Celebrity Cruiser Looking to try Princess! Help!

[doghog]

Delete. 

Edited May 3 by doghog

[doghog]

Delete

 

Edited May 3 by doghog

[doghog]

1 hour ago, Retired-N-Happy said:

Yep.  80 nights needed to reach Diamond.   Most of RCI's cruises are 7 days, so 11 cruises @ 7 days and a short 3 day , so it could take a dozen cruises to reach Diamond.  Even if you somehow averaged 8 days with a few longer ones, it would still take 10 cruises to become Diamond and you'd get those free four drinks on cruise 11.

Junior suites and above will get you diamond and above faster. B2B cruises also. 

[Lady Arwen]

We’ve honestly never considered RCI.  The Behemoth of the Seas ships just turn me off and I would imagine there would be tons of kids onboard.  Great for families and young people, but not so much for us retirees.

[memoak]

3 hours ago, suzyed said:

But 15?

Some days 15 some days 10. Either way a bunch of savings 

[jlawrence01]

1 hour ago, Lady Arwen said:

We’ve honestly never considered RCI.  The Behemoth of the Seas ships just turn me off and I would imagine there would be tons of kids onboard.  Great for families and young people, but not so much for us retirees.

 

RCI has smaller ships that are similar in size to most Princess, HAL and Celebrity ships.  However, they have so few of the real amenities that would make them special, why cruise with them.  IMO, the older ships on RCI do not compare well with Carnival ships in terms of service or available food options.

[doghog]

1 hour ago, Lady Arwen said:

We’ve honestly never considered RCI.  The Behemoth of the Seas ships just turn me off and I would imagine there would be tons of kids onboard.  Great for families and young people, but not so much for us retirees.

We cruise RC offen. We only cruise on the following class of ships. Never the huge floating amassment parks of the seas. 😁 Freedom class (~155,000 GT), Voyager Class (~138,000 GT) and Radiance Class (~91,000 GT).  We are RDINKs. 😁

[Mississippian]

I'm joining the conversation late, but I'm surprised that few people are mentioning that Celebrity ships have a much greater "Wow!" factor than Princess ships. They remind me of the designs of the Hyatt Regency hotels from the 1970s. And I couldn't help but notice on my last Silhouette cruise that there were just tons of little private nooks that were by design places where one could go to read a book or just relax.

 

Celebrity Pro: Slightly better food. Better ship design, trendier feel at bars. Lots of private spaces to read or work. Con: Simply more expensive, both for the base cruise and for the drink packages. Entertainment not as good, and ship not designed as well for entertainment. Video poker paytables seemed to be worse. Doesn't offer free European cruises to casino players (me, anyway).

 

Princess Pro: Better entertainment, ship more designed for entertainment. More affordable, both cruise fare and drink/wifi packages. Food is still good. More generous to casino players, with a few free European cruises (I hate sand and heat). The self-service laundry is a huge plus. Con: Princess ships just aren't as elegant and impressive as Celebrity ships. I don't care for the Atrium. The food isn't quite as good. In the bigger scheme of things, these shortcomings are things I can live with most of the time.

 

FWIW, I have 12 cruise credits with Princess and will have 14 after my solo cruise this summer. I have 130 Celebrity points after two cruises, so you can see what my cruise choices have been. If everything were exactly equal money-wise, I would probably choose Celebrity, but I don't think they deserve a huge premium.

[bumble_b62]

On 5/2/2024 at 6:30 AM, Muffinz said:

My understanding is that in Aus / NZ there is no smoking permitted in the casino on Princess ships - can someone confirm this?

 

Our only cruise to date was on Celebrity Solstice in 2018 and we loved it - and we're booked on Crown Princess in December 2024, so it will be interesting to compare 

We probably won't use the casino - unless we have to go through there to get to another part of the ship.

 

we priced a similar cruise on Celebrity in Dec 2024 and Princess was way cheaper

 

There is no smoking in the casino on any cruise ships in Australia or New Zealand. 

[suzyed]

7 hours ago, Lady Arwen said:

Actually, we also cruise with HAL.  Love the Pinnacle class ships, especially Rotterdam.  Variety is the spice of life! lol

Yup!  Actually never sailed on HAL.   Forgot to mention earlier that we sailed on NCL to Alaska twice...it was great!  Haven't sailed NCL since 2010 but we will be getting one of their ships in Jacksonville starting next year.  Might just have to try them again! 

[WeBcruisingMN]

I have skimmed the six pages of responses, so I apologize if some of this was covered… but thought I would chime in. My husband and I are 60 & 58, and have cruised Celebrity 20x, from 2012-2023. We love Celebrity, but when a good deal with the right itinerary came up on Black Friday 2022 with Princess, we bought in.

 

We just returned from the Princess cruise, Royal Princess, April 6-27, 2024 from Sydney to Tokyo…. And though we tried to just enjoy the cruise for “what it was”, we were constantly comparing to our beloved Celebrity cruise line. For the record, this was our second Princess cruise; the first was to Alaska in 2013. We have cruised Royal Caribbean 5x.

 

Here are some thoughts, and again- it may vary, ship-to-ship. 
With 21 days of mostly MDR dining (we did specialty dining 4x), we would have to award the trophy to Princess. Variety of food, serving temperature, and taste won out for Princess…especially in re the recent year or two of cutbacks, on Celebrity, but really- all of the lines.

 

Laundry: we loved being able to do our own laundry, though on a 21 night cruise- the laundry room was BUSY! One had to time your loads right. It was $3/load, either washing or drying…and I brought laundry detergent sheets (from our daughter’s house) instead of dealing with a liquid. The last two loads were wash-only, where we hung everything in our room to dry, because there was too much competition for the dryers.

 

Walking/Jogging Track: Royal Princess had a dedicated area on deck 18. We still needed to dodge other walkers, as we prefer speed walking, but on Celebrity- the track weaves through the upper pool deck area, so much more dodging is involved. Nod to Princess for this walking track layout . 
 

Free Pizza: Princess wins by a mile. The pizza on deck 16 was delicious and always hot. Celebrity tries, but slices are smaller, and sometimes tastes like it has been sitting around.

 

WiFi: goes to Princess. Fast, didn’t kick you out after a period of non-use…
 

Ship Layout: hands down to Celebrity. Princess seemed to be a maze, at least the Royal. One of the MDR’s (Allegro) is only accessible by the rear staircase coming down to deck 6, Allegro hosts both MDR breakfast and MDR lunch, so seemed we were constantly going up to 7, to then walk to the rear and go down to deck 6.
 

The Horizon buffet seemed really disjointed (the few times we had to eat early breakfast and use the buffet). It seemed like little rooms, and corridors, presenting so many blind corners to run into people. 
Especially the public bathrooms, both men’s and women’s were very small and laid-out poorly. Like the person would be drying their hands, but blocking the new person from entering. Small spaces to pass by other guests, just poor layouts in the bathrooms for most of them.

 

Speaking of the Princess bathrooms, I could not believe there were No Buttons for accessibility or automatic opening of the doors. Very un-ADA ….and even for a gal like me, I prefer to NOT touch the door handle when exiting the bathroom, but that was impossible. The doors are wooden and very heavy too. On Celebrity, I am constantly using the door open button, and hitting it with my hip. Also on Celebrity, the bathrooms are staffed more regularly with a helpful employee who directs guests to open toilets and cleans between each use (in the evening). 

 

The stateroom bathrooms were very small (we had a deluxe balcony). My husband is only 6feet tall and slim build, but he was struggling with the small size. The shower with curtain was a bummer, too…the curtain had some mold on the bottom (no wonder, it ‘hung’ in the water residue most times). Smallest cruise ship bathroom we’ve ever endured.
 

Service: on Celebrity, the crew greets you cheerily EVERY TIME. Plus, there are lots of crew out and about often, cleaning the stairways and everywhere on the ship. On Princess, we received a cordial Hello from crew most times, but it just didn’t have the same level of enthusiasm as on Celebrity. On Princess, we hardly noticed crew cleaning the stairways, and a noticeable ‘crumb’ would still be there several days later. 

 

No real nightclub atmosphere, at least on the Royal. We enjoy dancing at night, like to 70s and 80s tunes…but every evening the dancing was held in the Piazza, which was 3 stories tall…. With full lighting, and a mostly normal looking setting, the same as during broad daylight- at 11:00pm - beyond. The lights weren’t dimmed at all, and it just seemed too big for evening dancing. It probably didn’t help that the “DJ” (assistant cruise director) was merely playing full songs, without any blending or mash up, and he would often emphasize line-dancing songs (which the assistant CD had made friends with a group of 10-12 ladies who were in to line dancing) or he would even take requests from ballroom dancing people, and would play their music from 11-12midn, even though the DJ was supposed to be ‘playing the hits’ (as per the daily program).  Dancing was a big disappointment, and the Assistant CD never seemed to notice the cues of reduced people on the dance floor, once he started playing this specialty music (line dancing or ballroom). 

Celebrity has great nighttime dancing, both in the Sky Lounge and in the Grand Foyer.

 

Pool layout: very hard to find available shade loungers. A lot of prime pool deck space is devoted to the table & chair seating for the pizza and burger grill restaurants, so not as many loungers. On our particular cruise, it seemed people were NOT the sun worshipping type, rather they were looking for shade. Celebrity has a lot of lounge chairs under the overhangs on decks.

 

Lighting in stateroom: Celebrity is better. In fact, the first night on Royal we awakened each  other with nighttime trips to the bathroom. There were automatic lights under each nightstand that were VERY bright, and an automatic light in the room near the bathroom entrance that lit-up by motion, as one approached the bathroom. We did NOT need this additional lighting during the dark of night, and did some ‘hacks’ to disable these features for nights 2 through 21. Not sure if these features are for safety, since we noticed the average age of this Princess cruise was quite old, maybe 75-80? Maybe this older demographic needs additional nighttime lighting?

 

Celebrity wins Theatre by a mile…. Their production shows encompass MANY advanced dance moves and even acrobatics….their theatre stage allows for that extra movement and spatial flexibility.
Princess stage, at least the Royal, seemed like our local high school stage, so the dancers seemed to do basic back & forth moves, most of the time…. And the shows were just limited. The Princess theatre seating seemed like a lesser situation: lower ceilings, smaller corridors for accessing the seating, and just a smaller scale experience. We love the theatre shows, so this was a big bummer. Plus, there is no drink service in the theatre, and it is almost like they expect you to NOT be having a drink in the theatre, so there are no cup holders or wine glass holders in the arm rests between the seats.

 

Not typical to have sommeliers in the Princess MDR: on Celebrity, there is a Sommelier dedicated to only drink service in the MDR. The first 3-4 nights in the Princess MDR, the assistant waiter was expected to take our wine order, and we were supposed to know that exactly which wine we wanted to order. We were very dissatisfied with this, and thankfully on Night 5, a sommelier (who was responsible for the entire MDR) approached us and asked how things were going. We were honest, including the feedback of the wine being provided in basic chunky wine glasses, and from nights 6-21, we had a very nice sommelier on Royal Princess, who provided us with good advice on wine and decent semi-fancy glasses, which matched the elegant atmosphere of the dining room itself. 
 

15-Drink Daily Limit on Princess: we never really came close, most we had was 9-10 per day on a couple of days, but it was ALWAYS on our mind and we were constantly having to check our individual accounts to see what our number was. This was due to bar tenders or waiters counting BOTH of our drinks to one of us, not one to each…so one person could get very close to 15, without much warning. Bar Service was also a little spotty on Princess, they wanted you to wait for wait service, but sometimes that took a while…and meanwhile we would watch other guests walk up to the bar and get served immediately. 
 

Anyway, we enjoyed ourselves on the Royal, and we had a fine vacation…but we will probably return to Celebrity. I think the clientele suits our style more, and the service aspect is just such a big part of our cruise experience.

 

These are our recent thoughts; it really depends on what is important to you.

Happy Cruising, Everyone! 😊🚢⚓️

 

 

 

 

Edited May 5 by WeBcruisingMN
Typo

[swjumbo]

5 hours ago, WeBcruisingMN said:

I have skimmed the six pages of responses, so I apologize if some of this was covered… but thought I would chime in. My husband and I are 60 & 58, and have cruised Celebrity 20x, from 2012-2023. We love Celebrity, but when a good deal with the right itinerary came up on Black Friday 2022 with Princess, we bought in.

 

We just returned from the Princess cruise, Royal Princess, April 6-27, 2024 from Sydney to Tokyo…. And though we tried to just enjoy the cruise for “what it was”, we were constantly comparing to our beloved Celebrity cruise line. For the record, this was our second Princess cruise; the first was to Alaska in 2013. We have cruised Royal Caribbean 5x.

 

Here are some thoughts, and again- it may vary, ship-to-ship. 
With 21 days of mostly MDR dining (we did specialty dining 4x), we would have to award the trophy to Princess. Variety of food, serving temperature, and taste won out for Princess…especially in re the recent year or two of cutbacks, on Celebrity, but really- all of the lines.

 

Laundry: we loved being able to do our own laundry, though on a 21 night cruise- the laundry room was BUSY! One had to time your loads right. It was $3/load, either washing or drying…and I brought laundry detergent sheets (from our daughter’s house) instead of dealing with a liquid. The last two loads were wash-only, where we hung everything in our room to dry, because there was too much competition for the dryers.

 

Walking/Jogging Track: Royal Princess had a dedicated area on deck 18. We still needed to dodge other walkers, as we prefer speed walking, but on Celebrity- the track weaves through the upper pool deck area, so much more dodging is involved. Nod to Princess for this walking track layout . 
 

Free Pizza: Princess wins by a mile. The pizza on deck 16 was delicious and always hot. Celebrity tries, but slices are smaller, and sometimes tastes like it has been sitting around.

 

WiFi: goes to Princess. Fast, didn’t kick you out after a period of non-use…
 

Ship Layout: hands down to Celebrity. Princess seemed to be a maze, at least the Royal. One of the MDR’s (Allegro) is only accessible by the rear staircase coming down to deck 6, Allegro hosts both MDR breakfast and MDR lunch, so seemed we were constantly going up to 7, to then walk to the rear and go down to deck 6.
 

The Horizon buffet seemed really disjointed (the few times we had to eat early breakfast and use the buffet). It seemed like little rooms, and corridors, presenting so many blind corners to run into people. 
Especially the public bathrooms, both men’s and women’s were very small and laid-out poorly. Like the person would be drying their hands, but blocking the new person from entering. Small spaces to pass by other guests, just poor layouts in the bathrooms for most of them.

 

Speaking of the Princess bathrooms, I could not believe there were No Buttons for accessibility or automatic opening of the doors. Very un-ADA ….and even for a gal like me, I prefer to NOT touch the door handle when exiting the bathroom, but that was impossible. The doors are wooden and very heavy too. On Celebrity, I am constantly using the door open button, and hitting it with my hip. Also on Celebrity, the bathrooms are staffed more regularly with a helpful employee who directs guests to open toilets and cleans between each use (in the evening). 

 

The stateroom bathrooms were very small (we had a deluxe balcony). My husband is only 6feet tall and slim build, but he was struggling with the small size. The shower with curtain was a bummer, too…the curtain had some mold on the bottom (no wonder, it ‘hung’ in the water residue most times). Smallest cruise ship bathroom we’ve ever endured.
 

Service: on Celebrity, the crew greets you cheerily EVERY TIME. Plus, there are lots of crew out and about often, cleaning the stairways and everywhere on the ship. On Princess, we received a cordial Hello from crew most times, but it just didn’t have the same level of enthusiasm as on Celebrity. On Princess, we hardly noticed crew cleaning the stairways, and a noticeable ‘crumb’ would still be there several days later. 

 

No real nightclub atmosphere, at least on the Royal. We enjoy dancing at night, like to 70s and 80s tunes…but every evening the dancing was held in the Piazza, which was 3 stories tall…. With full lighting, and a mostly normal looking setting, the same as during broad daylight- at 11:00pm - beyond. The lights weren’t dimmed at all, and it just seemed too big for evening dancing. It probably didn’t help that the “DJ” (assistant cruise director) was merely playing full songs, without any blending or mash up, and he would often emphasize line-dancing songs (which the assistant CD had made friends with a group of 10-12 ladies who were in to line dancing) or he would even take requests from ballroom dancing people, and would play their music from 11-12midn, even though the DJ was supposed to be ‘playing the hits’ (as per the daily program).  Dancing was a big disappointment, and the Assistant CD never seemed to notice the cues of reduced people on the dance floor, once he started playing this specialty music (line dancing or ballroom). 

Celebrity has great nighttime dancing, both in the Sky Lounge and in the Grand Foyer.

 

Pool layout: very hard to find available shade loungers. A lot of prime pool deck space is devoted to the table & chair seating for the pizza and burger grill restaurants, so not as many loungers. On our particular cruise, it seemed people were NOT the sun worshipping type, rather they were looking for shade. Celebrity has a lot of lounge chairs under the overhangs on decks.

 

Lighting in stateroom: Celebrity is better. In fact, the first night on Royal we awakened each  other with nighttime trips to the bathroom. There were automatic lights under each nightstand that were VERY bright, and an automatic light in the room near the bathroom entrance that lit-up by motion, as one approached the bathroom. We did NOT need this additional lighting during the dark of night, and did some ‘hacks’ to disable these features for nights 2 through 21. Not sure if these features are for safety, since we noticed the average age of this Princess cruise was quite old, maybe 75-80? Maybe this older demographic needs additional nighttime lighting?

 

Celebrity wins Theatre by a mile…. Their production shows encompass MANY advanced dance moves and even acrobatics….their theatre stage allows for that extra movement and spatial flexibility.
Princess stage, at least the Royal, seemed like our local high school stage, so the dancers seemed to do basic back & forth moves, most of the time…. And the shows were just limited. The Princess theatre seating seemed like a lesser situation: lower ceilings, smaller corridors for accessing the seating, and just a smaller scale experience. We love the theatre shows, so this was a big bummer. Plus, there is no drink service in the theatre, and it is almost like they expect you to NOT be having a drink in the theatre, so there are no cup holders or wine glass holders in the arm rests between the seats.

 

Not typical to have sommeliers in the Princess MDR: on Celebrity, there is a Sommelier dedicated to only drink service in the MDR. The first 3-4 nights in the Princess MDR, the assistant waiter was expected to take our wine order, and we were supposed to know that exactly which wine we wanted to order. We were very dissatisfied with this, and thankfully on Night 5, a sommelier (who was responsible for the entire MDR) approached us and asked how things were going. We were honest, including the feedback of the wine being provided in basic chunky wine glasses, and from nights 6-21, we had a very nice sommelier on Royal Princess, who provided us with good advice on wine and decent semi-fancy glasses, which matched the elegant atmosphere of the dining room itself. 
 

15-Drink Daily Limit on Princess: we never really came close, most we had was 9-10 per day on a couple of days, but it was ALWAYS on our mind and we were constantly having to check our individual accounts to see what our number was. This was due to bar tenders or waiters counting BOTH of our drinks to one of us, not one to each…so one person could get very close to 15, without much warning. Bar Service was also a little spotty on Princess, they wanted you to wait for wait service, but sometimes that took a while…and meanwhile we would watch other guests walk up to the bar and get served immediately. 
 

Anyway, we enjoyed ourselves on the Royal, and we had a fine vacation…but we will probably return to Celebrity. I think the clientele suits our style more, and the service aspect is just such a big part of our cruise experience.

 

These are our recent thoughts; it really depends on what is important to you.

Happy Cruising, Everyone! 😊🚢⚓️

 

 

 

 

We couldn’t have said it better. A perfect answer to the original question.

 

No thread drift (the OP didn’t ask about RCL, HAL, etc) and a real comparison of the two lines.

 

Thank you!

 

[Lady Arwen]

10 hours ago, WeBcruisingMN said:

I have skimmed the six pages of responses, so I apologize if some of this was covered… but thought I would chime in. My husband and I are 60 & 58, and have cruised Celebrity 20x, from 2012-2023. We love Celebrity, but when a good deal with the right itinerary came up on Black Friday 2022 with Princess, we bought in.

 

We just returned from the Princess cruise, Royal Princess, April 6-27, 2024 from Sydney to Tokyo…. And though we tried to just enjoy the cruise for “what it was”, we were constantly comparing to our beloved Celebrity cruise line. For the record, this was our second Princess cruise; the first was to Alaska in 2013. We have cruised Royal Caribbean 5x.

 

Here are some thoughts, and again- it may vary, ship-to-ship. 
With 21 days of mostly MDR dining (we did specialty dining 4x), we would have to award the trophy to Princess. Variety of food, serving temperature, and taste won out for Princess…especially in re the recent year or two of cutbacks, on Celebrity, but really- all of the lines.

 

Laundry: we loved being able to do our own laundry, though on a 21 night cruise- the laundry room was BUSY! One had to time your loads right. It was $3/load, either washing or drying…and I brought laundry detergent sheets (from our daughter’s house) instead of dealing with a liquid. The last two loads were wash-only, where we hung everything in our room to dry, because there was too much competition for the dryers.

 

Walking/Jogging Track: Royal Princess had a dedicated area on deck 18. We still needed to dodge other walkers, as we prefer speed walking, but on Celebrity- the track weaves through the upper pool deck area, so much more dodging is involved. Nod to Princess for this walking track layout . 
 

Free Pizza: Princess wins by a mile. The pizza on deck 16 was delicious and always hot. Celebrity tries, but slices are smaller, and sometimes tastes like it has been sitting around.

 

WiFi: goes to Princess. Fast, didn’t kick you out after a period of non-use…
 

Ship Layout: hands down to Celebrity. Princess seemed to be a maze, at least the Royal. One of the MDR’s (Allegro) is only accessible by the rear staircase coming down to deck 6, Allegro hosts both MDR breakfast and MDR lunch, so seemed we were constantly going up to 7, to then walk to the rear and go down to deck 6.
 

The Horizon buffet seemed really disjointed (the few times we had to eat early breakfast and use the buffet). It seemed like little rooms, and corridors, presenting so many blind corners to run into people. 
Especially the public bathrooms, both men’s and women’s were very small and laid-out poorly. Like the person would be drying their hands, but blocking the new person from entering. Small spaces to pass by other guests, just poor layouts in the bathrooms for most of them.

 

Speaking of the Princess bathrooms, I could not believe there were No Buttons for accessibility or automatic opening of the doors. Very un-ADA ….and even for a gal like me, I prefer to NOT touch the door handle when exiting the bathroom, but that was impossible. The doors are wooden and very heavy too. On Celebrity, I am constantly using the door open button, and hitting it with my hip. Also on Celebrity, the bathrooms are staffed more regularly with a helpful employee who directs guests to open toilets and cleans between each use (in the evening). 

 

The stateroom bathrooms were very small (we had a deluxe balcony). My husband is only 6feet tall and slim build, but he was struggling with the small size. The shower with curtain was a bummer, too…the curtain had some mold on the bottom (no wonder, it ‘hung’ in the water residue most times). Smallest cruise ship bathroom we’ve ever endured.
 

Service: on Celebrity, the crew greets you cheerily EVERY TIME. Plus, there are lots of crew out and about often, cleaning the stairways and everywhere on the ship. On Princess, we received a cordial Hello from crew most times, but it just didn’t have the same level of enthusiasm as on Celebrity. On Princess, we hardly noticed crew cleaning the stairways, and a noticeable ‘crumb’ would still be there several days later. 

 

No real nightclub atmosphere, at least on the Royal. We enjoy dancing at night, like to 70s and 80s tunes…but every evening the dancing was held in the Piazza, which was 3 stories tall…. With full lighting, and a mostly normal looking setting, the same as during broad daylight- at 11:00pm - beyond. The lights weren’t dimmed at all, and it just seemed too big for evening dancing. It probably didn’t help that the “DJ” (assistant cruise director) was merely playing full songs, without any blending or mash up, and he would often emphasize line-dancing songs (which the assistant CD had made friends with a group of 10-12 ladies who were in to line dancing) or he would even take requests from ballroom dancing people, and would play their music from 11-12midn, even though the DJ was supposed to be ‘playing the hits’ (as per the daily program).  Dancing was a big disappointment, and the Assistant CD never seemed to notice the cues of reduced people on the dance floor, once he started playing this specialty music (line dancing or ballroom). 

Celebrity has great nighttime dancing, both in the Sky Lounge and in the Grand Foyer.

 

Pool layout: very hard to find available shade loungers. A lot of prime pool deck space is devoted to the table & chair seating for the pizza and burger grill restaurants, so not as many loungers. On our particular cruise, it seemed people were NOT the sun worshipping type, rather they were looking for shade. Celebrity has a lot of lounge chairs under the overhangs on decks.

 

Lighting in stateroom: Celebrity is better. In fact, the first night on Royal we awakened each  other with nighttime trips to the bathroom. There were automatic lights under each nightstand that were VERY bright, and an automatic light in the room near the bathroom entrance that lit-up by motion, as one approached the bathroom. We did NOT need this additional lighting during the dark of night, and did some ‘hacks’ to disable these features for nights 2 through 21. Not sure if these features are for safety, since we noticed the average age of this Princess cruise was quite old, maybe 75-80? Maybe this older demographic needs additional nighttime lighting?

 

Celebrity wins Theatre by a mile…. Their production shows encompass MANY advanced dance moves and even acrobatics….their theatre stage allows for that extra movement and spatial flexibility.
Princess stage, at least the Royal, seemed like our local high school stage, so the dancers seemed to do basic back & forth moves, most of the time…. And the shows were just limited. The Princess theatre seating seemed like a lesser situation: lower ceilings, smaller corridors for accessing the seating, and just a smaller scale experience. We love the theatre shows, so this was a big bummer. Plus, there is no drink service in the theatre, and it is almost like they expect you to NOT be having a drink in the theatre, so there are no cup holders or wine glass holders in the arm rests between the seats.

 

Not typical to have sommeliers in the Princess MDR: on Celebrity, there is a Sommelier dedicated to only drink service in the MDR. The first 3-4 nights in the Princess MDR, the assistant waiter was expected to take our wine order, and we were supposed to know that exactly which wine we wanted to order. We were very dissatisfied with this, and thankfully on Night 5, a sommelier (who was responsible for the entire MDR) approached us and asked how things were going. We were honest, including the feedback of the wine being provided in basic chunky wine glasses, and from nights 6-21, we had a very nice sommelier on Royal Princess, who provided us with good advice on wine and decent semi-fancy glasses, which matched the elegant atmosphere of the dining room itself. 
 

15-Drink Daily Limit on Princess: we never really came close, most we had was 9-10 per day on a couple of days, but it was ALWAYS on our mind and we were constantly having to check our individual accounts to see what our number was. This was due to bar tenders or waiters counting BOTH of our drinks to one of us, not one to each…so one person could get very close to 15, without much warning. Bar Service was also a little spotty on Princess, they wanted you to wait for wait service, but sometimes that took a while…and meanwhile we would watch other guests walk up to the bar and get served immediately. 
 

Anyway, we enjoyed ourselves on the Royal, and we had a fine vacation…but we will probably return to Celebrity. I think the clientele suits our style more, and the service aspect is just such a big part of our cruise experience.

 

These are our recent thoughts; it really depends on what is important to you.

Happy Cruising, Everyone! 😊🚢⚓️

 

 

 

 

We are also fans of Celebrity, but we have sailed Princess numerous times over the years.  I do agree that Celebrity, although more expensive, just checks all the boxes for us.  We will be sailing on our last Princess cruise, for the time being, in August.  We have 3 Celebrity and 1 HAL booked for 2024 and 2025.  The indoor smoking issue on Princess has become a deal breaker for us and we’re done with it.  If Princess changes their smoking policy in the future then we may consider trying them again.  So many things we do like about Princess, if only……..

[warthog2608]

On 4/30/2024 at 6:51 PM, lahlah57 said:

Yup those shower curtains always give me the weebie jeebies! It feels yucky when it touches you! 😫 

Yup, ditto!

[Mark_K]

For some perspective in the other direction, there’s a Celebrity vs Princess thread on the Celebrity board.

 

Celebrity vs Princess

[doghog]

12 hours ago, WeBcruisingMN said:

Walking/Jogging Track: Royal Princess had a dedicated area on deck 18. We still needed to dodge other walkers, as we prefer speed walking, but on Celebrity- the track weaves through the upper pool deck area, so much more dodging is involved. Nod to Princess for this walking track layout . 

I'm also a speed walker. Really liked the walking track on deck 18 on the Enchanted also. Same class ship as Royal. Celebrity's E class ships also have great walking tracks. No loungers or pool people to deal with either. Celebrity's E class ships walking tracks are better than Princess Royal class ship tracks.  

[Retired-N-Happy]

15 hours ago, WeBcruisingMN said:

These are our recent thoughts; it really depends on what is important to you.

Happy Cruising, Everyone! 😊🚢⚓️

It really does depend what's important to you.  We have cruised on Princess four times, on the Discovery and the Majestic.  We have cruised on X nine times, with five of them bring on the Edge Class.

The drink package that each line provides is important to us and this is the main differentiation between the two lines.  Princess's basic package covers drinks up to 15.00, so that you can get an espresso martini or a craft cocktail at Good Spirits at Sea.  On Celebrity, their basic package covers drinks up to 10.00 and basically is bar brands and no craft cocktails at all.  Another disparity is that a Michelob Ultra or a Blue Moon are 7.50 on Princess and covered.  They are 11.00 on X and thus not covered.  If you wanted to upgrade to the Premium package on X, it used to be 12.00 a day with gratuity and only 1 person could upgrade.  The difference is now 24.00 per day and both need to upgrade.  So what used to be 12 a day for 1 is now 48 a day for two.

This adds up and now that X has eliminated the staff gratuities as part of their package, that's another 16 added per day per person versus 0 on Princess since it's included in their Plus package.

The bottom line is that even though we really enjoyed the cutting edge attributes of X, the dollar savings on Princess is a higher value to us.  That is why X is in our rear view mirror and we currently have 11 cruises booked on Princess between the Enchanted, the Sun and the Star totalling 91 nights.

[WeBcruisingMN]

7 hours ago, Lady Arwen said:

The indoor smoking issue on Princess has become a deal breaker for us and we’re done with it.

Yes, I would hate the indoor smoking too… I think we got lucky, in that our April 6 Royal Princess cruise sailed from Australia, so they were subject to the rules that someone mentioned in a previous post. So- there wasn’t any smoking in the casino on our sailing.

[WeBcruisingMN]

4 hours ago, doghog said:

Celebrity's E class ships also have great walking tracks.

Thanks for mentioning that, I had kind of forgotten about Celebrity’s E class having favorable walking tracks. We have sailed on Edge, Apex, and Beyond….and it definitely was a better walking scenario on each of those ships.

[WeBcruisingMN]

2 hours ago, Retired-N-Happy said:

The drink package that each line provides is important to us and this is the main differentiation between the two lines. 

You make some very valid points, thank you for that!
 

We were pretty lucky with this Royal Princess cruise, in that our Black Friday 2022 deal was for the Premier package, which covered drinks up to $30 (Australian pricing). We also noticed that Princess has KEPT some of the ‘good brands’ in their package tiers, while Celebrity has seemed to be REDUCING package offerings, and moving brands to higher and higher tiers (or even above the packages).

 

Sounds like you are a wise consumer, and I think we all need to keep comparing and keeping tabs on the changes that each line makes.

 

i hope you greatly enjoy your upcoming nights on Princess. Happy cruising 🚢