Here is my personal ranking of every cruise line we’ve ever sailed with. Alphabetically, these are; Celebrity, Holland American, Norwegian, Princess and Royal Caribbean.
Norwegian gets the lowest rating, but it’s based on a sample of only a single cruise. They are known as a budget line, except for their ship “Pride of America.” It has a total monopoly on cruises within Hawaii. Due to an old, anti-free-trade—law, only American-made and owned ships can carry passengers between US ports without stopping at least once in a non-American port. All other lines doing Hawaii have to visit places like Vancouver or Mexico. In fact, “Pride of America,” doesn’t meet the regulations either, and required an exemption be passed by both houses of Congress for permission. In any case, as the single Hawaii-only cruise ship, they totally own that market. As a result it was the most expensive cruise per day that we’ve ever done. However, nothing on board seemed fancy at all, or high quality. It was fine, about what the line’s budget reputation would suggest. Nothing was bad, other than the price.
For me, Holland America comes in 4th place. They score high in the food and service departments. Their shows and entertainment are good. It is the ships themselves that fall short. They are smaller than the industry standard, which means less in the way of amenities. Fewer pools, less spectacular dining rooms, smaller foyers, smaller stage, fewer elevators. Bigger ships have more room per person, creating a more open and spacious feeling.
To illustrate let’s look at 2 very different ships owned and designed by the same company. The first is a dandy vessel about the size of the Titanic (a dwarf by today’s standards). She is 48,563 tons (interestingly tonnage in merchant vessels have nothing whatever to do with weight, and instead measures volume. Don’t you just love the english language?), and carries 1,840 passengers. This means about 26.4 tons per person.
The other ship is currently the largest passenger ship on earth, and is 225,282 tons in size, and can hold 6,296 guests. This sounds like quite a crowd, doesn’t it? It works out to 35.8 tons each.
On the larger vessel each person gets 35% more space than guests on the smaller ship.
Larger is also more efficient. The bigger ship is over 4.6 times as large as the smaller and certainly requires larger infrastructure, but not as extreme as all that. On the smaller ship, almost half of the space is inaccessible to the guests, while on the larger that works out to being lest than a quarter. That means more room for fun.
For example, on the smaller ship, the tiniest cabins measure just 139 square feet, while on the big girl the cheap cabins are 179 square feet. A high proportion of the small ship cabins are this size, while on the large vessel, most are larger.
Bigger cabins are nice, and so are bigger dining rooms, entertainment facilities, theatres, and even wider halls. The actual mathematical calculation of accessible space means that the big ship has twice as much room per person than the smaller.
It actually gets bizarre. The crowds are LESS noticeable on the big ships, and the cruise companies actually have trouble figuring out what to do with all the room. They only need so many bars and pizza places. The last big ship we were on was only 2/3 the size of the giant in the discussion. For active folk, they not only had a more than adequate gym, there was also a full basketball court, mini golf, a climbing wall, tons of pools and hot tubs, and a flow rider (look it up), and an ice rink. For show goers there was a theatre with a full-sized stage and a company of 20 singers and dancers, several venues for movies, a dozen bars with entertainers and dance floors, and an ice show.
This all means that I don’t prefer little ships, and Holland America’s are on that end of the scale. They are starting to change this by going larger, but their ships that we’ve been on were not of the newer type. Even the new ones aren’t particularly big.
My 3rd place cruise line is Princess. They put a lot of work into their entertainment department and it shows. The food and service are good. They are also the only line that gives repeat customers a quota of complimentary internet. They also have an onboard messaging system that everybody can use.
They also treat their staff better than most lines do. They actually encourage husbands and wives to work on the same ship, rather than forbidding this as some companies do.
Their only weak area is in their quirky design philosophies. They have the worst buffet layout in the industry, and have 4 small unimpressive dining rooms rather than a single show-stopper. They also have deck sections that can’t be accessed from anywhere else on the same deck, but only by stairs or elevators.
My choice for 2nd best cruise line is hard, as both the remaining ones are wonderful. Celebrity cruises is my choice for this spot.
Their food is the most consistent, and overall the best. Their ships are modern in all aspects, and they have good shows, staff, and service. The ships are well designed, and have a few things nobody else has.
On one class of their vessels, the indoor pools are the best on the seas. The water is bubbly, and hot, and there are several waterfall downspouts. They are not scalding as hot tubs can be, but certainly hotter than any normal pool.
That means that my choice for 1st place is Royal Caribbean. Their food is excellent, and their ships laid out in logical, modern styles. They are the most beautiful of the ships. No detail gets overlooked. Nothing looks industrial, and everywhere there are examples of perfect finish work.
They have the best production shows, and are pioneers in the world of large ships. Not all of their ships are huge, but the largest 3 cruise ships on the planet all belong to them. Of the 10 largest cruise ships on earth, 7 are theirs. They use that extra space spectacularly.
This is all very subjective. We do a lot of our cruising in the company of our dear friends Lola and Bernie. Bernie likes Celebrity the best, and Lola prefers Holland America. My wife Helen says they are all equally good. Of course, my opinion is the correct one, but this shows how minor the differences between the lines really are.
