NCL consideration?

[gettingmarried]

I am preparing to book a cruise and have never tried to NCL but their price seems right. I am a Princess cruiser. ANy comments or feedback verses the two lines would be great. I believe the cruise I am looking at will be on the Jewel Thanks!

[DeltaOne]

I am preparing to book a cruise and have never tried to NCL but their price seems right. I am a Princess cruiser. ANy comments or feedback verses the two lines would be great. I believe the cruise I am looking at will be on the Jewel Thanks!

 

We've sailed both. Both offer pluses and minuses. A lot depends on whether you like or dislike traditional dining. The newer NCL ships, built to support anytime dining, seem to get better reviews.

 

We've sailed one of NCL's oldest ships, the Majesty, twice and loved it -- but we like any ship, new, old, small, big. It's just nice being on a cruise...

[tiggerfan616]

I am preparing to book a cruise and have never tried to NCL but their price seems right. I am a Princess cruiser. ANy comments or feedback verses the two lines would be great. I believe the cruise I am looking at will be on the Jewel Thanks!

Sorry I cant comment on Princess but I can tell you the Jewel is a great choice, she was our 1st ship and now we are hooked on cruising. We love the freestyle dining concept.

[uppitycats]

I've sailed on both Princess and NCL, and coincidently, on the NCL Jewel. The NCL experience is less formal, much more casual, laid back. There are no formal nights, no afternoon teas. There wasn't a "captain's party" or "captain's dinner" on my NCL cruise -- but I think I saw that those things might have happened on other NCL ships.

 

The Princess experience is more formal. You can choose to go to "traditional dining" (a set dinner time) rather than "anytime dining" (which would be comparable to NCL's "freestyle"). There are formal dress-up nights on Princess cruises, which a lot of folks take advantage of. On NCL there are a couple of nights designated as "dress up or not"...but not very many people choose to "dress up". Princess staff seemed a bit more attentive, but that may have just been my impression.

 

I'd cruise on either line again. My husband likes NCL's casualness; I miss the afternoon teas! :)

[LindaKE]

We sailed on the Jewel after our 2 Princess cruises. The biggest difference we found was that Princess has a quieter, more "refined" atmosphere while NCL's is more a "fun" atmosphere and has more speciality restaurants. Decor accounts for most of this. People say that more people dress up on Princess, but on our cruise, every night, not just on formal night, seemed to be about the same as what we saw on Princess. (NCL did still had the "No Jeans in the Dining Rooms" rule at the time.) The service was just as good, and the crew on NCL actually spoke better English. The food was comparable. We liked Princess' shows better but considered that to be simply our personal taste in entertainment. While we still consider Princess our favorite, NCL is a close second. We compared the two and chose our upcoing cruise on NCL Spirit based solely on itinerary and price. If you like Princess you'll like NCL also.

[GinDon]

We've done Princess twice, Carnival once, and now recently Norwegian (Spirit), We found that the food is more "elegant" on Princess, and even Carnival. But that's not to say the food on Norwegian wasn't good. We were never disappointed in our choice of meals. As for the entertainment, Princess and Carnival have better shows, hands down. But, we liked Norwegian very much, Freestyle everything is hard to beat! We will definitely sail with Norwegian again.

[jdenn4]

click my name and you'll see a list of my posts, one of which is "Princess vs NCL" ...hopefully that will help :)

[DDMau]

click my name and you'll see a list of my posts, one of which is "Princess vs NCL" ...hopefully that will help :)

 

 

Very good review, helpful with lots of information.

Thanks