Help will be appreciated!

[janotay]

:D We are planning a Caribbean - 7 nighter for February '09. My DH and I have been on 3 Celebrity Cruises and one RCC. We really enjoy Celebrity. Our friends have only been on Princess. They really enjoy Princess. So those of you out there in CC land that have sailed both...would you give us some comparisons? Food, Service, Ship mainly the basics. Not too concerned about entertainment, but do like the casino, pools and specialty dining. PLEASE help! We just keep point/counter pointing each other. :D ;)

[Peteymil]

I feel that the food on Celebrity is much better in general. I did not enjoy the specialty restaurant on Princess at all, very poor service and the food was not good (table of 9, we all agreed on this point). Since the quality of food is very important to us, this alone would bring us back to Celebrity.

 

However, both lines had nice casinos (Princess seemed bigger), and the basics of both ships were also very nice. Cabin service was good on both lines.

 

Their is something about the ambience of Celebrity that we just enjoy more!!

Hope this helps.

[usha]

You should probably also ask this question on the Princess boards, since the X boards will more likely be skewed in favor of X.:o (It goes without saying that you'll see more Pro-Princess stuff on the Princess boards, too.)

That said, I'd rate Celebrity way above Princess, especially in service. To be fair, I only sailed Princess once (Golden), and it's been six years, but believe me, I'm in no hurry to repeat the Princess cruise experience. The service was no big deal.

Food? I'd rate the food on Princess to be comparable to Celebrity. I enjoyed the food on both lines. Princess' food service wasn't even in the same ballpark with Celebrity. The Princess personal choice dining was not something I would personally choose again.:rolleyes: I much prefer having traditional dining, and the excellent service Celebrity offers in the diningroom.

Pools? Princess' pools are fresh water, and they're open 24/7. Celebrity has salt water pools open until 8 pm. Princess wins there. But don't count on finding a deck chair anyplace onboard after 7:00am on Princess!

The ships themselves? Both cruise lines have beautiful ships, that are kept very clean. I felt terribly crowded on Golden Princess, though, and I've never felt crowded on any Celebrity ship, even when booked to the gills. There just seemed to be way too many people sharing the same public spaces on Princess. Golden Princess also had smaller cabins than the comparable categories on Celebrity, and Princess' showers are the tiniest things I've ever seen! I'm a very small woman, and I was banging my elbows on the shower walls trying to wash my hair, and the shower curtain gets VERY fresh with you. Celebrity's showers are giant by comparison.

Casinos? Can't say. I don't gamble, so I casinos onboard a place to walk through to get from point A to point B for me. Sorry.

Specialty dining? This is another area where Celebrity really shines. While I very much enjoyed the food at Sabatini's, it was no comparison to the dining experience to be had at one of Celebrity's specialty restaurants.

Again the most glaring difference I noticed between the two lines was service. The friendly, gracious service on Celebrity keeps us coming back again and again. The so-so service on Princess turned me off to the point that I've never even considered giving them a second try.

[bubbie617]

It has been our experience that staff is much friendlier on Celebrity and RCCL than on Princess. I really am made to feel like a "valued guest" rather than an annoyance. I also think Celebrity's food is much better than Princess. And the service in the dining room - far superior on =X=. We had a terrible experience with dining room service when we were seated at the Captain's Table where you would expect to have the best service in the room.

 

Princess, after 2 cruses with them, is definitely off our list.

[CathyCruises]

This is funny--personally, I don't think OVERALL there's much difference between any of the mainstream lines--sure, one thing may be better than another on a particular cruise, I'm just talking about the general ambiance as a whole.

 

I sailed both Princess (Tahitian) and =X= (Century) last year. I think the food was better on =X=, but DH thinks the opposite. We BOTH think the dining room waiter and assistant were better and more personable on Princess. Cabin stewards equal although we had a butler on =X= who was very nice. On both ships, we were treated very courteously by everyone we saw, even the engineers in the hallways.

 

100% honestly, I think the casino, the buffet, the entertainment, the service were all within a hairs breadth of each other on both ships. I have sailed every mainstream line, and other than Carnival can't find much difference between them. If you pick a ship that's in good shape with an itinerary you like at a price you can afford, you will have a great time no matter which one you travel.

 

I did sail on Crystal once and that was definitively better across the board; going to try Oceania next.

 

Just go and have fun!

 

Cathy

[Andy]

Hi Everyone !

 

I've sailed both lines many times. I continue to feel that Celebrity has a huge edge on Food and Service over Princess. I am sailing on Celebrity next week and Princess in May, so I look forward to making a better comparison when I return from our Caribbean Princess Cruise in mid May.

[operafan]

I'm hoping that our first (and last) Princess cruise on the Grand was an aberration. The food was inedible and the service horrendous. There was no a/c in the cabins and had we not had a balcony would have roasted. Our cabin attendant "forgot" to clean our cabin 3 days out of the 7 and when we complained ripped our luggage tags off on the last night of the cruise. Did she think we wouldn't notice?? Food, in general, was so sub-par that my husband would give up trying to find something edible (daily) and get a hot dog. Service was non-existant. For example, a group of us had gotten into a hot-tub and the water was cold. We asked the attendant (who was just standing there) to turn up the heat and were told "Go to the back of the ship, the water's hotter there". Last year we were on Connie and the water was tepid. We asked the attendant to turn up the heat a notch and not only did he do it, he came back 30 minutes later to ask if it was ok. There are so many more things that made this cruise positively putrid, but I won't bore anyone with more. I could go on for an hour. Suffice it to say that if what we experienced on Princess is the norm then X provides a MUCH better product.