Hell, just do it. Remember, when you should find yourselves in harms way and suffer an unimaginable horror but managed to get out, you can then hire a "Miami based Maritime Lawyer" and blame the entire misadventure on Royal Caribbean. Because that's what people do.
So, I'm back from a 2-week Mediterranean cruise on Princess that was going to be a trip of a lifetime with my whole family. Unfortunately, 5 days into our sailing my wife and I both tested positive for Covid-19 and ended up in isolation for a week. I still wanted to give my perspective on Royal vs. Princess, but it's going to be equal parts about my experience as a Covid-positive individual in isolation, along with a general comparison of the two cruise lines and my experience with their ships and regular services.
I'll start with the general impressions I have of each:
The Ship: We sailed on Regal Princess, which I would say is roughly equivalent in size and capacity to Anthem of the Seas. Regal Princess was very nice, with a gorgeous central Piazza going from deck 5 to deck 7 that reminded me of pictures of the Centrum or Atrium on ships like Brilliance of the Seas. Instead of an indoor Solarium for adults-only swimming and lounging, it has an outdoor Retreat Pool area that is similarly adults-only. While it has the usual collection of shops, it seemed to me that there were fewer of them than on Anthem, which I appreciated. The layout of the ship has one incredibly annoying flaw, however: If you are in an aft cabin, there is no way get to any part of the Deck 5 or Deck 6 mid-ship areas from the aft elevators unless you either go to Deck 7 and walk mid-ship, then go down the stairs; or go directly to the mid-ship elevators and take them to Deck 5 or 6. This tripped us up for a couple days every time we had to go to dinner or wanted to visit the Piazza area. Mainly because of this, I'm rating Anthem and Regal Princess the same in my book.
Itinerary: Princess wins this one hands-down. They have far more options for Mediterranean sailings than anything I could find with Royal or sister line Celebrity. They were the only line I found with a rotating set of 7-day itineraries covering different segments of Eastern and Western Med, allowing for a custom mix-and-match for desired trip length and port set, and this is the main reason I chose to sail with them for this trip. I have no idea why Royal (or at least Celebrity) doesn't do the same thing; any attempt at a 2-week Med trip requires a side-to-side sailing with a few days between each leg, originating from widely separated ports.
The Cabin: Sailed in an aft-facing balcony when not in isolation, and was in a mid-ship balcony during our isolation period. The mid-ship balconies are just big enough for two chairs and a small table in between, and the chairs need to be up against the sliding door or facing sideways if you want to stretch your legs at all; definitely smaller than Royal's mid-ship balconies that I've sailed in. The aft-facing balcony was about 3 times as large, yet it still had just the standard chairs and table instead of two loungers or two chairs with footrests. This made no sense to me, and we never got a chance to try and get footrests for our run of sea days mid-cruise due to our Covid infection timing. The cabins themselves were basically identical, although I'd say the aft-facing one was slightly more spacious with a less-navigable layout than the mid-ship one. Decor was fine, as long as you like lots of beige. The bed in the mid-ship was hard as a rock, and I had to ask for a mattress topper; the aft-facing cabin's bed was much more comfortable. All that said, I personally liked our cabins on Royal better; decor was nicer, balconies mid-ship are deeper.
On-Board Entertainment: My experience here was limited to what was presented in the Piazza and aft-most bar area on the Lido deck. A nice selection of classical, jazz, acoustic guitar, and piano music. None of it super-loud, all the performers talented and capable. I have to give Princess the edge here; Royal always blasts whatever music is playing in one of the bars or other venues, to the point where you can't have a conversation if you're sitting with anyone. On Princess, I could talk with people had I wanted to, or focused on the music if that was my preference. None of us saw any of the main theater shows during the entire two weeks; Cathy and I were sick during most of the time the main shows were on, and the girls were far more interested in doing karaoke and hanging with the group of 18-22 year-olds they found.
Crew: This was the area most clearly impacted by Covid, and I can't give a fair comparison right now. Many of the crew were clearly still green; bartenders didn't know what the drinks of the day were (despite placards for them right on the bar) or how to make them, MDR wait staff varied tremendously in quality of service/professionalism, room service had a chronic problem getting our orders right during our isolation period, etc.
Overall Experience: For being a premium mass-market line, Princess didn't feel particularly premium to me at all.
The wine selections on board weren't as good as on Royal (although I did find a few new wines I am determined to get here at home)
Cocktails were consistently super-weak; none of us expected to get loaded off a single cocktail, but all of us agreed that we couldn't even taste the spirit used in anything we ordered. Most of the time, we might as well have ordered a virgin drink.
The MDR and specialty dining food quality and menu variety were the same, in my opinion
Will note here that several passengers we spoke with on board said that Princess' MDR food was significantly worse than on earlier cruises they'd taken with the line
On top of that, my daughters both got food poisoning after eating at the on-board sushi place, which they said was worse than any local sushi place they've eaten or worked at, and was more on par with local supermarket sushi (i.e., the same as what you used to get on Freedom of the Seas)
The quality of the crew wasn't any noticeably better or was even slightly worse at times (though I'm trying to give a pass on that because of how new so much of the crew likely still is)
Worst of all, Princess pulled a complete bait-and-switch on my whole family. When we booked the cruise in December 2020, we used the Princess Plus option that added their Premiere Beverage Package along with 1-device internet and pre-paid gratuities. In March of this year, Princess replaced the beverage package with a "Plus Package" and never told anyone; if you wanted the Premiere package, you had to now pay several hundred dollars more for their Princess Premiere (which included other extras I had no interest in) or pay the overage for any beverages on the Premiere list. I was beyond pissed off that they didn't grandfather passengers who booked under the original terms. I don't care that it only translated to about $50 in additional charges for me, that is crappy customer service and a pure money grab.
OK, now onto the Covid handling experience...
Obviously I can't directly compare to Royal, since this is my first cruise since Covid and my first time dealing with isolation protocols. But I have the written experiences of @Matt, @monorailmedic and others to draw on. And Princess just didn't measure up in a few key areas.
Communications: Matt and others mentioned how they had regular communications from both medical and guest services, with each often checking to confirm the other had asked about something or informed them of something. The only calls we received daily were from medical, to check on our symptoms (and later to relay results of our daily re-tests). I never heard from Guest Services in any capacity, besides once about mid-way through to see if we needed anything in terms of cabin items like fresh towels and if we were doing OK with the in-room dining. I had to call Guest Services myself to get answers to every one of my questions
How was the per-diem refund of our cruise during isolation being handled? (FCC issued to our accounts; I would have preferred a cash refund tbh)
Would we be able to join excursions scheduled the same morning if we tested negative? (yes, thank goodness)
Would using the laundry service be charged to our account during isolation? (no, it was free; the included forms gave no such indication)
Could we continue to order wine, cocktails, specialty coffees, etc? (yes, thank goodness; by day 5 when symptoms were mostly gone and cabin fever had set in, we were seriously ready to get our drink on)
Re-testing: Every morning's re-test was an exercise in stress and worry. Not because we were concerned about testing negative; that would be what it would be each morning. But we had excursions every single morning after our initial 5-day isolation window, with meet-up times around 7:45 to 8:15 AM. And no one came to test us earlier than 7 AM, with no call back to us with the result for a minimum of 30 minutes. The first day, we didn't even get that call until almost 8:30. This was after informing the med team about excursions each morning and that we needed to be tested and get our results ASAP to avoid missing it, due to the early meet times. Cathy and I tested negative on different days, and on both of them we got our results about 10 minutes before we had to be at the excursion meet-up location. This resulted in having to hurriedly get our separate stuff back to our original cabin (which was held for when we cleared isolation), and then run down to the meet-up. Each time, Cathy and I only barely made it.
Dining: As noted earlier, there were frequent errors with the deliveries, requiring us to call them back and request the items that had been ordered but weren't delivered. There were other times where we had ordered just one of something and ended up with two, which was certainly a better situation but let to a bit of food waste. And to be fair, we did get a visit from a head steward about 2/3 of the way through our isolation to apologize for the errors, and after this the deliveries did get better. He even gave us a plate of chocolate truffles as consolation, although that was the day we both lost our sense of smell and taste. Not their fault, but we were sad they couldn't be properly enjoyed. All this said, there were some positives:
Like with Royal, Princess makes the MDR dinner menu available for guests in isolation. On sea days, the lunch menu was also available. This greatly relieved the monotony of the room service menu for these meals, but there was no such option (even on sea days) for breakfast.
We had one lucky morning where Cathy begged and pleaded for pancakes, and they scrounged some up for her
I also have to give a point to the room service phone staff; they were always pleasant, always patient, and even took time for a minute of chit-chat to help break up the monotony of isolation time
I don't really know what my final view of Princess is vs Royal. Getting slammed with Covid and losing half of our vacation really put a damper on the whole experience. But, right now I feel like Royal is still the better line for most times that we'll be cruising. Since we have a decent bucket of FCC available now that will let us get a basically-free cruise (minus deposit), we're looking at options in early 2023; depending on how that goes, I'll likely have come to a more solid conclusion.
Screw the so-called experts. I’m in my forties and addicted to cruising. I am now in the process of brainwashing/conditioning my children as the next gen of cruisers. #cruisetillyoudie
I love this thread! We are now back to the usual cruising complaints and not all of the pandemic stuff! Unruly kids during school vacation time, no pool chairs, waiting at Windjammer, I love it!
On the other hand I recently saw someone with a Magic Cup fill it up then walk over to the table his 3 kids were at and use it to fill some smaller Dixie cups they had with them. Whatever.
On the other hand I recently saw someone with a Magic Cup fill it up then walk over to the table his 3 kids were at and use it to fill some smaller Dixie cups they had with them. Whatever.
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