Princess Cruiser tries Royal Caribbean

[Samanthamelody3]

I was wondering what the comparison between the 2 cruise lines would be.

Thank you for this.

Enjoy your next cruise!

[sept10dsm]

There used to be quite a few of these type of comparisons a few yrs back

[baldercash]

I had to respond to this. It all sounds good, but the kids just don't go for it.

 

We just sailed on Freedom of the Seas earlier this month. My kids are 15 and 12. My 15 yo daughter went to the teen center on the first night, met people, and never went back. She was out until 1 am every night (the ship curfew for under 18s) and had a ball but did not do any of those activities you listed. She said they were lame. My 12 year old son isn't much of a club person so other than the basketball tournament he didn't bother with any of it either. Surprisingly neither had any interest in the rock wall, and my kids are very athletic.

 

I have limited cruise experience - one cruise each on Princess and RCI - but here are my observations. I actually thought food in the MDR was better on RCI. I've heard lots of people say the opposite so maybe its just me. Pizza is much better on Princess. The IC beats the Cafe Promenade hands down. Room layout was better on Princess. Our room steward was better on RCI. MDR service was much better on Princess. Entertainment was better on RCI.

 

I didn't like the Royal Promenade area at all because it didn't have any windows. I was calling it the cave after a couple days. I could not figure out why people would want to have a drink or eat pizza in a cave. We attended a couple night time things there and went down for coffee a couple times but pretty much stayed away from it. I liked the layout of the Ruby much better.

 

Over all, I liked Princess better. Daughter preferred RCI because of the social scene. Husband prefers RCI because of the entertainment. Son prefers Princess because of the food, especially the pizza. We would sail either again based on timing, price, and itinerary.

 

Could be correct, I look at the stuff and think of what I did as a teen and I would be in heaven. I have even given the wall a try and the flow rider not done zip line.

 

But I notice the kids don't even play outside in our neighborhood anymore.

A different world out there for kids these days.

[cruzsnooze]

RCL has a small sofa in all category cabins which gives the cabin an edge for me. I also think RCL has a better buffet then Princess but Princess dining room is equal. Princess is more formal then RCL. I think both cruise lines are more similar then different although i have to agree that a ship the size of the Oasis wouldn't appeal to me. I wouldn't hesitate to book a cruise on either cruise line although not on one of RCL's mega ships.

[Seal]

Well--I think that the Oasis and the Allure are the ships that are good for RCL--Besides that I'll take Princess any day !!!!!!

 

Nancy:D:D

[royalcruz]

If anyone has only tried Oasis class, please try Voyager or Freedom classes before deciding to abandon RC. I much prefer Freedom class.

[Desert Cruizers]

Our favorite Class with Royal Caribbean, is their Radiance Class. Doesn't have all the belsl and whistles of the larger ships or the Royal Promenade, but the views from all the glass in the public areas is wonderful. We keep our cruises between Princess and Royal depending on price and itinerary. We did sail on the Liberty of the Seas and will say the shows were top notch. We have found the food pretty equal and the service on both lines very good.

[tinatark]

If anyone has only tried Oasis class, please try Voyager or Freedom classes before deciding to abandon RC. I much prefer Freedom class.

 

:) We had already decided to try that before saying "No more RC" ... then hubby won a cruise on the Liberty of the Seas for Dec. 2014.

 

I think we will look at booking before/after our sailing - a back to back!

[Loonbeam]

I think you will like the Liberty. We found her to have most of the same features, without the crowding the Oasis class seems to have...

 

To prep for your Liberty cruise, here's our review of her from a Princess cruiser standpoint..

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1726735

 

We just got back from a 7 night W. Caribbean on the Oasis of the Seas, after many Princess cruises - Crown, Golden, Caribbean, Grand Princess.

 

Comparisons:

 

Food - Princess has the upper hand, both in dining room and other (free) venues - Pizza, pastries, etc. EXCEPT for the fresh carved roast beef sandwich on the Oasis! We sure did miss the International Cafe! Room service menu was VERY limited - and you can't write in anything! My teens missed the ultimate drink card Princess offers!

 

Rooms - equal - but our bed was more comfy on RC.

 

Entertainment - RC has the upper hand, with the diving show and Broadway style productions - I don't think those are offered on all of their ships, though.

 

Staff - Princess is more polished - although I have to say our cabin steward on the Oasis was the best ever! Otherwise - wait staff, Cruise Director Staff, etc. - Princess definitely is better. It was strange in the casino when I watched a child (looked to be under 10 years old) playing a slot machine - I asked a security officer walking through about age limits - he said, "Well, his father is there, so it's okay". On Princess you are only allowed to pass through the casino if you are underage.

 

Teen Club- my 17 year old said (unsolicited) that Princess is much better. More activities they want to participate in. I don't think they ever went to the RC one, except to register the first night - maybe to the club party, too.

 

Labadee vs. Princess Cays - PC has the upper hand. It just does!

 

It was nice, because the Oasis was so large, that we never tendered.

 

Public areas were generally pretty crowded on the Oasis, especially if anything was going on.

 

We think that the mega ship Oasis is just too big to be done well, personnel wise.

 

We will try one of their other ships - actually my hubby WON a Liberty of the Seas cruise for Dec. 2014! Looking forward to the Royal Princess coming to Fort Lauderdale!

[lovevacadays]

Thanks for the comparison. I always enjoy reading them.

[lovevacadays]

I agree with most of what you wrote - with one exception. We felt that Labadee had more to offer than Princess Cays.

 

I've sailed Royal Caribbean but missed Labadee due to weather. What do you like better about Labadee than Princess Cays?

[Holomoku]

We will be on the L.oS. next Mar. for our first RCCL cruise. We are loyal Princess cruisers but then decided to try other lines for short cruises to compare. Next year is a 4 day Cozumel and then a 15 day Panama Canal. I'm not quite sure what if the Freedom Class is in one of the large ship classes or a smaller ship class? Maybe someone can answer that for me. No time right now to look up all the stats on the different ships. Mahalo for the very good review of your cruise.:)

[riclop]

Allure has Princess beat in all categories by a mile.

[tinatark]

Allure has Princess beat in all categories by a mile.

 

Allure is a cruise line?

[Astro Flyer]

Allure is a cruise line?

 

No, Allure of the Seas is one of the 2 mega (about 220,000 tons) RCI ships with the Oasis of the Seas being the other one.

[dmwnc1959]

Having done both Allure of the Seas and Ruby Princess on a B2B, and not having done either cruise line (RCI and Princess) in a decade or more (previous experiences had been with the Sun-class and the Voyager- and Vision-class), I wasn't sure what to expect other than what I had read in the reviews. Both ships were receiving glowing, stunning, wonderful reviews from their respective Cruise Critic forums, and both ships were rated very highly, if not near perfect, by those who had experienced either one. But no reviews I had ever read were by anyone who had cruised both of them in consecutive short order as I was preparing to do at that time.

 

Embarkation Day came for Allure of the Seas and it was flawless. Everything that followed was as near perfect as the reviews had indicated it would be, from the food in the specialty restaurants to the entertainment. It was however not without hiccups. On the second day, which was a Sea Day, and only on that one day, I was feeling a bit overwhelmed by the shear scope of the ship. We reportedly had 5,820 guests aboard, but it never felt crowded except, as previously mentioned in another post, during a special event like the Move It! Move It! Parade or the big 70's Disco Show in the Royal Promenade. Yet even though it was packed with wall-to-wall bodies during those events it still appeared amazingly open-air due to the enormous size of the space. For the most part the entire ship felt quite spacious and uncrowded.

 

As for the entertainment, I had known ahead of time to pre-book the shows and did so when they opened for 'reservations' around the 100-day mark prior to sailing. Waiting to be seated prior to the shows was akin to going to any real-world venue and waiting outside for the doors to open. Other than that I never waited in line for anything. And the quality and execution was first-rate and brilliantly professional, albeit some of it was not to my personal taste.

 

The service was for the most part quite polite and courteous, and the accommodations superb. I had booked a Central Park View Stateroom (no balcony) and the room was quite large, with a full size sofa and a love seat. The interactive features on the TV were simply amazing, from ordering off of the extensive Room Service menus, checking and modifying reservations, seeing your onboard account, or the current real-time availability of dining venues and how busy they were.

 

I had also made all of my Specialty Restaurant reservations as soon as they opened pre-cruise, and those onboard experiences went as near perfect as it had been reported in the reviews. The food quality was, in my opinion, quite good to exceptional on all accounts, the only deviation being the night I ate in the Samba Grill. I now look back and can attribute that to being the final night on the ship and I was restless at the seemingly slow pace of service. I left mid-meal just so I could go out and enjoy the ship. In hindsight I would never again book a specialty restaurant for the last night unless I was doing a B2B on the same ship.

 

Debarkation Day came, I departed the ship around 9am, and was on my way to retrieving my luggage and grabbing a cab to head over to the Ruby Princess.

 

When I arrived at Ruby Princess (admittingly too early under normal circumstances) there was a line already forming outside the embarkation hall by those who had also arrived too early. Having come off of the Allure of the Seas there was little choice with the amount of luggage and electronics I was carrying to do anything else other than head from ship to ship, and just wait. After about an hour of waiting outside they finally opened the doors to allow us inside. Terminal 2 had just finished an enormous refurbishment, which by all accounts was not yet compete. After check-in I was directed to a seating area which eventually filled to overflowing (standing along the walls and between the aisles, sitting on the floors) by people who had no where else to go. At approximately 12pm they begin boarding the ship, and as chaotic and unfortunate as the preceding two hours had been, it went rather smoothly.

 

As beautiful as the Ruby Princess was/is, the design of the spaces and the overall feel of the ship felt claustrophobic and small. I guess coming off of the largest cruise ship in the world would leave that impression.

 

For the next week, and this is a matter of personal opinion, the service, food, and entertainment were just lacking. The 'best pizza in the cruise industry' turned out to taste like cheese covered cardboard, the food in the International Cafe was really very pretty but just not that savory or satisfying, and the overall quality and taste of the food on the ship was just not good at all, except for the burgers at the Trident Grill and the evening I dined in Sabatini's. Even the much praised Black and Blue Onion Soup in the Crown Grill was just not good.

 

The accommodations (Inside Cabin) were comfortable and adequate. I never experienced the 'marble slab' mattresses I had read about. The Room Service menu was limited compared to my previous week, and the TV offered no real entertainment value, ability to check your account, or doing anything other than to 'be a TV'. And not one of those new Smart TV's you hear about either.

 

And the entertainment came off as Amateur Hour at a local nightclub. It was OK, just nothing special. I rarely sat through an entire show and MUTS turned out to be a bust, especially during the daytime when it looked like Shark Week or they had just run out of good concerts or programming and put on anything they could to fill gaps between movies.

 

I rarely saw a smiling staff member and those at the Guest Relations Desk and especially in the Horizon Court were cold, unapproachable, robotic, and treated me like I had maggots. Several times (and nearly at every breakfast) I witnessed staff being openly and loudly reprimanded like children in front of passengers, and at one breakfast witnessed the Gate Guard for the buffet stations grab an elderly mans hand after some intense conversation, and shove it into the Purell dispenser. I had a nice long chat with the restaurant manager right after that. The service in the MDR on that first night was so slow and so bad I never went back. One of the passengers mentioned it felt like 'grumpy butt Tuesday' all week because everyone was in a bad mood. That was the best laugh I had the entire cruise. I had also ran across quite a few other passengers who were doing the exact same B2B as I was and they too noted their disappointment with the ship, it's food, and the service.

 

I personally attribute all of this to having come off Allure of the Seas then going to Ruby Princess. If it had been done the other way around, Ruby Princess followed by Allure of the Seas, my personal views and opinions of Ruby Princess would have probably been better but utterly forgettable once I had spent a few days on Allure of the Seas. My personal experience on Ruby Princess was so disappointing that I contacted my travel agent in St. Thomas and told him to expect a cancellation of the December 2013 cruise I had booked on another Princess Cruises ship. However, knowing that the new ship wasn't a Grand-class and (by time I embarked) would be 'broken in', I decided to wait and see. I also expected that Princess Cruises would 'pull out all the stops' for this new ship and the experience couldn't possibly be as poor as what I had encountered on Ruby Princess.

 

It was not all without a few very bright shining stars. There were two crew members, one that worked the International Cafe where I filled my soda cup several times a day, and one that worked the Explorers Lounge Bar where I got my virgin drinks, who where both perfect examples of customer service. I made a point to note them in my comment cards (yes, plural) prior to leaving the ship. And the meal in Sabatini's that one night was amazing, both in food quality and exceptional service. That was also noted in my comment cards.

 

In retrospect, had either cruise been my very first ever on RCI or Princess Cruises, I would certainly never choose to cruise Princess again. And since it was my first cruise with both lines in a decade, I gave the benefit of a doubt to Princess and kept the booking on that new ship they were building in Italy. I'll be on her in 94 Days as a B2B, and hopefully Princess Cruises will have stepped up their game on service and food on this new ship as compared to the last time which was by all accounts one of the single worst cruises out of the 48 that I have been on.

[austinlw]

Interesting viewpoints so far.

 

We have enjoyed Princess (4 cruises), Royal Caribbean (3 cruises), and Celebrity (1 cruise in the E Med). Having done our last 2 cruises on Princess out of FLL (Ruby and Emerald), we are booked for RC Navigator OTS out of Galveston in February, right after her upcoming major overhaul. We enjoy the variety. Each line has its strengths and weaknesses.

 

I would agree that Princess seems to have the most consistently good to excellent MDR food. But I agree with the above poster about how the interior layout of the Princess ships (with smaller public areas) feels a bit cramped and crowded to me in comparison to other lines - in particular the buffet areas and the theater. This was expecially apparent to me 2 years ago when we sailed Celebrity Equinox (in the Med), followed by Ruby Princess (in the Caribbean) a month later. Our Caribe cabin on Ruby felt small and poorly laid out (other than the large balcony) compared to our verandah cabin on Equinox. The tiny Ruby bathroom (with the clingy shower curtain) was a major step down. And the cramped buffet serving line really made me wish I were back on Equinox with its spread out serving stations, islands, and higher ceilings.

 

We have enjoyed our Princess cruises and found the quality and experience to be very consistent from ship to ship, and we especially like the variety of itineraries offered by Princess. But there are certain aspects of the ships where we have thought RC and Celebrity were better (cruise director personalities, interior layout, genuine staff friendliness and helpfulness, and just overall fun). As I said before, we enjoy experiencing the variety. Looking forward to our Navigator cruise in Feb.

[mm1251]

Having done both Allure of the Seas and Ruby Princess on a B2B, and not having done either cruise line (RCI and Princess) in a decade or more (previous experiences had been with the Sun-class and the Voyager- and Vision-class), I wasn't sure what to expect other than what I had read in the reviews. Both ships were receiving glowing, stunning, wonderful reviews from their respective Cruise Critic forums, and both ships were rated very highly, if not near perfect, by those who had experienced either one. But no reviews I had ever read were by anyone who had cruised both of them in consecutive short order as I was preparing to do at that time.

[........]

 

Thanks for a great post. I think you probably WOULD have enjoyed Ruby a bit more had you gone on her first, and then would have been simply blown away by Allure! We love the boardwalk aft balconies on Allure & Oasis, facing the rock wall, Aqua Theatre and wake. Pretty hard to beat for the price.