Princess and Cruise Critic's Best ships list

[caribill]

Cruise Critic has released its 2015 list of the best ships according to Cruisers' Choice Awards.

 

Each category had winners for large ship, mid-size ship and small ship.

 

Princess had winners in four categories.

 

Interesting is that three of those four winning categories had the Pacific Princess as the winner. (The Sapphire won once. It also won for best cruises from west coast for any size category).

 

I hope Princess gets the hint that its largest ships are not winning Cruisers' Choice Awards while the smallest ship in the fleet is.

 

Read about it at http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=140690&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=2018923

Edited February 24, 2015 by caribill

[Cruisers from MA]

...I hope Princess gets the hint that its largest ships are not winning Cruisers' Choice Awards while the smallest ship in the fleet is...

 

I saw the list too. Really just the near-complete absence of Princess Grand- or Royal-Class ships among lists featuring Disney, Carnival, and Royal Caribbean ships was surprising and disappointing.

[Colo Cruiser]

I hope Princess gets the hint that its largest ships are not winning Cruisers' Choice Awards while the smallest ship in the fleet is.

 

Read about it at http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=140690&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=2018923

 

 

 

No worse then Conde'nast, very rare a Princess ship ever makes one of their's either.

[shredie]

 

Interesting is that three of those four winning categories had the Pacific Princess as the winner. (The Sapphire won once. It also won for best cruises from west coast for any size category).

 

I hope Princess gets the hint that its largest ships are not winning Cruisers' Choice Awards while the smallest ship in the fleet is.

 

Let's hope, though I'm not fully confident the new management ever learns from experience.

[Cruisin' Chick]

I was just looking at this (trying to delete some emails and came across the email linking to the list). After checking out a few of the lists, that listed the same ships over and over again (the Coral got mentioned among midsize ship but not the Island), I looked at the explanation of how the lists were made...and it's from submitted reviews.

 

This whole list, as with Conde Nast, Porthole, etc. when they print their lists, I have to take with a grain of salt. It could be that some ship's "fans" are just more active with posting reviews, especially positive ones on CC, just as readers of some of the travel magazines may tend to sail on certain ships. So meaningless in my way of thinking.

[Brisbane41]

I don't give reviews like that any thought or credit. I have learnt long ago that it is just editorial garbage with flawed and biased opinions.

 

The reason it is flawed is based on categories like "Best Cruise Ship for Cabins" - how more flawed can this get? It names one ship only. The fundamental problem here is that there may be a dozen clones of this one ship with exactly the same cabins. One ship in the class is really no better than the others. The same principle of this flaw can be replicated along all the other categories for awards.

 

Best entertainment again another subjective opinionated topic. It all comes down to being in the right place at the right time. Anyone who knows cruising knows that these major cruise lines share entertainers around their entire fleet and share them with the other lines under their brand. It is true that the newest ship may get first digs at the best, but the entertainment will reach other ships in the fleet. This causes a major flaw in the review because if the review of entertainment was done while guest entertainers were on board and those guests have since moved onto other lines then how can the review be relevant?

 

If reviews want any credibility they need to reflect the entire cruise line. It is not good to declare a single HAL ship as the best for food. HAL is likely to have the same food preparation and training practices across the entire fleet and the crew often go on leave and return to different ships. I would suggest that the food standards on all HAL ships would be uniform and only have slight differences based on who is in charge and how well the crew are performing at the time. In general the food standard across a fleet in one line is relatively stable.

 

It would be better off to just rate the individual cruise lines opposed to individual ships.

[Kruznut]

Brisbane41, I agree with you. I take most reviews with a grain of salt.

[Talisker92]

No worse then Conde'nast, very rare a Princess ship ever makes one of their's either.

If you ever look at Conde Nast Traveler, you have to wade through page after page of ads for high end merchandise and autos to get to any content.

That sort of implies the demographics of their readers.