B2B2B on Royal Princess, MSC Seaside and Celebrity Equinox. A comparison review.

MikeyA53 · January 13, 2019

20 hours ago, Host CJSKIDS said:

Really enjoying your review and all of the pictures.

Thank you.

MikeyA53 · January 13, 2019

20 hours ago, reedprincess said:

Enjoying your review, thanks a million.

Are you going to post it to the MSC and Celebrity forums as well?

Thank you, yes I am posting the review on MSC and Celebrity forum.

MikeyA53 · January 13, 2019

6 hours ago, pcsunlover said:

Great review! I appreciate the comparison and pictures from all of the ships. We generally love the Royal class ships with the exception of the tiny balconies. Princess really missed the mark there.

Thanks a bunch.

MikeyA53 · January 13, 2019

6 hours ago, TracieABD said:

Which ended up being your favorite cabin? Or will you include an overall score sheet at the end of your review?

Celebrity.

MikeyA53 · January 13, 2019

6 hours ago, nutensteve said:

Very good review ... thanks for posting.

Thank you for following.

MikeyA53 · January 13, 2019

4 hours ago, richsea said:

Really loving your review and comparisons. It’s a rare thing to see, especially since yyour reporting on b2b2b sailings. We’ve sailed Equinox & Royal multiple times & love them both, even with Royal’s tiny balconies. Equinox & her sister Silhouette are probably our favorite ships. We’ve been considering MSC & your views will help. I was wondering how the Yacht Club affected the rest of the ship. Your comments kind of confirm my fears.

Thanks

MikeyA53 · January 13, 2019

Entertainment

Royal Princess

Overall the entertainment was good on Royal Princess; we saw three out of the four production shows and comedian Scott Wyler twice because he was so good. The production shows were shown twice each night in the Princess Theater, usually at 8:00 pm and 10:00 pm. We also enjoyed the Marriage Match and Majority Rules game show in the smaller Princess Live Theater.

Princess Theater

For activities they had table tennis, mini golf, laser trap shooting, shuffleboard and hitting golf balls in the enclosed driving range. The ship had ‘Movies Under the Stars’ featuring recently released movies on the big screen. In our cabin we had good size wide screen TV with a wide variety of free recently released movies at our disposal.

Basketball court

Mini Golf

Table tennis

Golf driving range

Laser trap shooting

Edited January 13, 2019 by MikeyA53

BarbinMich · January 13, 2019

We've mostly been on Princess, but started with Celebrity and have occasionally gone back to X so I look forward to the rest of your review!

salabc · January 14, 2019

great review very interested in comparing these 3 lines

geoherb · January 14, 2019

Enjoying your comparison. The Royal has three dining rooms, though. You left out Concerto, the second anytime dining room on the Fiesta Deck.

MikeyA53 · January 14, 2019

16 hours ago, BarbinMich said:

We've mostly been on Princess, but started with Celebrity and have occasionally gone back to X so I look forward to the rest of your review!

2 hours ago, salabc said:

great review very interested in comparing these 3 lines

Thanks

MikeyA53 · January 14, 2019

2 hours ago, geoherb said:

Enjoying your comparison. The Royal has three dining rooms, though. You left out Concerto, the second anytime dining room on the Fiesta Deck.

You are right, I don't know how I missed that since I took photographs of all three.

MikeyA53 · January 14, 2019

MSC Seaside

Overall the best entertainment we have ever experienced on a cruise ship. There was a different production show each night of the cruise, plus an additional afternoon show on the second day called ‘Butterfly’. Each show ran about 30 minutes and they were showed at 6:45 pm, 8:00 pm and 9:15 pm. We made reservations on embarkation day for all of the shows and we attended all of them. Even with reservations we usually arrived approximately 20 to 30 minutes before it began because the theater did fill up every night. The shows usually ended with a standing ovation. The cast was made up of approximately 40 singers, dancers and acrobats. The cast had beautiful costumes and it was amazing how many times they changed into different costumes each show.

In addition we saw a very funny BeerProv comedy show in the theater and played the Quest game in one of the lounges. The 4 member cast of the BeerProv was very talented and we wished we would have seen all three of their shows; however their adult only shows played at 10:15 pm which was a bit late for us early risers who love going to the gym and spa.

Quest

MikeyA53 · January 14, 2019

Seaside has a Fun Pass for their F1 Simulator, 5D Cinema, Bowling and Zip Line. They have different packages you can buy and the best deal was purchasing a $100 package and getting $60 additional credit. We bought the package but soon regretted it. It was our fault for not looking into it fully before getting it. Each F1 simulator ride, zip line and 5D Movie (4 different interactive movies) uses $10 of your credit and bowling cost $25 for 30 minutes and $45 for an hour.

Full size bowling lanes

Seating for bowling

Cinema

F1 Simulator

rogerdawhip · January 14, 2019

I followed your many adventures on Carnival with the kids. I’m enjoying this thread just as much. I’ve been on the Royal and agree with your assessments so far.

MikeyA53 · January 14, 2019

Since we had planned on staying onboard for 3 out the 4 ports we thought we would have plenty of time to use our package but they have a very narrow schedule for when it’s open. Reservations can only be done on a daily basis. In addition they didn’t have enough staff working which resulted in long lines. We ended up only using $125 out of the $160 credit available.

Schedule

Line up goes beyond this photo and it was taken on the morning of the last sea day. We stood in line 35 minutes before they opened and we were first in line just one minute before 4 other persons showed up. All of this to make sure we were able to bowl.

Worth mentioning is the Garage Club which is next to the bowling, F1 and cinema on deck 7. It’s a 1950s themed area where you can get drinks and it also becomes a dance club at night with the car as a DJ station.

MikeyA53 · January 14, 2019

For other activities the ship had waterslides, a big screen that showed movies on some nights (they were not recently released movies).The size of our cabin TV was adequate and they had recently released movies at a cost of $8 per movie.

Basketball court

Zip line

MikeyA53 · January 15, 2019

Celebrity Equinox

Compared to Royal Princess and especially Seaside, the production shows on Equinox were boring. We saw two of them throughout the week, during the first one I was falling asleep and I couldn’t wait for the second show to end, vowing I would not return. However the comedians were good and we also attended the game show Majority Rules and several trivia games which was fun.

MikeyA53 · January 15, 2019

One new form of entertainment recommended by our friends who came with us on this cruise was ‘Silent Disco’. Everyone is given a pair of headphones and you can switch between 4 different channels for your music preference. As a consequence not everybody in the crowd is grooving and dancing to the same songs. It’s fun to see other people moving to a different beat than yourself and others. We also took part in Karaoke since Tracy and her friend love to sing.

The headphone glow different colours depending on what channel you have it on

Karaoke

MikeyA53 · January 15, 2019

We found that the ship did not have much in term of activities. They did have Bocce ball and Lawn Bowling on deck 15 which was mostly covered with real grass. One unusual activity was the Hot Glass Show where one passenger at a time could make their own glass art piece for a fee. I believe the prices started at $45. Our cabin had a good size TV and we had 6 free recently released movies at our disposal, all other movies cost $15.

BarbinMich · January 15, 2019

14 minutes ago, MikeyA53 said:

We found that the ship did not have much in term of activities. They did have Bocce ball and Lawn Bowling on deck 15 which was mostly covered with real grass. One unusual activity was the Hot Glass Show where one passenger at a time could make their own glass art piece for a fee. I believe the prices started at $45. Our cabin had a good size TV and we had 6 free recently released movies at our disposal, all other movies cost $15.

. . .

We were on the Eclipse a few years ago and was surprised to see the glass blowing facility because of the extremely high temps needed for that; seemed like a potential fire hazard. It's being on the top deck probably keeps the danger down. I did enjoy the lawn area, primarily when they had entertainment there in late afternoon/early evening. Don't know of any other cruise line that has those two things! What kind of activities did you wish they had? As I remember they had the usual trivia, bingo, etc.

Edited January 15, 2019 by BarbinMich

MikeyA53 · January 16, 2019

On ‎1‎/‎15‎/‎2019 at 1:38 PM, BarbinMich said:

We were on the Eclipse a few years ago and was surprised to see the glass blowing facility because of the extremely high temps needed for that; seemed like a potential fire hazard. It's being on the top deck probably keeps the danger down. I did enjoy the lawn area, primarily when they had entertainment there in late afternoon/early evening. Don't know of any other cruise line that has those two things! What kind of activities did you wish they had? As I remember they had the usual trivia, bingo, etc.

Trivia is fine however we are very active so activities such as climbing wall (Norwegian) Mini Golf, Imax Theater (Carnival), shuttle board, bowling (Norwegian & MSC) rope course (Norwegian & Carnival) etc. Therefore some people will say "why don't you cruise on Norwegian and Carnival if that's what you like" . Well we have but what they may have over Celebrity they also may not measure up in other areas. We can truly say that we have enjoyed all 6 different cruise lines we have sailed on. They all have their pros and cons. I don't think we will ever find one that has everything we love in a cruise.

MikeyA53 · January 16, 2019

Dining

Royal Princess

The buffet food was good overall, we usually had breakfast and lunch at the Horizon Court. Many of the selections were repeated each day but we always found new dishes to try out. It was easy to get a table and I liked that they had the utensils at the table rather than collecting them at the food stations.

Pastry area which includes a speciality coffee bar

The plates have been decorated but the desserts are not on the plates yet.

Edited January 16, 2019 by MikeyA53

MikeyA53 · January 16, 2019

They did have a chocolate buffet toward the end of the week which we unfortunately missed and on the last sea day they had all you can eat lobster tails, shrimps and mussels.