Princess vs Holland? Never been on Princess Cruise Your Opinion Please

We are elite on Princess and 3 star on HAL. We solely travelled on HAL until 2006. By then the differences to HAL were noticeable for us since Carnival had purchased them a few years prior.

We felt the decline of the meals,. no longer fresh made cakes and pies daily and no longer any homemade ice cream.

Even worse than the food,. they let go of the activities staff and only maintained the cruise director. So we haven't gone since 2006,. but my friends who are four and five star have gone and now they too will no longer. They found cruises exceptionally boring and particularly when they did a long cruise around South America,. the ports were all industrial and they had long rides to get anywhere.

We have been doing just Princess since 2006 now and really enjoy the ambiance onboard and the food as well. Love all the trivia games,. etc.

The Vista class new ships are just gorgeous and the buffet on them in outstanding compared to other cruise lines.

I think that Princess has better pizza.

Enjoy your cruise.

Ira

We have over 500 days on HAL and have been Elite on Princess for a very long time. Obviously we enjoy both lines. But for some strange reason the "suits" at HAL have never gotten the message about their limited dining hours (in both the MDR and Lido). Just came off the Regal where we never had to be concerned with dining times since we just showed-up and the venue was open. On HAL, if one sleeps a little late you might be out of luck. And decide to eat a really late dinner.....well good luck!

One attraction we found when booking MSC's Yacht Club was that their private dining room is open for lunch on port days.

Hank

On Hal leaving from San Diego, they usual sail their decrepid really old ships (Zaandam, Veendam etc). These are smaller old ships. Their theatre is the really old cabaret style seating.

 

Did a Hawaii cruise and there were so many scooters that they needed traffic control but didn't have it. In evening the Buffet closes early. No where on ship can you even get a cookie . Room service only place to get food.And the ship looked like a ghost ship at 10:00pm.

 

Now in all fairness, we have never sailed on their newer ships (Konigsdam etc). Have sailed on the above mentioned as well as Oosterdam, Westerdam class of ship.

 

Entertainment was not as good on HAL for production shows but they did have good individual entertainers that were superb. We are 3 star on HAL and have over 60 cruises with Princess.

 

Princess isn't perfect but we always have a good time. And even though we prefer Princess and have mentioned the negatives on HAL, we did enjoy ourselves and met some great people traveling with us on HAL.

 

In some reason we enjoyed Veendam out of Boston tremendously.

Except for some maintenance issues (cabin upkeep, toilets) everything else was very good to great. Great entertainment in theater (we sailed on her right after large Royal ships Allure and Anthem!) , service and food (except for weird buffet hours) were great.

On Zuiderdam although earlier we had tons of service issues.

PS. Princess is our favorite line over 8 lines we sailed though. I think we ate the most amount and variety of seafood on a Princess ships. :)

It does depend on the ship; however, our DD and SIL will NEVER go on HAL again because of broken A/C in the Mediterranean that was not addressed and other reasons. We will not go on HAL again because of the ship we went on- I call it a bucket of bolts- the Osterdam (sp?)

However, right now, we are on our 6th Princess cruise and LOVE the Regal Princess!!! Please know that we do not care for the Coral Princess for numerous reasons.

No line or ship is perfect, but we prefer Princess and Celebrity. ;)

Princess is both classy and sophisticated with fabulous entertainment and gourmet seafood

I only cruise Princess. Disembarked from the Sky on March 14, so very happy I was able to get that trip completed before life changed.  

One day in port I shared a bench with a HAL crew member.  He told me they refer to HAL ships as floating nursing homes, so I think I'll stay with Princess if crusing ever resumes.

Sure, but try Celebrity (with all four perks) at least once

We are happy to sail on Celebrity, HAL, or Princess.

Four things that we very much prefer on Princess vs HAL

-we feel that Princess ships are better maintained

-we like the fact that there are multiple dining venues on Princess AND that unlike HAL, they do not close by 8PM.  Room service does not do it for us.

-better entertainment on Princess....much better

-we like Princess atriums-especially the International cafe on some ships.

Overall, we find the service is identical on all three.  Food very subjective.

This ship has sailed (2018).  Why was it resurrected?

40 minutes ago, cr8tiv1 said:

This ship has sailed (2018).  Why was it resurrected?

Maybe there’s not much to talk about right now 😭

I like both but prefer Princess for the amount of activities and better entertainment. HAL has really cut back on both. The one advantage is the culinary hosts on HAL. I really enjoy the programs they do. I guess they still have them. Our last HAL cruise was February 2017--my retirement cruise, a partial to the Panama Canal. 

For us, one deciding factor on a 28-day cruise would be getting free laundry on Princess. We are just 2-star Mariners on HAL after five cruises.