Princess 10 Day Eastern vs Southern Cruise, Which is Better?

We are planning our next cruise to the Caribbean. Which is a better itinerary, we love beaches, sightseeing and shopping. We did a 7 day Eastern Caribbean cruise on the Royal Princess in Feb. 2015 visiting St. Maarten and St. Thomas.

We are considering:

10 Day Princess Eastern Voyager: Antigua, St. Lucia, Barbados, St. Kitts, St. Thomas.

10 Day Southern Caribbean Medley: St. Thomas, Dominica, Grenada, Bonaire, Aruba

Those who have taken these cruises, can you tell which is better, thank you.

We have done the 10 day southern trip and enjoyed it a lot. Lots of fun things to see and do at all the ports. Bonaire is suppose to have some of the best snorkeling. Aruba has some good beaches.

We will be trying the other one this next winter. As we had seen the other islands we thought we would try some new ones.

There is a blog from a couple (she writes it) who lived on the Emerald for the past few winters. Last winter they did both of these tours and you could go back and read about them. They love beaches and know how to do it without spending a lot of money. Worth checking out. It is Yellow Fish cruises. Here is a link:

http://www.pescadoamarillo.blogspot.com/2014_10_15_archive.html

Maybe that will help?

I have been to all of those ports. I would choose So Caribbean but either one is a very good itinerary. I love beaches and Bonaire had great snorkeling. You can't go wrong with either.

Have been to all the islands except for st Lucia. It is hard to choose between the two itineraries. Both have good and not so good islands.

Unless you are into snorkeling or diving, Bonaire is a bust. Grenada, although we liked when we were there, many have complained about the over-aggressiveness and downright harassment while at the beach there :eek:

Always enjoy st Thomas, Aruba has wonderful beaches. Dominica is beautiful but not a beachy place. Antigua was so-so Always enjoy the beaches of Barbados st kitts is just okay

We enjoy some islands more than others, but we have always had a good time

The niceness award goes to the lovely people of Dominica.

I've done both and really enjoyed each of them, so it's a real toss-up.

The deeper southern Caribbean itinerary (the Medley) would be a little different. Aruba is more arid and not as lushly green everywhere as one is used to seeing in the Caribbean. But they have gorgeous beaches down there.

Eastern Voyager is our all-time favorite Caribbean cruise itinerary!:D

We are planning our next cruise to the Caribbean. Which is a better itinerary, we love beaches, sightseeing and shopping. We did a 7 day Eastern Caribbean cruise on the Royal Princess in Feb. 2015 visiting St. Maarten and St. Thomas.

 

We are considering:

10 Day Princess Eastern Voyager: Antigua, St. Lucia, Barbados, St. Kitts, St. Thomas.

 

10 Day Southern Caribbean Medley: St. Thomas, Dominica, Grenada, Bonaire, Aruba

 

Those who have taken these cruises, can you tell which is better, thank you.

We did both of these itineraries on our Emerald B2B this year. We loved both so much that we're doing them again next year on the Royal! I honestly would be hard pressed to pick one over the other, sorry. :)

We did both of these itineraries on our Emerald B2B this year. We loved both so much that we're doing them again next year on the Royal! I honestly would be hard pressed to pick one over the other, sorry. :)

Now that's the way I'd like to do it! We have yet to cruise the Caribbean but a b2b with the Eastern and Southern sounds wonderful.

Now that's the way I'd like to do it! We have yet to cruise the Caribbean but a b2b with the Eastern and Southern sounds wonderful.

It is wonderful. :) Now if they would just replace one of the two Princess Cay days with Grand Turk and one of the two St Thomas days with St Maarten..... the darn thing would be PERFECT! :D :cool:

I did the Southern Caribbean itinerary last year and quite enjoyed it (Bonaire was probably my favorite island on the itinerary. Dominica and Grenada are a bit less common as port stops, but are interesting in their own ways.) I haven't done the Eastern itinerary though so I can't speak for that.

We've done both of these several times. We have found the beaches of the eastern itinerary better. Antigua has 365 of them, St. Kitts has some nice ones along with Barbados especially at the Boat yard. The southern itinerary is more limited. I agree with other regarding the nice beaches on Aruba but not so on Grenada, or Dominique or Bonaire. Be sure to read the blog mentioned. Jeannie does a great job explaining the ports.

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We have done both and enjoyed southern the most.

I couldn't decide so doing them both as a B2B :eek:

I'm sure you will enjoy either.

I couldn't decide so doing them both as a B2B :eek:

 

I'm sure you will enjoy either.

that is great and what I would do too.... in fact we will be on with you --- we are doing a b2b2b with the 7th being our last leg.

For the original poster, I love both itineraries. I have written extensively about both those itineraries in my blog (link below) just click on the port on the right to learn more about each spot.

Vickie

I couldn't decide so doing them both as a B2B :eek:

 

I'm sure you will enjoy either.

Agreed......we did the B2B and it was great.

Two visits to Princess Cays was really nice and we treated the mid-trip return to Ft. Lauderdale as a port day (and a wine restocking day :)).

We are booked on the Royal for the Eastern Caribbean Voyager March 19, 2015. Looking forward to visiting some new Islands.

We are planning our next cruise to the Caribbean. Which is a better itinerary, we love beaches, sightseeing and shopping. We did a 7 day Eastern Caribbean cruise on the Royal Princess in Feb. 2015 visiting St. Maarten and St. Thomas.

 

We are considering:

10 Day Princess Eastern Voyager: Antigua, St. Lucia, Barbados, St. Kitts, St. Thomas.

 

10 Day Southern Caribbean Medley: St. Thomas, Dominica, Grenada, Bonaire, Aruba

 

Those who have taken these cruises, can you tell which is better, thank you.

We've done both and would choose the Southern Caribbean Medley...hands down!!

We had the same dilemma, and so started with the Southern one year and Eastern the next. Last year, Alaska B2B and now we're scheduled for the Southern again in March. We do more water-sports with the Southern (champagne reef snorkel in Dominica is a big favorite), but really enjoyed touring St. Kitts via cab. You can look at the excursions for both and see if there is something that you'd really like to do and go with that for your first trip. I agree with the previous poster though - would love it if they replaced St. Thomas with anything else and tucked in a stop to Turks & Cacaos as a change of pace. :)

I don't think you'll be disappointed with either cruise. We've been to some of these places when we took a Princess cruise from San Juan. If you like snorkeling, Bonaire is beautiful. The coral reef is amazing. I found Aruba to be very touristy - Palm beach was pretty but extremely crowded. Eagle beach would have been a better choice. I wasn't feeling well when we stopped in Grenada so we missed that port, but I believe others said the spice tour was great. We where only in port for half of a day.

St. Lucia is just beautiful. We took a private excursion with members of our roll call and it was the best we've ever had - took a mud bath in the middle of the forest, snorkeled in a cove near the Pitons, had a homemade lunch at our tour guide's home and a high speed boat ride seeing different sites around the island.

I really think your choice depends on what you like to do. Check out the excursions offered by Princess on each of the islands and/or google private ones to see which itinerary has the better options for your tastes.

If Princess would replace St. Thomas with St. Maarten on one of these itineraries we would book it in a heartbeat - getting kind of tired of St. Thomas.

To the OP ....

We've been on both of these itineraries several times on Princess. They are great for making into a B2B! :D

Since you haven't been on a Deep Southern cruise, that would be my choice.

Bonaire is one of our favorite Caribbean ports. :)

LuLu

We've done the Eastern twice and the Southern once (This past March). Both were great and I agree you really can't go wrong, but IF I had to choose I would pick Eastern. Barbados has swimming with sea turtles, Antiqua has nice beaches, St. Lucia is beautiful, and has an active volcano you can get up close to-smells like rotten eggs, but a neat experience, and St Kitts is my favorite of the Caribbean Islands.

We have done both as individual 10 day trips and are doing both as a 20 day in January. For us we prefer the southern. However, we do a lot of snorkeling. The question depends more upon what your interests are (which you did not mention).