.

 

Chuck

Edited September 17, 2014 by seacruise9

[Thrak]

We have done quite a few cruises and I have never really been on a Princess cruise when I felt that the average age was even close to under 50...

string quartets in the atrium everyday do not exactly say "hey...let's get down!" :D

 

 

Well... How about, "Hey...let's sit down"? :D

 

I'm good with that...

[Dreamer333]

I've taken several 7-night Caribbean and Mexican Riviera cruises and I would estimate the average adult age is late 50's, early 60's on these cruises.

[arizonaperson]

I don't think there is a typical age on Princess, there will be all age ranges on each itinerary.

How great to be seated at a table where the couples have been married for quite a few years and still enjoy & can travel together, how wonderful.

Keep an open mind,who cares what the age range of passengers is. Go enjoy your vacation/cruise. In our day to day life we experience all age ranges everyday!

Hopefully we won't see cruises advertised for a set age range or if we have been married over XX years and exclude the rest of us.

I was just wondering what in your experience is the typical Princess cruise passenger age? I ask because we have only been on Princess once about 18 months ago for a 7 day cruise and found the average age on board to be surprisingly high. I am 45 and felt like I was almost the youngest person onboard that was not there as part of a multi-generational family trip. To give just a single example one night at dinner we were seated with 2 other couples, the first couple had been married for 55 years, the other had only been together for 45 years, but they were both on the second marriage. By contrast last fall did an Alaskan cruise on Holland America which seems to have a certain geriatric reputation online, and I was somewhat surprised to find the average age on board was far closer to mine that what we experienced on Princess.

Edited September 17, 2014 by arizonaperson

[swscruiser]

Not as old as HAL

[smslms]

I don't think there is a typical age on Princess, there will be all age ranges on each itinerary.

How great to be seated at a table where the couples have been married for quite a few years and still enjoy & can travel together, how wonderful.

Keep an open mind,who cares what the age range of passengers is. Go enjoy your vacation/cruise. In our day to day life we experience all age ranges everyday!

Hopefully we won't see cruises advertised for a set age range or if we have been married over XX years and exclude the rest of us.

 

Well said, I'll drink to that.

[Lovetocruiseprincess]

Why do you think they blast the volume in the Princess theater at night at a level of over 120 db. The old timers can't hear anything lower than that. :D

Seriously, cruises especially in the early fall/winter season have greater numbers of elderly. The longer the cruise the older the crowd. Go in the summer time & the age drops off considerable, but the kids will drive you nuts.

[Nebr.cruiser]

I've taken several 7-night Caribbean and Mexican Riviera cruises and I would estimate the average adult age is late 50's, early 60's on these cruises.

 

That sounds about right for 7-day cruises. For longer cruise it goes up considerably, and at late sixties I sometimes feel like a young whippersnapper! One Panama Canal cruise had a reported 8 kids aboard, from babies to teens.

 

Holidays, school vacations and shorter cruises tend somewhat younger, but Princess is still not known for it's young demographic.