Loyal Royal goes Princess

[Steelers0854]

I enjoyed your review /comparison. We will be taking our first Princess cruise this fall, we too usually sail Royal Caribbean, so we our really looking forward to sailing Princess this time. I have a question, you said that you made reservations and booked an excursion on line before your cruise but paid at invoice. Was that at final payment or at end of cruise. We have $800 OBC and we are planning on using it for excursions and dinner at a specialty restaurant. That is why I am asking if it is end of cruise then it will be taking off of the obc.

 

 

 

Shore excursions are charged to your stateroom account and are paid for at the end of the cruise. You can use your OBC to pay for the excursions. You will be charged if an excursion is cancelled within 24 hours of the excursion time but other than that you pay for only the ones you book and pay at the end of the cruise.

[hopestotravelmore]

Thank you for a wonderful review. I just went on my first cruise with Princess and loved it. I hope to try RC next year to the south pacific

[RDC1]

Shore excursions are charged to your stateroom account and are paid for at the end of the cruise. You can use your OBC to pay for the excursions. You will be charged if an excursion is cancelled within 24 hours of the excursion time but other than that you pay for only the ones you book and pay at the end of the cruise.

 

Not necessarily. I seem to recall that Princess is testing a new process for Alaska this summer. The old process was if you book an excursion before the cruise you had the option to pay in advance, but did not have to until the end of the cruise. This summer Princess has indicated that for Alaska cruise you must prepay, prior to the cruise, if you book an excursion in advance.

 

No change for those booked on the cruise, but a change for pre-booked excursions.

 

Hopefully the test will draw a lot of objections and not go well, since the change would make it more difficult to use OBC for excursions, by removing the prebooking without requiring prepayment option.

 

Can one of you that has an Alaska cruise booked for this summer take a look at the excursions and see if they are requiring pre-payment for Alaska excursions like they said that they were going to? Someone in another topic indicated that the test is only on the grand.

Edited April 17, 2016 by RDC1

[Orangefan]

Then maybe you should spend less time hanging around the brig.

(Sorry, couldn't pass up the typo)

 

I actually just did my first RCCL cruise after years on Princess, and ultimately find the two lines more similar than different. The short version is that even though the RCCL cabins are bigger, I think the standard Princess cabin uses space more efficiently and is easier to manage, and I didn't care much for the bathroom in my cabin on the Vision either. On the Princess side, I've been unimpressed with the Horizon Court on my last few sailings, but generally like the MDR food better, and we also experienced some very slow service in the MDR a couple of nights on the Vision. Oh, and the self-serve ice cream machines on RCCL are just plain dangerous for me.:D

 

I plan to do a more detailed comparison post when I am back at a real keyboard. The short version is that I would definitely sail RCCL again if the itinerary is right, but will probably still prefer Princess. Oh, and I want to try out one of the Oasis class ships now too.

 

 

I hope in the future you will have a chance to cruise on the Regal Princess. I have been lucky to cruise the Regal 4 times. The piazza is huge and amazing. The Horizon Court is the best. The structure of the buffet is different with many more choices and plenty of chefs and other help available.

 

Sali

[medic526]

Thank you for your review and comparison. We have been loyal to Royal and are taking our first Princess cruise on the Caribbean Princess in February of 2017 to the ABC islands. We are looking forward to seeing what Princess has to offer in comparison to Royal. Sounds like they are much the same.

[Jessejo]

"Can one of you that has an Alaska cruise booked for this summer take a look at the excursions and see if they are requiring pre-payment for Alaska excursions like they said that they were going to? Someone in another topic indicated that the test is only on the grand."

 

We're booked on the Ruby to Alaska in August. Have reserved an excursion, did not have to prepay.

 

I loved your review too. Have been on both Princess and Royal Caribbean, they are very similar, as is Celebrity.

Edited April 18, 2016 by Jessejo

[denamo]

When we booked the ship excursion, we had the option of pre-paying or having it added to our shipboard account. Either way, we had a reservation and that was great. Nice to have had the option. We opted to have the cost added to our shipboard account since we had some OBC.