cruise line?

I have cruised on Royal Caribbean and Celebrity and both cruises were excellent.

Surely Costa must be the worst right now?
 
We've sailed the most on NCL, going back to Royal Caribbean on Voyager of the Seas in 4 weeks. Have also cruised Carnival several times and won't be going back...nothing really bad, they're like your basic, no-frills cruise and not the "Fun Ships" from earlier years. Princess was awesome on our 12-day Australia cruise...luved it! If you have kiddos, Disney is THE best, period. They get all the details right, even the cabin designs.

Out of the NCL ships, the Pearl is our favorite, though we haven't been on the Epic yet. We're doing NCL Spirit next Summer out of Barcelona, mainly for the itinerary, not the ship.
 
We enjoyed cruises on NCL, Royal Caribbean and Celebrity. All good experiences.

I agree on Carnival being a no frills, but could be fun for those "younger" on a tighter budget.
 
Have cruised with Holland America several times and had great experiences. Although they have a reputation as being the "white hair" line, over the past several years we have found more variety in the ages and a definite trend of younger folks - but they aren't the "party boats" like Carnival.

My Mom and sister went on a Celebrity cruise and really enjoyed it.

CruiseCritic.com has lots of reviews, as always YMMV.
 
I have been on Celebrity , Royal Caribbean, Costa , NCL & Carnival . All of them several times . They are all pretty similar . I usually just pick an itinerary and then look for a deal . I haven't sailed Costa since the late 80's and would hesitate to do so now especially in Europe .
 
I loved Costa when we took a Caribbean cruise last year. The Concordia sinking won't deter me from future cruises with them. The attention to detail on their food was probably what pushes them to the top in my book. For me, I enjoyed the exposure to European travelers and staff on the ship. Our daughters enjoyed meeting other kids from around the world, even though they couldn't always speak to them in English (I had to translate some using my pidgen French or Spanish for example ;) ).

I have also sailed on Celebrity and Norwegian. Celebrity was also very nice. NCL was decent just not as much attention to detail. Overall I think they are similar enough that I shop based on price mainly.
 
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We've sailed a number of times on Holland America, 3 on Royal Caribbean, twice on Princess, once on Azamara (owned by Celebrity)and Renaissance (now defunct!) ... all were very good. All appeared to be run professionally with happy crews. We were on Emerald Princess most recently for an Alaska land/cruise and loved it. We're taking another Azamara cruise in May ... smaller ship ... we loved the first trip with them too. Never have been on Costa, but we wouldn't have picked them just because the 'ambiance' on board we've read about isn't our style...but never ever would have guessed that they employed a captain like that..never thought safety would be an issue. One thing this tragedy hopefully has brought about is for all the other cruise lines to beef up their rules and safety practices. As far as which cruiseline I'd recommend....all of the above we've taken are great...just would pick based on itinerary. We did once take a Carnival cruise...because we're close to LA and thought it would be an easy, inexpensive getaway. Found out we wouldn't do that again. Maybe if you've never been on another cruise you'd think it was ok, but agree its a 'no frills'...our experience was the food and stateroom was fine but at least on that cruise (to Mexico) many of the crew were surly - not happy at all and made us feel uncomfortable, also no nice common areas and bars made for party crowd. Just not our thing.
 
We cruise every year, and after trying Royal, Celebrity, and Carnival became loyal NCL customers 10 years ago. In light of the recent Concordia tragedy, this little story may be interesting:
Our most recent cruise was this past December, and on a sea day I attended a Q&A with the captain (wife did not go). Over dinner that night, I could not stop talking about how impressed I was with the captain. He was no "Merrill Steubing" of the Love Boat; he was a serious, consummate professional who took his job very seriously. He recognized he was responsible for 1000's of lives.
After the Concordia incident, I reminded my wife of our captain. There is no doubt in my mind that would NEVER have happened if this NCL captain was in charge of that ship. I'm sure other captains of other ships and cruise lines are also professional; but this Q&A, combined with Concordia's incident, sealed my commitment to NCL.
 
I have been on The Big Red Ship, Carnival, Royal Caribbean and Holland America. Carnival was my first cruise without my family and I was younger then, but it was really fun. The last Carnival cruise I was on did not seem to be as much fun. Holland America seemed to have many older people on it. Maybe that is not typical for them, but that was our experience. I liked Royal Caribbean. I would like to try Celebrity and NCL in the future. Also, if we ever take our granddaughter on a cruise, she is 3 yrs old now, it would definitely be on Disney. Our only cruise as a family was on The Big Red Boat and our daughter was 5 and our son 15 and they both enjoyed it. They had cartoon characters that walked around and had a small children's area with activities going on and also a teen club that kept my son occupied.
 
Ms G and I went on a cruise with Princess, it was with a well known CA winery. I don't remember much.
 
OK, for us,
we had about 9 cruises with Princess Cruise line and they were all predictably fine, nothing fantastic but not bad either. We can predict what the meal is going to be, since they re all the same in all the ships.

Our worse- NCL cheap 4 day cruise out of Miami! The ship is old, dirty, some crew were rude,the food was awful, and everything was so cheap.

Moral lesson for us: Stick with what works, and don't get into a cheap short cruise.

For the future:
we will try the more expensive ones like Crystal and Sovereign! if we have time and money.
Cunard-- I don't think we like the snotty formal transatlantic ambiance.

European River boat cruises: that sounds intertesting.

Antartica: that should be a thrill.

South America: That's exotic.
 
We've been on several Princess cruises. They're consistently good (not out of this world great, but good.). I didn't care for a few of the on board gimmicks like the art auctions or the "big sales" in on board shops on sea days, but the facilities, dining, entertainment, and organized shore excursions are pretty good. Passengers appeared to be mostly in their 50s and 60s, and largely well-behaved. (Compare and contrast with Carnival Cruises, their "party" line.)

We recently were on an Avalon cruise through central Europe. The European river cruise ships top out at around 130 passengers, to get a ship that can fit through the locks on the rivers. You won't find big theater productions or multiple alternative dining facilities, but dinners in the dining room were excellent, and shipboard service was impeccable. Extras on large ship cruises like wine at dinner were included on Avalon. Some ports were a bit out of town, but busses were provided to city centers for organized tours or "on our own" wandering about with ship supplied maps. It was really neat to step off the ship into a city park, and walk a couple blocs to the town square.
 
We have cruised on Celebrity, NCL, Princess, Disney and Carnival.

Our favorite is Celebrity but if the grandkids are coming along, we will take Disney.

Carnival is our least favorite.
 
In March my sister and brother-in-law are going on the Oasis of The Seas cruise in the Caribbean. Anyone been on that ship? They've cruised before and always get an outside room with a balcony. My sister has already reserved all their dinners and excursions.
 
We have only sailed 4 times and they were on Carnival. They were new ships and the port was close to home so no flying costs. We enjoyed ourselves but have nothing to compare them to. Now we are looking for an alternative that is a good value (not too expensive) with a fun but more mature and considerate crowd. Either we were expecting too much or the Caribbean cruises attract a party hard crowd. We found many passengers on each of the Carnival cruises were very relaxed about social etiquette and curtesy. Going to try Mediterranean, Greek, North Atlantic, and Alaska cruises on other cruise lines.

Cheers!
 
My wife and I are not accomplished cruise ship patrons. We've only been on three - each by a different company. My favorite was The President, up the Yangtze River in China. We recently got back from Curacao and nearby ports via the Carnival Miracle. I had been told negative things about Carnival but found the ship to be quite adequate. Good service, good food, interesting ports, comfortable cabin with balcony. Being midwinter, most of the clientele were older, so there was little of the "fun" attributes for which the line seems to be known.
 
We have cruised Carnival and RC so far. We liked them both but over all we like RC better. I think that it depends on the which ship you go on. I would google
cruise critic followed by the name of the ship you are considering and that gives you reviews for that particular ship and and over all score on what percent of reviews loved it. Some of the new carnvial ships got pretty low scores
(carnival dream 75% carnival majic 67%) and I would never go on them while their older ship the Legend got a 86%).
 
We've cruised Carnival, RC, Princess, and NCL. Our findings are that RC is our most preferred line, with probably Princess a second.

Each brand (like any hotel brand) has its reputation, strengths, and weaknesses. Our impressions:

Royal Caribbean has the most beautiful ships. While we've not yet been on the Oasis/Allure class, we love the Voyager class of ships. Their ships have real wood, granite, and marble, and the art is beautiful. The 10+ story atriums are spectacular and gorgeous. The line is geared to mainstream travelers and famiilies - not a party boat but not a grey-haired boat, either. Entertainment is excellent. Foodies claim the food iis mediocre. Since we're not foodies, we don't care, but it could be important to some.

Princess is like RC with a bit less grand/pretty ships, and just a little more sedate. Still very good, with good entertainment and high quality ships. They have the best itineraries at more exotic locations.

NCL (we were on the EPIC) was fine and we liked the ship. It looked nice but we found that when you actually touched the decor, things weren't as high quality as they looked at first. Things like wood posts that are really plastic, or plastic appliques in the decor. Just a bit cheap. We found their food very good - probably the best buffet on a ship. LOTS of nickel and diming - more than other lines. We found the ship's excursions on our European cruise averaged 1.5-2.0x the cost of comparable excursions on RC or Princess. Kind of like they lure you in with a good cruise fare, but then make up for it by ripping you off on the excursions. Needless to say, we ended up doing all of our own arrangements for touring at ports.

Carnival - among the best food we've had. Ship was ok but definitely more of a cheaper Vegas hotel decor. Crew was good and entertainment was excellent. Would cruise them again, but definitely not our first choice.

We've found all our cruises to have generally great crews and service, although there can always be a bad apple or two.
 
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Surfdaddy said:
Carnival - among the best food we've had. Ship was ok but definitely more of a cheaper Vegas hotel decor. Crew was good and entertainment was excellent. Would cruise them again, but definitely not our first choice.
Click to expand...
Interesting. We found Carnival to be too crowded, too noisy and the buffets had the same spread every single day. The food wasn't bad, but it was pretty monotonous. We also found that when the ship was in port, there were almost no activities on the Carnival ship at all. Usually there are less, but on other cruise lines we've tried, there have always been some.

We do most of our cruising with Princess, as much because we have some "standing" and get some perks based on our past business with them. Seems silly, though, that Princess is just one cruise line *owned* by Carnival, and that the "frequent cruiser" rewards don't go across lines owned by the same parent company.
 
We have been on Carnival, Crystal, NCL, RCI, Princess, Celebrity, and HAL.

We liked them all-never had a bad cruise. Our favorite would be Celebrity Solstice class ships.

I think that the ship is just as important as the cruise line. There are large variations between ships in the same cruise line.

We are currently booking last minute specials. We watch for a good price and then jump on it-usually 30-45 days prior to sailing.
 
ziggy29 said:
Interesting. We found Carnival to be too crowded, too noisy and the buffets had the same spread every single day. The food wasn't bad, but it was pretty monotonous. We also found that when the ship was in port, there were almost no activities on the Carnival ship at all. Usually there are less, but on other cruise lines we've tried, there have always been some.
.
Click to expand...

We had the same experience. We did have fun on the Carnival cruise and it was certainly a bargain, but it was also crowded, gaudy, and there was a lot of cigarette smoke. Our fellow cruisers weren't the most mannerly, lots of pushing and very few "excuse me's."

On the flipside, we LOVED our two Disney cruises, even though we're not kid people. gorgeous ships, first class service, great food, and lots of fun stuff to do.

SIS
 
brett said:
We have been on Carnival, Crystal, NCL, RCI, Princess, Celebrity, and HAL.

We liked them all-never had a bad cruise. Our favorite would be Celebrity Solstice class ships.

I think that the ship is just as important as the cruise line. There are large variations between ships in the same cruise line.

We are currently booking last minute specials. We watch for a good price and then jump on it-usually 30-45 days prior to sailing.
Click to expand...

What web site do you use to find last minute cruises?
 
My new girlfriend has invited me on a cruise with her later this year. I said yes. She mentioned Carnival. Looks good to me, although all I want is to share time with her and rest...
Birchwood said:
What is your favorite cruise line?

Which is the worst?
Click to expand...
 
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