Balcony or mini-suite on Princess?

[rstep]

We have never sailed on Princess, but are considering it. Which is the better cabin for the money and which has the bigger balcony. We had a cat. 11 on Carnival Legend and fell in love with the huge wrap around balcony. Any help would be appreciated.

[virgenia]

We have sailed on the Coral Princess and Grand Princess and had mini-suites both times. The balconies are not that huge--the width of the room and deep enough for two chairs and a round table. The chairs are not even lounges. We were on Dolphin deck both times in the mid part of the ship.

[critterchick]

We've been on the Star & the Diamond. We had a standard balcony room on Baja Deck on the Star, and the balcony was pretty small. I remember having balcony envy when I looked down at the Caribe & Dolphin deck balconies. We've had minisuites on Dolphin deck on both ships, which have nice, large balconies - room for a couple of loungers, although not all of the rooms have them. Maybe you need to ask your cabin steward. My inlaws have had standard cabins (FIL qualifies) on Caribe deck on both ships, and the balconies on that level are pretty substantial, too.

 

The Dolphin deck balconies on that class of ship are all open, meaning there is no shade & people can see you. It didn't bother us at all, but if you want some shade or privacy, go with the Caribe deck standard rooms or see if you can get an Emerald Deck minisuite.

 

Our favorite cabins are aft with wrap-around balconies.

[rstep]

Are the wraparound balconies bigger? What did you mean that FIL qualified?

[irislady]

We had a balcony cabin on the Aloha deck on the Coral Princess. Our cabin was a little bit smaller than the balcony cabin we had on the Carnival Pride, but the balconies were about the same size (5' x 9'). On both Princess and Carnival some of the balconies are larger than that.

 

Our closet was bigger on the Coral. The bathroom a little bigger on the Pride.

 

Traffic flow seemed a whole lot better on the Coral than the Pride. On the Pride we often found the main corridors blocked with people.

 

Our friends had a balcony mini suite on the Coral. Our balconies were the same size, but their cabin had an additional sitting area and a larger bathroom with a full size bath tub rather than a small shower stall. DH and I felt for us the difference in cost wouldn't have been worth it.

 

We did like the decor much better on the Coral and felt like we got much better, friendlier service than we did on Carnival. Our room stewards and waiters were very good on both, but the rest of the staff on the Pride weren't that friendly or helpful.) We would sail on Carnival again if the price was really good, but prefer Princess. To be fair I do have to say that a friend of mine (who is the same age as my son) prefers Carnival because she feels it's geared more to younger cruisers like herself. DH and I did think that the food on Carnival was actually better than on Princess which surprised us both.

Shae

[critterchick]

I left out the part that they had a handicapped cabin, that's what FIL qualified for, duh! On Star & Diamond, the handicapped balcony cabins are larger than a standard balcony.

 

I haven't been on an aft cabin on Princess. On S&D, they tend to be suites that are out of my price range, although there are some BB cabins. I've heard that those balconies are larger. On the Royal Caribbean ships, you can get some boffo balconies on the aft. We've had a couple of wrap-arounds on Vision & have one on our upcoming Radiance Alaska cruise. The wrap-arounds are huge and you can see off to the side of the ship as well as behind.