Top 25 Cruise Ships with the Most Online Searches

[CruisingSteve]

Spoiler: The top 5 are all Royal Caribbean ships
Top 25 Cruise Ships with the Most Online Searches (cruisefever.net)

[JasonOasis]

I was just reading this article and it surprised me to see that Royal has 10 ships in the top 25 most searched ships for the past 12 months and the top 5 ships are all Royal. In fact Royal has 7 ships out of the top 10 positions.  I must admit I was surprised to see ships like Liberty and Freedom of the Seas on the list although they are number 24 and 21 respectively. 

Following Royal was MSC with 8 ships from some interesting homeports like Sao Paulo, Brazil and Martinique.  MSC's global expansion and homeports is really impressive and customers are responding.  I wish Royal would add a few interesting homeports like MSC has done. 

Carnival had 2 ships make the list the Mardi Gras and Celebration.  In addition to 2 Carnival cruise ships on the list the Carnival Corporation had another 3 ships make the list 2 Costa ships and 1 Aida ship. In all Carnival Corporation had 5 ships make the list of the top 25.

However what really surprised me when reading the article was the lack of NCL ships.  NCL only has 1 ship on the list of top 25 most searched in the past 12 months and that was Prima, and Prima location on the list was a bit of a eye catcher, it came in at number 17 out of 25.  NCL like Royal and MSC has a lot of new/newer ships in their fleet.  I thought with semi-older ships like Royal's Liberty and Freedom on the list there would be several newer NCL Breakaway Plus Class ships on the list  as those appear to be very popular ships but there wasn't the only ship to make the list was Prima.

[PPPJJ-GCVAB]

I have only sailed Royal but will be on Prima in a little over a month from now.  Reason I am cruising a non-Royal is because we are sailing with friends who like NCL.  My opinion before I even sail with NCL…very very expensive!!!!  
So…I am not surprised Royal has so many on the list…great vacations for easy on the pocket prices!

[Xaa]

Please let us know how you liked the ship and the overall experience.

[PPPJJ-GCVAB]

I certainly will let you know what my thoughts are about the Prima.  
My brother will be on the MSC World Europa the second week of May…sailing out of Barcelona.  I’ll ask him for details and let you know about that one too.  From some of the descriptions he has sent to me, it looks pretty futuristic!

[Midwest Cruiser]

1 hour ago, PPPJJ-GCVAB said:

I certainly will let you know what my thoughts are about the Prima.  
My brother will be on the MSC World Europa the second week of May…sailing out of Barcelona.  I’ll ask him for details and let you know about that one too.  From some of the descriptions he has sent to me, it looks pretty futuristic!

Excited to hear of your experience also. We are booked currently on Encore for January of next year. If your experience is anything but great(we are on the fence of even sailing with NCL just doing so because we have friends on this cruise and my father and his GF), I'm ready to cancel and book either Oasis again or Symphony for that same day. 

[PPPJJ-GCVAB]

So yesterday was the day to check in for my NCL Prima cruise...their check-in is at 21 days.  It was also the day I was leaving to fly to Portland Oregon with my granddaughter for our “grandma/granddaughter “ trip.  So I thought it would be really simple like Royal’s check-in!!!  NOPE!  There are 8 steps and each one has requirements to complete before you are considered Checked In!  I thought I was lucky with getting a 9:30-10:00 arrival window.  Ha!  Because I did not complete all 8 steps it gave me NOTHING!  When I say it is NOT user friendly…I mean it!  Once we arrived in Portland I looked at the app again.  It took me another hour or so to figure out what I needed and I finally had to put my picture in my husband’s security shot because he is not here with me and his check in couldn’t be completed without a picture!

I know we all have our moments with Royal’s app and IT issues but having never sailed NCL before I had no idea what a real issue is!   
Anyway…I ended up with 10-10:30 arrival so not bad and I will need to switch out my husband’s picture once I get home later this week!

Now to enjoy my time with my sweet almost 16 granddaughter in rainy Portland Oregon!  We will be hiking and catching views of waterfalls for the next few days!  

[Midwest Cruiser]

On 4/10/2023 at 10:45 AM, PPPJJ-GCVAB said:

So yesterday was the day to check in for my NCL Prima cruise...their check-in is at 21 days.  It was also the day I was leaving to fly to Portland Oregon with my granddaughter for our “grandma/granddaughter “ trip.  So I thought it would be really simple like Royal’s check-in!!!  NOPE!  There are 8 steps and each one has requirements to complete before you are considered Checked In!  I thought I was lucky with getting a 9:30-10:00 arrival window.  Ha!  Because I did not complete all 8 steps it gave me NOTHING!  When I say it is NOT user friendly…I mean it!  Once we arrived in Portland I looked at the app again.  It took me another hour or so to figure out what I needed and I finally had to put my picture in my husband’s security shot because he is not here with me and his check in couldn’t be completed without a picture!

I know we all have our moments with Royal’s app and IT issues but having never sailed NCL before I had no idea what a real issue is!   
Anyway…I ended up with 10-10:30 arrival so not bad and I will need to switch out my husband’s picture once I get home later this week!

Now to enjoy my time with my sweet almost 16 granddaughter in rainy Portland Oregon!  We will be hiking and catching views of waterfalls for the next few days!  

Woof.

Our January 28 2024 on Encore sailing, if I switched us over to a royal sailing that same day or weekend(Oasis out of Miami or Symphony out of Everglades) I think we might be happier.

[PPPJJ-GCVAB]

So I told you I would give my reaction to the Norwegian Prima.  Here it is:

Likes:  the newness of the ship / modern decor/ spacious room (Balcony)/ awesome bathroom (large sink, large rectangular shower, spacious)/ balcony seats are cushioned, reclinable, comfortable / food was really good (there are many complimentary places to eat with so many options for food choices) / two main dining rooms (make reservations or just show up) and the menu changes every night (this is not how it was when Prima started sailing in October…our cruise was the first one returning back to daily changing options as well as several entries the same each night and plenty of choices!) / lots of outdoor eating options / gorgeous 3 level atrium with lots of comfortable seating choices / pretty decent size non-smoking casino and enclosed smoking casino (which you could only smoke in when actively playing) / awesome Observation Room on deck 17 that wraps around front of ship and offers tasty breakfast and late afternoon snacks…and there is a bar / 

Dislikes:  very small main pool (emphasis POOL with no S after it) with limited chairs / 2 smaller infinity pools on deck 8 one on each side of ship nice but very small! / too much shaded areas…seemed like there were more seats in shaded areas than sunny areas / difficult to navigate outside around the ship unless we were on the 8th deck which is the Oceanwalk / only a select few shops which are not in same area…they are scattered on the 3 level atrium and their operating hours seemed very limited / when walking around the ship we constantly had to walk through eating areas or bars to get to where we were going / elevators are unbelievably slow so we did an awful lot of stair climbing up and down (16 steps per floor each way) / buffet is tiny!!!!!…really decent food but so hard to find a seat and food stations are not walk around so lines were constant / the only coffee cream they have is coffeemate (YUCK) or whole milk (I need light cream in order to enjoy my coffee!) / main theater is small which fills up quickly (but I did love the Donna Summer show) / disembarkation was ridiculously slow and confusing (made for rising tempers and we witnessed 2 fights in a 5 minute period!) / check in times don’t make sense since we arrived at our 9:30am time and were unable to board until 11:30! / the NCL app is vey hard to figure out and staff know absolutely nothing! / because of the ship’s layout it’s just difficult to catch your bearings and know where you are going and how to get there.

Would I recommend it?  probably not but it is an experience!     Would I go again?  No   For now I am sticking with Royal 

 

[Midwest Cruiser]

On 5/8/2023 at 11:40 AM, PPPJJ-GCVAB said:

So I told you I would give my reaction to the Norwegian Prima.  Here it is:

Likes:  the newness of the ship / modern decor/ spacious room (Balcony)/ awesome bathroom (large sink, large rectangular shower, spacious)/ balcony seats are cushioned, reclinable, comfortable / food was really good (there are many complimentary places to eat with so many options for food choices) / two main dining rooms (make reservations or just show up) and the menu changes every night (this is not how it was when Prima started sailing in October…our cruise was the first one returning back to daily changing options as well as several entries the same each night and plenty of choices!) / lots of outdoor eating options / gorgeous 3 level atrium with lots of comfortable seating choices / pretty decent size non-smoking casino and enclosed smoking casino (which you could only smoke in when actively playing) / awesome Observation Room on deck 17 that wraps around front of ship and offers tasty breakfast and late afternoon snacks…and there is a bar / 

Dislikes:  very small main pool (emphasis POOL with no S after it) with limited chairs / 2 smaller infinity pools on deck 8 one on each side of ship nice but very small! / too much shaded areas…seemed like there were more seats in shaded areas than sunny areas / difficult to navigate outside around the ship unless we were on the 8th deck which is the Oceanwalk / only a select few shops which are not in same area…they are scattered on the 3 level atrium and their operating hours seemed very limited / when walking around the ship we constantly had to walk through eating areas or bars to get to where we were going / elevators are unbelievably slow so we did an awful lot of stair climbing up and down (16 steps per floor each way) / buffet is tiny!!!!!…really decent food but so hard to find a seat and food stations are not walk around so lines were constant / the only coffee cream they have is coffeemate (YUCK) or whole milk (I need light cream in order to enjoy my coffee!) / main theater is small which fills up quickly (but I did love the Donna Summer show) / disembarkation was ridiculously slow and confusing (made for rising tempers and we witnessed 2 fights in a 5 minute period!) / check in times don’t make sense since we arrived at our 9:30am time and were unable to board until 11:30! / the NCL app is vey hard to figure out and staff know absolutely nothing! / because of the ship’s layout it’s just difficult to catch your bearings and know where you are going and how to get there.

Would I recommend it?  probably not but it is an experience!     Would I go again?  No   For now I am sticking with Royal 

 

Dang, Now I wish I would have seen this earlier, Was our busy season on not much time for other activities on the forum. We just did our final payment for Encore in January. Looking at it now as an experience, but this review confirmed my suspicions from reviews i have read and watched. Had the chance at booking our favorite Oasis for the same time out of Miami.