Best, simple cruise line?

Question

We've been on 2 Princess Cruises and enjoyed the ability to eat at the 24 hour buffets the entire trip (never set foot into a dining room, as the same food was in the Horizon Court Buffet).

We really liked the informality of the cruises, and the simplicity of the automatic tipping (both drinks and room/dining room tips...we canceled the dining room tips and raised the room amount by some since we were never in the dining room).

There was far more entertainment than we could enjoy, so altho it was a good time (especially the movies under the stars), we have no frame of reference to compare the other cruise lines. I saw in the news that Celebrity delayed a cruise 6 hours for a false drug alarm and their idea of compensating the passengers was to give them a lousy $15 credit. So they are off our list. We are retired and in our 50s and DO NOT enjoy dressing up. So what cruiselines do you recommend and why? Thanks!

Answer 1

IMHO, Any cruise is a good cruise.

I must agree that NCL would be your best bet for casual, but still nice atmosphere.

Research what people say about all the lines at cruisecritic.com

Answer 2

The contemporary c/l's (RCI, NCL, Carnival, Cel, HAL, Costa etc.) all have buffetts for alternate dining although only Princess is open 24 hours. The RCI Voyager class ships (Voyager, Mariner, Adventurer, Navigator, Explorer, Freedom and Liberty - all ending in off the Seas) have a location on deck 5 in the Promenade with sandwiches, desserts etc. open 24 hours. Carnival has pizza place open 24 hours. And there is always room service although the menus can be limited.

NCL freestyle is just that - go when you want where you want but as any land restaurant (and why I got out of the food business) every one gets hungrey at the same time so you might have to wait awhile between 7-8:30.

So far as the tipping for not using dining room goes, please know that those people also work the other venues for food so even though not in dining room, they do share in the tips pool for the service staff and the tipping should be something one just does. They all work very hard to take care of you.

Answer 3

Royal Caribbean is very similar in tastes to Princess. If you want to go to Tahiti try the MS Paul Gaugin, it's more country club style with no formal nights. Norwegian also does the eat when you want dining.How about a river cruise? Europe as well as the states has some good ones for a casual style cruise.

Answer 4

the second answer tinkertoy didn't mention that ncl has buffets also i think 24 hrs not sure on the hours go to cruisecritic.com and look at the message boards i've never been on a cruise before but am going on the ncl in january but this is the reason we picked this one so we didn't have a specific time for dinner well hope this helps good luck( ps you don't have to dress up you can even wear nice jeans they just changed this)

Answer 5

You need to go on Norwegian Cruise line.  They have pretty much all informal dining called Freestyle Cruising  meaning that you do not have to specify a dining option when you book your cruise and thus don't have a table and waiter assigned to you. "FREESTYLE" means you can go to dinner in the main dining room, or any other alternative restaurant, any time of the evening after 6:00 PM..  But you will have to reserve a time in the alternate restaurants.  It also means that you don't have to "dress up" for dinner, but just go "sports casual".  But it also means that you may be standing in line awaiting a table on some days (like we had to do a couple times).  

The option to traditional dining on NCL is their optional dining restaurants. However, these dining options can cost $5 to $20 a person for dinner each night.  The optional restaurants are very nice, including French, Chinese/Sushi, Tex-Mex, Italian, and steak house restaurants. We always skipped the optional restaurants and just got to the main dining early. That worked fine, except on "at sea" days when everyone wanted to go eat early.  We later found that we could reserve a time in the main dining room, but we still got a different table and waiter for dinner each night

Since you like informal NCL is the line for you.