Should you try NCL? (A Princess Perspective)

[CruizinSusan70]

On 10/8/2023 at 3:16 PM, Paula_MacFan said:

 

That was our first NCL cruise. We have another booked out of Galveston in January, as well as the Regal. We're trying to decide which one to stick with. Been on Regal several times and the NCL ship is brand new.

If you're deciding between the Regal and the Prima, there is no comparison.  I will state that Princess is our new favorite line of choice having sailed on the Discovery and Majestic and we have 7 future bookings amongst the Sun, Discovery and Enchanted.

The Prima is a fantastic ship.  We have sailed on her for a total of 25 nights between an 11 day repo cruise and a 14 day B2B.  The Indulge Food Hall is fantastic and is a great walk up option for a leisurely dinner or for an alternative for lunch or breakfast.

You've sailed on the Regal several times already.  If you're conservative, then stick with the Regal, but the Prima has some really nice cutting edge details to it that I would not pass up.

[CruizinSusan70]

Regarding the sailaway cabins on NCL in order to save money, one thing that was not mentioned is that NCL picks your cabin location, not you.  On some cruises depending upon how far out you book, they could be sold out on NCL when in fact they are actually on hold by the big box agencies and might not be able to be booked directly through NCL until right before final payment when the agencies have to return the unsold cabins to NCL.

[Oxo]

So, if you have never cruised.

After reading all of these posts, would you cruise Princess or NCL?

 

It's your choice!

HAPPY CRUISING! 

[ravenjls]

My 2 cents... since covid we have cruised a few times each on NCL, Royal, Princess and Celebrity  All are very similar.  I cannot recommend 1 line over another as I really believe it has more to do with the ship rather than the line.  We were on Anthem (Royal Caribbean) and had a fantastic cruise, so much so that we booked the Harmony for my whole family and that turned out to be the worst cruise we ever went on. Same line different ship. We love NCL Haven area on their newer ships. The private areas and food were absolutely the best.  But you do pay for that. All in all I would book for the ship and itinerary rather than the line.

[LRCruzr]

On 10/8/2023 at 2:50 PM, Steelers0854 said:

DW and I really started our cruise journey with Princess and while we have tried most of the other cruise lines we have consistently found that Princess is our favorite line.  We had the opportunity to book an NCL cruise out of NY at a fantastic price and we have wanted to sail from Manhattan and go to Canada for a while so we went for it.  It’s on the newer NCL Escape (2015).  We had cruised NCL once before back in 2010 and remember it being fine.  Other than Disney, Celebrity has been our second favorite thus far to Princess.  I have to say NCL was a disappointment for the things that we like most about cursing.

 

TL;DR: They don’t cook a lot of their buffet food onboard, and their ship has so many paid restaurants there is no place to sit and relax or enjoy any of the entertainment.  It’s a hard pass for us.

 

1) Food (Free): The food was inconsistent at best.  The buffet didnt have really any variety between each day, it was a lot of the same food with a slightly different version.  The buffet layout was not great which meant a lot of crowding and it wasnt easy to get around and seating was difficult.  I did like that much like Princess the buffet was open all the time, most other lines close their buffets often, which is very frustrating especially when trying to time meals with excursions etc.  The MDR would have some really good dishes and some really not good ones.  I find both the Princess Buffet and MDR to be much much better overall.  Also, the vast majority of their food is NOT made on board in the buffet.  I’ll get into this a little more below in point 3, but this was disappointing as it definitely looked and tasted premade, where Princess makes almost everything onboard.    

 

2) Food (Paid): this has to be a separate category given the sheer number of paid restaurants on board.  We had several specialty dinings included in our cruise fare so we went to 3 of the specialty restaurants.  The best of the bunch was the Brazilian Steakhouse Moderno.  Fantastic food, unlimited, solid price.  The steakhouse was an utter disappointment and the Food Republic was not only the most overly priced dining at seas but the food wasnt good either.  Moderno may give Crown Grill a run for their money, but when you consider to cost Crown Grill wins hands down.

 

3) Food Allergies: DW cant eat gluten, dairy or egg.  Cruising has been the best way for us to travel as she generally is well taken care of and she can relax a little.  That said, NCL ended up being as bad as Carnival at handling her allergies.  Anything that wasnt made on board they wouldn’t serve her, even if it had a label that they or we could read, they refused to let us see the label and refused to serve her anything.  With the vast majority of the buffet being stuff that is premade this meant she could only eat a handful of things each day and they were the exact same day to day.  Also, on night she got sick from food served to her in the MDR and there must have been something in the sauce that was served to her with dinner.  Also NCL lacks complete creativity on dishes and desserts.  We have had such wonderful meals on Princess and Celebrity where the chefs were amazing and created dishes that were absolutely delicious.  On NCL she got a bowl of blueberry pie filling for like 3 nights in a row.  I know they cant make everyone a unique dish, but you know a day in advance, I cant imagine its that difficult since we have had it on other cruises.

 

4) Entertainment: Well the entertainment looked great, but for the majority of it (Live bands, comedian, etc) the venues are so small and uncomfortable if you didn’t get there an hour early you were never going to see anything.  We did see the main production show the Choir of Man and it was one of the best shows we have ever seen, on land or sea.  But for the other shows it was so disappointing to not be able to get in to see any of them.

 

5) The ship: this plays into point 4 above, but because they have a casino that takes up almost an entire deck, and more paid restaurants than cabins on board there are no places to sit, no lounges, no comfortable chairs, nothing.  I have never been in a position on Princess where I couldn’t find a comfortable chair somewhere to sit and read a book, play a card game or enjoy some live music.  It’s impossible to find on NCL.  The one area they have for this, the atrium, is so small that no matter what time of day you went there no seats were available and they had to bring in folding chairs, yup folding chairs, to help add additional seating for some of the planned activities there.  

 

All in all NCL was a disappointment.  In almost every way Princess is superior.  The ONLY thing that was great about NCL was the MDR process.  You could literally walk up at any time you want and wait 5 minutes or less for a table as long as you weren’t a large party.  But, that being said, we much prefer to have the same waitstaff each night, especially with DW’s allergies, and we did try and do this but they wouldn’t honor it and it was basically impossible to do.  Suffice to say NCL wont be on our list to do again, it’s just not for these Princess cruisers.  YMMV.

We did the NCL Encore in the Caribbean.  I thought the Buffet Food was the Best Food out of Princess, Holland, Carnival and Royal carib.  The Food buffet has SO MUCH FOOD, So many choices it takes up over 50% of the Deck BOTH SIDES. Dining Rooms and Food same as any other Cruise Line.  

[CruizinSusan70]

4 hours ago, LRCruzr said:

We did the NCL Encore in the Caribbean.  I thought the Buffet Food was the Best Food out of Princess, Holland, Carnival and Royal carib.  The Food buffet has SO MUCH FOOD, So many choices it takes up over 50% of the Deck BOTH SIDES. Dining Rooms and Food same as any other Cruise Line.  

Have to fully agree.  The one main stream line whose buffet would be better than NCL would be Celebrity.