Although this is not the ship I will be cruising on, it is a ship that I would cruise on if it were to sail a route I wanted to be on from New York. This post should help the novice cruiser in selecting a cruise by illustrating the decisions I would make in that selection process.
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Next year, I will be traveling to Norway with my partner. This destination is on many peoples' bucket lists, as the Fjords are breathtakingly majestic. We chose to take the cruise in 2024, as most of the scenic fjords will be off limits to conventionally powered cruise ships after the end of the year. This left us with a lot of questions to be answered, and choices to be made.
Given that we already knew the main destination, Norway, we needed to prioritize things such as departure ports, ports being visited, cruise length, cruise line and ship Many ships will be sailing the Fjords next year, so we decided which ports were musts and which ones were nice to visit. For me, riding on the Flaam railroad was almost a must (I am a railroad junkie). That limited cruise selection, ruling out a few cruise ships and itineraries. Then, not having pets to worry about, we chose a 14 day vacation, with 12 days being on the cruise. We could have sailed out of several European cities, London (Southampton) and Amsterdam being our top 2 choices. The former was picked, as I have family in London. This finally limited us to cruising on Princess, and not Holland America.
One might be asking, what other factors did we consider when cruising a cruise line, itinerary, and cabin type? Well, I've sailed on NCL, Holland America (HAL), and Princess lines in the past, and I consider all of them when picking cruise lines. MSC has a mixed reputation, especially on European cruises, and I didn't want to risk things on a once in a lifetime cruise opportunity. Each cruise line (and ship) has unique Norwegian Fjord cruise itineraries, and with much of our time to be spent in the Fjords. a balcony cabin became an essential part of our requirements - we wanted to view things from the comfort of our own cabin. Since all 3 cruise lines being considered have activities appropriate for seniors, I wasn't as concerned about life onboard ship as if I had been cruising with Carnival, Royal Caribbean, or MSC. (Royal tries to do everything on its ships, and I prefer older, smaller ships found on the 3 cruise lines I've sailed on before.)
You'll note that I ruled out MSC because of a lack of experience cruising the line in Europe. I place a lot of value in the reviews of ships and cruise lines that I've read online. Why is reading reviews and doing preliminary research so important? Well, if I chose a cruise on price and cruise length alone, I might have chosen a different cruise. At the time of writing, the following were the lowest prices cruises being offered:
16 Days: Jun 14, 2024 Southampton, England Caribbean Princess $1,394 pp
14 Days : Jun 15, 2024 Southampton, England Sky Princess $1,667 pp
14 Days: Jun 29, 2024 Southampton, England Sky Princess $1,667 pp
16 Days: Jun 09, 2024 Southampton, England P&O / Arcadia $1,777 pp
14 Days : Jun 17, 2024 Hamburg, Germany MSC Preziosa $1,909 pp
14 Days: Jun 08, 2024 Rotterdam, Holland HAL Rotterdam $1,979 pp
On the site where I extracted this list, the Princess and HAL ships were rated as 5 stars, the P&O ship was rated as 4 stars and th3 MSC ship as 3.5 stars. The MSC ships often give the best prices, but it caters to a multilingual European audience. Entertainment on their ships is known to be abstract. The P&O ship oozes British formality, and might feel a little too stuffy for an American cruiser. That leaves Princess and HAL at the top of my list. Given that Princess skews to a (slightly) younger demographic than HAL and offered a cruise both at a better price point and reached a port I wanted to visit, the Princess cruise won out.
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