A longtime Princess cruiser tries out RCCL - Vision of the Seas 4/9-4/16/16

As a counterpoint (sort of) to the recent thread where a diehard RCCL cruiser tried out Princess, I just disembarked yesterday from the Vision of the Seas on my first RCCL cruise after 10 previous cruises on Princess. All things considered it was a very nice cruise and I quite enjoyed it, and really think Princess and RCCL are much more similar than different from each other. I thought I would share a few thoughts on how I would compare them:

The Rooms - I'd have to give the edge to Princess here. I was in a deck 2 outside cabin (which is pretty comparable to the Plaza deck OV cabins I often sail in on Princess) and even though the RC cabin is larger overall, I find the use of space on the Princess cabin is more efficient, and I have an easier time storing things there. I also had a number of issues with the bathroom. The sink is difficult to use for washing hands, and the shower seems to be carefully calculated to soak the bathroom floor when you turn it on no matter what countermeasures you may take to prevent it. That said, the bed was reasonably comfortable, and I think I slept better on this cruise than I have on some previous ones. My wife never likes the beds on any cruise ship, and didn't care much for this one either. We had a couple of duvets placed underneath the sheet, which helped some.

The food - I think the actual quality of the food is pretty close to equal, although I think the MDR menus on Princess have more dishes I tend to like (I particularly like the pasta selections on Princess, and the fact that I can order them in appetizer portions to try them out.) The Windjammer was adequate, but never spectacular (then again, I have been less than impressed with the Horizon Court on the last few Princess sailings I've been on.) Normally on Princess I get the Soda and More drink package (Neither me or my wife drink any alcohol) but given the fact that the comparable package on RCCL is twice the price we opted to skip it this time, and ordered a few drinks ala carte instead. One thing we saw was that they were offering a punch card for 7 non-alcoholic frozen drinks for $25 + gratuity, but didn't bother with it. I definitely missed the Princess pizza (I never tried the pizza on the Vision, but the reviews seem to suggest it's nothing to write home about) and the shakes, but I have to say that the self-serve ice cream machines on the pool deck are probably my kryptonite on the ship (Princess has these behind a counter, which tends to keep me from eating too much of the stuff.)

Service - Generally the service was pretty good on this sailing, but we did occasionally encounter slow service in the MDR, and on one evening our meal took nearly 2 hours to complete, which annoyed some of the people in our group. Cabin service was generally as expected, but a request for shampoo, conditioner and lotion went unanswered until we made the request a second time. We did not make any use of the spa and only minimal use of the bars.

The ship - The Vision of the Seas is smaller than most of the ships in the Princess fleet, but for the most part still had all of the stuff we expected. The main things that seemed to be missing were an aft stairway (the Some Enchanted Evening lounge in the back seemed to be a bit of a hike without one) and I would normally expect one more pool on the Lido deck. Neither of those were a big deal though. In general, the ship is well taken care of and looked nice, but we did run into some maintenance issues that did interfere somewhat with the enjoyment of the ship. For one thing, one of the forward elevators on the ship was acting up for most of the cruise, with the doors refusing to close a lot of the time. Eventually it got to the point that I just avoided the forward elevators as much as possible. In the cabin, we had a drawer that was stuck closed, but a call to maintenance got the issue resolved quickly. Basically, the ship checked off all the boxes, but aside from the aerial shows in the Centrum didn't really have much wow factor compared to the other ships I've been on.

The Muster Drill: This is one area I think RCCL does better, at least on this particular ship. Even though muster was on the promenade deck here, they made it quick and efficient and got it done with in just around 15 minutes. On Princess, the muster drills always seem to end up being a big drawn out 45-minute process, and having everyone bring lifejackets makes things really crowded (I do believe Princess has recently moved away from having everyone bring lifejackets to Muster though.)

All things considered, I quite enjoyed this cruise, and would really like to try one of the Oasis or Quantum class ships to get an idea of what the big-ship RCCL experience is like. That said, I think the experience here was in many ways pretty close to what I have experienced on Princess, and would probably choose based on itinerary, although I'll probably favor Princess since I am near Elite status there and have no status (yet) on RCCL.

To finish, a few notes on the cruise:

- Although I only saw him around the ship a couple of times, I was particularly impressed by Captain Marek. He always seemed charming, and loves to make fun of late arrivals in the ports, both crew and passenger. It's probably not a good thing to get named by name in the Captain's docking announcement when told to arrive back on time...

- For the first time I can recall, we did all of our own excursions instead of going through the cruise line. The best one was the cave tubing excursion in Belize that was put together through the CC roll call with about 20 people. We also did a snorkel excursion (that ended up being only the four people in our group) in Roatan and a beach day at Mr. Sancho's in Cozumel. In the past I've generally been inclined to stick to ship's excursions, but might be more likely to try setting them up on my own at this point.

All in all, quite a nice cruise, but between that and a week of Disney beforehand, I think I'm vacationed out for a while.

Love the comparisons, thanks.:)

Great writeup.

Thank you.

Keith

Great write up! We recently cruised Princess for the first time, after sailing mostly with Celebrity. We were on Golden Princess and totally agree with you on the overuse of the MUTS screen during the day - it seemed for the sake of having noise vs actual quality content.

Also agree with the Horizon buffet...we ate their on day of embarkation, was less than impressed and avoided it for the rest of the cruise. I do think we've been spoiled on Celebrity Solstice where the buffet is wonderful - lots of choice and easy to navigate. Thank goodness however for princess pizza!

We are off on our first Royal cruise next Feb, going big sailing on Ovation of the Seas! Her Dynamic Dining concept will be interesting to try the multitude of dining options!

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I hope you will try at least a Freedom class ship some day. The Vision really isn't a great example of what Royal has to offer today. If you are looking for WOW, go bigger. I love your comparisons though. We have never done Princess but certainly have heard nothing bad about them. Just fell in love with Royal and usually find great deals so stuck with them. Thank you so much for taking the time.

I hope you will try at least a Freedom class ship some day. The Vision really isn't a great example of what Royal has to offer today. If you are looking for WOW, go bigger. I love your comparisons though. We have never done Princess but certainly have heard nothing bad about them. Just fell in love with Royal and usually find great deals so stuck with them. Thank you so much for taking the time.

I definitely want to try an Oasis class ship at some point. In this case the itinerary, departure port and price were the main deciding factors for selecting this particular cruise, since we were sailing after a week at Disney World, and sailing out of Tampa seemed to be the best option. 2 weeks is quite a long time to spend on vacation, but given the hassle and expense of flying from Seattle to Florida, I figure it was best to combine trips. And even with the smaller ship I still quite enjoyed the cruise. Some of my favorite Princess ships are the smaller Grand class ships (Golden, Star and Sapphire) but even those are still signifncantly larger than the Vision.

Brian,

Great review. I agree, the Captain was excellent. He actually greeted us (and others) as we disembarked). Nice touch.

In regards to the cabin tv's, I agree. I always find it amazing they have Big Bang Theory running constantly in every language, except English. Bizarre. And for interactive tv, most of the bigger or refurbed ships have it now. Don't know why Vision doesn't.

Glad you and Courtney enjoyed the cave tubing. I know we did. Vitalino and his people were excellent. Couldn't beat it.

Erika

Thank you for sharing.

We really should try Princess, we have friends who love them. Thanks so much again for taking the time to share. It is great to hear different people discuss their cruise because we all look for such different things.

- Although I only saw him around the ship a couple of times, I was particularly impressed by Captain Marek. He always seemed charming, and loves to make fun of late arrivals in the ports, both crew and passenger. It's probably not a good thing to get named by name in the Captain's docking announcement when told to arrive back on time...

We were on the same sailing. We enjoyed captain Marek's humorous announcements, too. At the Captain's Q&A, one passenger suggested distributing water balloons to welcome back the late arrivals! :-D

Very enjoyable comparison between your Princess experiences and this Royal Caribbean voyage....thanks.

DW and I were also on this sailing with a couple we cruise with frequently, our first RC cruise in 6 years ( normally cruise Celebrity but did Panama Canal on Island Princess in 2015 pre-refurb ). We also did private tours in all ports, including cave-tubing in Belize, Mayan ruins ( Chichoban) in Costa Maya, and Escape Room in Cozumel ( HIGHLY RECOMMENDED)...for much cheaper costs than ship tours....We had a very enjoyable cruise and glad you did as well !!

I agree completely with your comparison. We are Diamond Members with RCCL and Platinum Members with Princess. There are things we like better on RCCL and things we like better on Princess. We will be on the Crown in May and on the Allure in October, and looking forward to each one of them for their individual qualities. Sometimes people waste their vacation with needless complaints (comparisons). Like..."They don't do that on RCCL" or "On Princess they do it this way". Just enjoy each cruise line for what they are......A CRUISE VACATION! Glad you enjoyed yours and thanks again for your great open minded views:)

Oh, and one other thing I forgot to mention: I definitely missed the self-service laundromats on the Princess ships on this trip. Fortunately I planned ahead and was able to do laundry at the timeshare condo we spent the previous week at (we did a week at Disney prior to boarding) before embarkation so I had clean laundry for the week, but if I had access to self-serve laundry like the Princess ships have I probably could have gotten away with packing at least 20% less clothing for the trip. I know I could have sent the laundry out if I wanted to, but $30 for a bag of laundry (and that's the sale price) seems a bit excessive.

We were on the same sailing. We enjoyed captain Marek's humorous announcements, too. At the Captain's Q&A, one passenger suggested distributing water balloons to welcome back the late arrivals! :-D

He probably loved the idea of water balloons. We think Captain Marek is the best captain we've ever sailed with. Hope to see him again one day!!

OP;

I just came across your review/thoughts. Thanks for taking the time to post.....:):):)

Bob

The vision OTS is an older ship (1998) and lacks the wow factor of the ships that follow like the voyager and freedom class. The gargantuans OTS is just plain huge with 6000 pax and over 2000 crew. You will get your exercise on those two ships as you walk between food and activities. Nice review though.

The Muster Drill: This is one area I think RCCL does better, at least on this particular ship. Even though muster was on the promenade deck here, they made it quick and efficient and got it done with in just around 15 minutes. On Princess, the muster drills always seem to end up being a big drawn out 45-minute process, and having everyone bring lifejackets makes things really crowded (I do believe Princess has recently moved away from having everyone bring lifejackets to Muster though.)

Thank you for the comparison.

Having just gotten off a Princess cruise last week, we are still bringing the life jackets to the muster drill. However, in my experience, I must say that no drill has ever lasted more than 30 minutes from the sound of the signal until my life jacket was back in the cabin and I was on deck for the sail-away. On Royal did they let you carry the jackets like on Princess or require you to wear them from start-to-finish like they do on some other lines?

Great comparison, hopefully will be looking forward to the Rhapsody of the Seas next year.

I really enjoyed this review. Our first and only Royal Caribbean Cruise was on the Vision of the Seas. That is the ship that got us hooked on cruising; and while we enjoy Royal Caribbean, they have been priced out of the market for us lately. I am very enthusiastic to try Princess. I hope we can find an itinerary that works for us next year and the sooner we get to try them the better!

...On Royal did they let you carry the jackets like on Princess or require you to wear them from start-to-finish like they do on some other lines?

When I saw the OP's title I was imagining a comparison of the newest Princess ship versus one of the older RCI ships. I appreciate the valid points pros and cons in a good review.

Thom

The similarities between the two lines AND the differences are what keep us alternating between them. Love them both.

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Royal does not require you to bring the jacket at all to Muster (but I suppose they would let you carry it if you want to:rolleyes:).

Thank you for the response.