Princess – General thoughts, and thoughts on Regal Princess vs Royal?

[JLMoran]

Looks like I'm going to be sailing on Regal Princess for our 2022 Mediterranean sailing. It's a 14-night sailing from Athens to Rome, visiting 9 ports across Greece, Italy, France, and Spain. Awesome itinerary, and their current Princess Plus package seems like a great offer. Basically, add $40 a day to the base cruise fare and you get pre-paid gratuities, unlimited wifi, and the Premium Beverage Package with tips included.

Just curious for people's impressions of Princess in general, as my only experience so far is with Royal Caribbean (Freedom and Anthem of the Seas). And if anyone here has sailed Regal Princess, any insight / opinions about her venues, dining, etc. would be even more help. I see she's a pretty new ship, having started sailing in 2014. And it looks like she's comparable to a Freedom class ship in size / passenger capacity.

We're booked in a pair of aft-facing Premium Deluxe Balcony cabins, on deck 9 and deck 11. Chose those because those are the decks with semi-covered balconies; read that the uncovered aft-facing balconies had reports of soot issues at times, so figured this would help cut that risk while getting those aft views of the Med during sail-away and the few sea days we have.

[karl_nj]

I have not sailed on Princess yet.  I was supposed to sail on Princess a few years ago, for an Alaska Itinerary, but unfortunately I ended up having to cancel that sailing.  So i'm not going to be that much help.

Although I have sailed on Royal Caribbean very often recently, I do like to try out different lines.  I've sailed on NCL, Cunard, Carnival, Disney, Celebrity, and Royal.  I've enjoyed all of my sailings on all of these lines.  They are all a little different, but it's fun to see what each line does better.  In the end, it's a cruise and they are more alike than different.  Moving away from the lines owned by the Royal Caribbean Group isn't anything to be worried about ?

Princess is a line that I do want to try eventually.  My travel agent has said good things about the line, and that she always gets positive feedback from her customers about Princess.  So I think you've made a great choice.  The itinerary looks wonderful.

CruiseTipsTV tends to sail on Princess pretty often, you may  want to look for some Princess info on their YouTube channel.  They also have a podcast that has some episodes on Princess.

[dv70]

We just booked Princess for the first time, also a Deck 9 aft balcony on a Royal-class ship (Sky). Ours is in January 2022. Assuming that actually happens, I'll post feedback on the cabin as well as any soot. 

 

I'm also interested in what others have to say about Princess, and Royal-class ships in particular. This will be our first exposure to Princess as well, having only sailed with Royal Caribbean in the past also.

 

--Dave

[JLMoran]

1 hour ago, dv70 said:

We just booked Princess for the first time, also a Deck 9 aft balcony on a Royal-class ship (Sky). Ours is in January 2022. Assuming that actually happens, I'll post feedback on the cabin as well as any soot. 

I'm also interested in what others have to say about Princess, and Royal-class ships in particular. This will be our first exposure to Princess as well, having only sailed with Royal Caribbean in the past also.

--Dave

 

Did you also get the Princess Plus fare? Seems like a no-brainer for the price and what's included, especially with the current "Best. Sail. Ever." offer that tacks on a room location upgrade and one specialty dining reservation. Since one of my kids is pescatarian now, and my wife doesn't eat any kind of seafood, I'm guessing we'll be using ours in the Italian restaurant. (want to say Alfredo's?)

[dv70]

We booked during their Black Friday sale - whatever it was called. It was the promo just prior to the latest "Best. Sale. Ever". It was a pretty decent deal: reduced deposits, drinks, WiFi, gratuitues, $50/pp OBC (for a balcony). We aren't specialty dining people, so that didn't matter much. The same cruise during the Best Sale Ever promo was about $200 higher - not terrible.

All the reviews (Billy's included) and video tours of the Royal class ships look pretty great. It does seem the side-facing balconies on those ships are SUPER small, at least compared to Royal Caribbean ships. So we went for an aft-facing, but those are better anyway ?

[JLMoran]

22 hours ago, dv70 said:

It does seem the side-facing balconies on those ships are SUPER small, at least compared to Royal Caribbean ships. So we went for an aft-facing, but those are better anyway ?

 

I had read the same over on CruiseDeckPlans.com, along with these interesting bits that make getting our aft balconies even better yet (emphasis added):

Quote

5. Due to fail in design of the ship, there are no central staircases for passengers. Cabins located around the midship elevators may find those elevators busy and therefore difficult to get to other floors.

6. Aft facing balconies are open to view from deck above and vary in size. The largest aft facing balconies are on Marina, Riviera,and Dolphin decks. The smallest aft facing balconies are on Aloha and Caribe decks. Baja and Dolphin aft balconies are partially covered.

 

Now, this was very recently updated because I was reading the above just a couple of weeks ago when I booked; when I went back to the site to get this quote, I saw the following had been amended to #5: "(UPDATE: MIDSHIP CREW STAIRS HAVE BEEN CONVERTED TO PASSENGER STAIRS)"

I'll leave it to you to decide whether this will ultimately be acceptable or not. Since crew stairs are typically bare metal and completely interior / enclosed by the metal superstructure, I'm hoping this "conversion" was more than just leaving the door unlocked and included making the stairs more comfortable for lots of people to walk on, and hopefully giving that stair corridor some visual improvements.

Either way, I'll be happily taking the aft stairwell that's right near to our cabins, and the elevators when I need to go more than a few decks up or down.

[karl_nj]

On 1/1/2021 at 11:02 AM, JLMoran said:

 

I had read the same over on CruiseDeckPlans.com, along with these interesting bits that make getting our aft balconies even better yet (emphasis added):

 

Now, this was very recently updated because I was reading the above just a couple of weeks ago when I booked; when I went back to the site to get this quote, I saw the following had been amended to #5: "(UPDATE: MIDSHIP CREW STAIRS HAVE BEEN CONVERTED TO PASSENGER STAIRS)"

I'll leave it to you to decide whether this will ultimately be acceptable or not. Since crew stairs are typically bare metal and completely interior / enclosed by the metal superstructure, I'm hoping this "conversion" was more than just leaving the door unlocked and included making the stairs more comfortable for lots of people to walk on, and hopefully giving that stair corridor some visual improvements.

Either way, I'll be happily taking the aft stairwell that's right near to our cabins, and the elevators when I need to go more than a few decks up or down.

 

Looks like they are nicely finished, but exceptionally narrow:

 

https://www.cruisecritic.com/photos/ships/regal-princess-679/hallways-stairs-and-more-100439/hallways-stairs-and-more--v5952885

 

CruiseCritic seems to have a nice batch of photos of the ship, btw:  https://www.cruisecritic.com/photos/ships/regal-princess-679/

 

And if you want to read more about Regal Princess:  https://beyondships.com/Princess-RE-Profile.html