FreQuentKruser

1 hour ago, Sunshine3601 said:

With all the great scientist out there I am confident we will have a cure soon.

 

I pray you are right.

We're booked on the Liberty April 12, we're in the  70 year old group and our doctor already said she won't sign the medical form, so we know we cant go on that cruise but we still don't want to cancel for FCC yet, we're waiting for RCCL to cancel.

3 minutes ago, kwokpot said:

Why wouldn't it include cruiseship ports? The point of the travel restriction is not to introduce the potential of people carrying the covid19 virus. 

Surely it must include all forms of travel.

2 hours ago, kwokpot said:

There is a joint North American travel restrictions. Meaning we CANNOT travel to Canada or Mexico. Starting March 21st for 30 days. No cruises period,end of story.

 

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I wonder if that travel restriction includes cruise ships not being allowed to dock in Mexico and Canada .. if so that rules out being able to dock at Cozumel which is on the itinerary of so many RCCL ships. 

Can anyone tell me about E401? Just got "upgraded" from L115, which is the very forward cabin on the top, starboard side of Regal, to E401, from the look of it, is at the aft end of the 3rd life boat on the starboard side, above Facets and Meridian Bay on the Promenade. Thanks everyone in advance.

E401 is a "deluxe" balcony cabin, the cabin is a bit bigger and includes a loveseat, small sofa, where L115 does not have the loveseat. Nice to have the loveseat IMHO.

We are Pinnacle with RCI and we left .. for many reasons .. not the least of which was a huge drop in the quality of their food, and other reasons like all their little cut backs, followed by many other little cut backs followed by more cut backs right down to not even having plastic RCI logo pens anymore. They even cut some of the television news stations saying they were not going to renew those contracts because they were too expensive. Yet RCI's stock has nearly doubled in the past 12 months as their profits have grown bigger than ever before. RCI offered us a free pre-inaugural cruise on the new Quantum of the Seas next month .. we said no thank you!

RCI has banned smoking except for a few outside spots. They included E-cigs in the ban. And Celebrity is even stricter.

 

Quite a few smokers are leaving the line(s) because of this.

 

Princess allows E-Cigs.

I know quite a few RCI cruisers who do use ecigs (including myself) and none of those people, except one, is leaving RCI because of their ecig policy. Since they do not burn, have no smoke and have no odor they can be used in many places without drawing attention.

Being Pinnacle on RCI gives us a great amount of perks, so making the decision to walk away was not something we took lightly or decided based on any one thing, it was based on a great many little things that added up to a big deal for us.

Funny thing is we were against going on the Princess cruise. Our daughter and son-in-law made us go, they love Princess. When they asked us to go we said no, because we were already booked on a transatlantic that ended just 5 days before the Princess cruise and my husband can't bear to leave our little dog that much .. it meant we'd be gone the whole month of November except for 5 days. Plus since retiring we never go on holiday sailings because the ships are so crowded with families. But our daughter insisted we go and we did, but we only did it because she wanted us together for Thanksgiving.

We were not looking forward to the cruise at all, we were reluctant even as we went into our cabin the first time .. and then the cabin steward showed up and then brought the champagne and from that moment on everything started going uphill for us .. up and up .. in areas where RCI has gone down and down.

FreQuentKruser:

 

Thank you for that excellent post comparing RCI and Princess. Wife and I retired this last summer and are new to cruising. About all we know is that we like to cruise. We've done only one cruise on RCI. We are struggling though with which cruise line should be our primary. We booked a cruise on Caribbean Princess less that a week after our RCI cruise. We've booked another on HAL and will probably also try Celebrity. Your review provided exactly the kind of information we've been looking for.

I'm happy it helped, I don't post very often but the Princess cruise was so much better, in so many ways that I didn't even go into because my post was already so very long, we were very surprised how much more we liked Princess nowadays than RCI.

We are retired, we don't climb rock walls or do flowriders anymore .. so perhaps a Princess cruise isn't for everyone, but it was great for us.

We do like RCI's promenades however we loved the ambiance on the Caribbean Princess more. And in the buffets, at night, the ambiance was lovely .. there were little lights in the ceiling and the staff were so attentive. As RCI has declined into more of a family type environment it seems Princess has stepped up to providing more of a lovely more upscale cruise.

I hope you enjoy the Caribbean Princess as much as we did, you will surely have less passengers than we had on the holiday Thanksgiving cruise which they said was booked to the max capacity with so many families and children onboard.

We are Pinnacle members on Royal Caribbean and Elite on Princess. We just returned from being on the Caribbean Princess's Thanksgiving week cruise out of Houston. We haven't been on a Princess cruise in 8 years, instead we've only cruised on Royal Caribbean and have done nearly 100 cruises with RCI.

To summarize our experience last week on Princess .. let me start by saying it has caused us to cancel 9 future Royal Caribbean cruises and we plan to cruise exclusively with Princess from here on.

Why would we leave RCI after so many cruises ... the answer, for us, is that Royal Caribbean stopped delivering the WOW that we use to have. RCI started cutting "little things" 2 years ago ... just little things here and there. In the beginning we didn't care about them cutting "this" little thing .. or "that" little thing. However, over the past 2 years of "little things" being cut it has now added up to a BIG thing for us!

For instance ..

RCI has eliminated many of their full salary management positions and instead now have a series of supervisors filling those roles but not in true management positions. For example, there use to be a Manager of the Windjammer buffet and then there were 6 supervisors who worked under the Manager. RCI eliminated the Manager position this year and instead just has the supervisors. It makes a difference, because now there is not one person who is "in charge" of the Windjammer, but instead a bunch of supervisors who alternate between working in the Windjammer and also working in the dining rooms.

Several months ago RCI changed the way they pay for their employees airfares. In the past RCI always paid the employees airfare to begin their contract and, if the contract was completed then RCI would pay for the employees return airfare home. Now RCI no longer pays for the employees airfare home! The employees still receive free air to begin their contract, but they have to pay their return airfare themselves.

RCI use to pay for the employee uniforms .. now they have to buy their uniforms.

Why does this matter to a passenger? Because the employees are unhappy with these changes. The cabin stewards now have more cabins to service than they did before, the waiters have more tables to serve than before and they are working longer hours than they use to. Until a year ago we rarely encountered an unhappy employee on RCI .. but on our past 4 cruises we have heard numerous complaints of unhappiness from crew members, cabin stewards and waiters.

Little things ... little things ... that add up:

THE FOOD:

We have seen RCI's food go down and down in quality. We use to see large shrimp on the buffet, now there is hardly ever any shrimp .. and when there is shrimp they are the small ones. On Princess the shrimp were LARGE and plentiful, there was always shrimp in the buffet and in the dining rooms .. large ones, not little ones.

My husband had mussels 3 different times on this cruise and loved them, they were prepared perfectly in a wine and garlic sauce, we haven't seen any mussels on Royal Caribbean in over 2 years except for one time and the mussels tasted like they had been left out in the elements for a week before they were cooked, they were inedible.

The ambiance in Horizon Court and in the Caribe Café was lovely .. whereas on RCI the Windjammer feels more like a cafeteria type atmosphere in comparison.

The waiters in the buffets serve you water, tea or whatever you want as soon as you sit down at a table, whereas on RCI you might wait 5-10 minutes for someone to ask if you want anything to drink or you end up going and getting it yourself.

In the evenings the buffets on Princess have the tables set with glasses, silverware and napkins .. whereas on most Royal Caribbean ships you get your own.

The buffets on Princess open earlier and stay open later. On Princess the buffet opened at 6am and closed at 11pm. On RCI they open at 6:30am and close at 9pm (the employees start "warning" you that the buffet is going to close at 8:45pm).

Yes we also ate in the dining room, we had Anytime Dining. The waiters on Princess seemed to have less tables to serve than the RCI waiters do .. or it just seemed that way because we always had very fast service between courses and no long delays

THE CASINO:

I will admit to being a slot machine junkie! I love slot machines and am in the casino most nights. In all of our nearly 100 RCI cruises I have never been offered one single free drink in a RCI casino. Sad, but true. On Princess, when I returned the 2nd time to the casino, the manager came up to me and said "thank you for returning, welcome back .. I'll be happy to get you free drinks, what would you like to have?"

Huh? What? How did you know I was even here last night amongst the hundreds of people who were packed into this casino, and how come I haven't been on a Princess cruise at all in the past 8 years????

Also .. a biggie for me ... the casino slot machines stay open ALLLLLLLLL night if there is no port the next day. So if there is a sea day the following day, the slot machines stay open! The employees leave around 2am, but you can stay and play the machines! The machines are computerized to your seapass card, if you have credits you can move them from one machine to another with your card. If you hit a jackpot the money for it goes on your card. The next day when the casino employees return you can get the credits you have on your card in cash.

On Princess there is no charge if you withdraw money on your card .. on Royal Caribbean they use to charge 3% but now they charge 5% (although there is no charge for Pinnacle members).

The slot machines on Princess seemed to be set at better payoff percentages than on RCI .. either that or my daughter and I were just very lucky .. because we each were able to play a long long time without needing to get a mortgage on our homes!

So ... for a casino junkie like myself ... I was in heaven!

THE TV:

5 days before going on this Princess cruise we were on a 2 week transatlantic cruise with Royal Caribbean from the UK to SanJuan. The first problem we encountered on the RCI transatlantic was there was NO Fox news. In the past we've always had Fox News channel on every RCI ship. On this transatlantic they only had CNN International which barely covered any USA news.

So my husband went to guest services and asked them why there was no FOX .. they didn't even understand what he was asking about. They were brand new employees and they'd never even heard of Fox. So he asked to speak to a supervisor or manager. They told him there was no supervisor there but that they'd have one call us in our room soon. Two days later, still no phone call .. and still no Fox News.

My husband went back to guest services, repeated his question from 2 days ago ... received a blank stare and the person said they don't know about the TV channels but would have a supervisor call.

6 hours later a supervisor called our cabin. My husband repeated his question and the supervisor said he had no idea what we were talking about but that he'd check and get back to us.

24 hrs later ... no phone call, no Fox news.

Finally, the next day, the supervisor called and said he'd gotten word from Miami that Royal Caribbean's executives had decided to "terminate RCI's relationship with Fox".

We cruise on Royal Caribbean 8-9 times a year ... we've always had Fox News. Whazzup with this new policy? And does this impact Fox Sports channel too? What about the football games that Fox broadcasts that we've always watched onboard RCI ships? The supervisor had no knowledge about anything football (unless it was soccer) but, the answer became clear to us when throughout the entire 2 week cruise we only had ONE football game on TV the whole time.

The ship had 5 movies, none of them were newer than the past 5 years. On Princess we had multiple movies on the TV and they were all current movies! And, they had Fox News, and MSNBC and CNBC. And football ... LOTS of football, which was great for us because we are football fanatics.

THE CHILDREN"S CENTER:

We were with our daughter, son-in-law and their 5 year old daughter. This was our granddaughter's 7th cruise .. 5 of which were on Princess and 2 on Carnival. When Ashley is home she frequently talks about how much she loves the Princess Children's Center .. she calls it "cruise school".

On RCI the children's center is very large and has lots of machines to play .. however Ashley loves, loves, loves the Princess one so much and she was there everyday. Her parents never have "made" her go, she only goes if it's her idea and she can stay as long or short a time as she wants. She went everyday, she loved it, they had many fun activites for the children to do and she made lots of friends.

CHOCOLATES:

OK, here comes another "little thing". Royal Caribbean stopped chocolates on the pillows 3-4 years ago (except in full suites). We were all in mini-suites on Princess and there they were .. chocolates every night on our pillow. Just a "little thing" ... a little thing that is such a sweet touch.

WIFI/INTERNET:

As Princess Elite members on a 7 day cruise we were given 150 minutes each of free internet ... a total of 300 minutes for the week. On Royal Caribbean, as the highest ranking level of being Pinnacle (which means 700+ nights on RCI) .. we each get 45 minutes of free internet, regardless of the length of the cruise. On Princess if you are on a longer cruise, you get more free minutes. On Royal Caribbean if you are on a 2 week cruise .. you still only get 45 minutes each.

Another "little thing" ... not a huge thing ... but another little thing.

CHAMPAGNE:

When we first boarded the ship we had only been in our mini-suite for 5 minutes when there was a knock on the door and there was the cabin steward introducing himself. On RCI we've never seen our cabin steward until close to muster drill time and often not until they come on duty at 6pm.

The first thing the Princess cabin steward asked us is "would you like a glass of champagne". We stood there with our mouths open and finally one of us muttered "yes". A few minutes later he reappeared with 2 glasses of champagne on a silver tray.

We asked him if this was because we're in a mini-suite and he said it was because we're elite. To be Elite on Princess is only 175 nights .. to be Pinnacle on Royal Caribbean is 700 nights and NO, we've never been offered a glass of champagne when we boarded a Royal Caribbean ship, even on the cruises when we've booked the top suites on the RCI ship.

Champagne on a silver tray ... Lovely way to be welcomed back!!!

Little things ... little things ... the pile of little things has now gotten higher and higher.

Little things have added up for us .. as a result of our wonderful experience on the Caribbean Princess last week (putting the weather related issues aside), we've cancelled 9 future Royal Caribbean cruises and have booked 5 future Princess cruises so far, with more Princess bookings coming to the Panama Canal and a transatlantic that we'll be booking soon.