Loyal RCI cruisers tried Princess and really liked it!

[DonnaK]

If you'd like to read my long, compare/contrast review, click here:

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=837569

[The Big Booper]

Answering this here rather on the Princess Board.

 

You have confirmed for us the reasons we have not gone on Princess since it put in Personal Choice (hah) dining.:eek:

 

The ship is too crowded with the addition of an additional deck of cabins and no additional common space (theater seats, walkways, etc.) Our comparison is with the older Grand Princess class (Grand, Star, Golden)

 

Personal Choice Dining as implented by Princess is a major headache. We are late dining people by choice and can't see waiting for 40-60 minutes with a friggin beeper. When we go to Cheesecake Factory at the Mall, we get there at 6 PM get the beeper do our shopping and put the stuff in the car and get back by 7:15 for our 7:45 time. OK for Sat night with nothing else to do, not ok on a cruise ship with lots to do.

 

The Princess people worship the line, we don't and haven't been back since 2001.

 

And now that HAL has put in a version of this our first reaction was to avoid them also until we realized that with all the older people on HAL, late Traditional is not a problem, or just showing up at Anytime after 8:30.

 

From what I have seen on the RCI Board, My Time is being implemented on the RCI fleet backwards from the Carnival family. Here, My Time users are limited to the space available for them, while Carnival limits Traditional reservations.

 

So we stick with RC and X.

[piercetc4]

great review, donnak-

a friend and i got to do one of the 4 nighters on this ship this past april- it was a great experience- loved the c.b. but prefer rci - mostly because of the loyalty program and ease of navigating the voyager class ships- if a deal comes by we would def. sail princess again............til then we will be at home on rci-

as far as the food went for us- i thought the buffets had great choices on the c.b.- we never made it to the formal d.r.- we did try the italian place one night and it was pretty good- not as good as portofino but was worth trying out- i also felt like the 2 lines were more similiar than diff. and would highly recommend both-

[satxdiver]

Interesting review. We have only sailed on the Grand Princess and would still be sailing on it if they had kept it in Galveston. While the VOS is certainly a showy ship, we still prefer the smaller GP. We did the traditional dining and are happy with it. It sounds like the anytime dining is not ready for prime time yet. I did venture down several times to check out the nightly menu posted outside the anytime dining and did notice there were many people waiting.

 

While we do travel on RCI, we are not necessarily loyal RCI clients nor are we loyal Princess clients. If we never sail on another carnival or HAL, however, it will way to soon!

[CFIGuy]

We sailed on the Caribbean Princess last October, and while it was a lot cheaper than RCCL's similar 1 week cruises, we too noticed that it was a lot more crowded. It also seemed to have less evening activities per night. We did like the anytime dining concept, and didn't have any waits (party of 2, and were willing to sit with others or by ourself). Of course having the same waiter throughout is nice too. Just a trade-off.