Royal Carribean vs. Carnival Cruises

[Anonymous]

Even the smaller RC ships have plenty for kids to do, and a lot of them have been retrofitted with the modern bells and whistles. Don't feel like you absolutely need to go on one of their newer megaships, you'll probably get much more bang for your buck on a smaller ship.

[Anonymous]

My teens like the teen clubs because they are social and they often plan fun events and competitions. They also like activities on board — disney has good shows, Norwegian has good music scene (dueling piano bar, pub style rock music live band, sometimes a Broadway musical). They like the rock walls and stuff as well but the lines for those are often long unless you time it right. I do wish disney had more active stuff like rock walls and decent water slides — their water slides all stink. But the teen club is good, as are the shows if your kids like that kind of show. My preteens weee bored by the disney kids club — I think their clubs are best for 13-17 or 3-8. They don’t have a separate club for tweens so the 11-12 year olds are bored.

The carnival ship we did was fine — the pool and bar are trashy but easy to avoid. The burger place and taco place are really solid and you can upgrade for some good specialty dinners. I thought food in main dining hall wasn’t bad though. The slides were fun as were the other active events. That was pre Covid though so don’t know if the food has declined.

The best food in RCL is the Indian vegetarian option. The crew is mostly Indian, including kitchen staff and typically head chef. There were a fair number of Indian-American cruisers on our cruise and they also seemed to enjoy the Indian food. I didn’t think the main dining room food was bad but our RCl cruise was Alaska and it was pre pandemic so maybe they’ve slipped.

If you’re really picky about food do something like the NCL club level (haven) — it has a dedicated restaurant and the food is good. Some of the Ncl specialty restaurants are also good (except the Italian one) and the main dining room isn’t bad in NCL.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My teens like the teen clubs because they are social and they often plan fun events and competitions. They also like activities on board — disney has good shows, Norwegian has good music scene (dueling piano bar, pub style rock music live band, sometimes a Broadway musical). They like the rock walls and stuff as well but the lines for those are often long unless you time it right. I do wish disney had more active stuff like rock walls and decent water slides — their water slides all stink. But the teen club is good, as are the shows if your kids like that kind of show. My preteens weee bored by the disney kids club — I think their clubs are best for 13-17 or 3-8. They don’t have a separate club for tweens so the 11-12 year olds are bored.

The carnival ship we did was fine — the pool and bar are trashy but easy to avoid. The burger place and taco place are really solid and you can upgrade for some good specialty dinners. I thought food in main dining hall wasn’t bad though. The slides were fun as were the other active events. That was pre Covid though so don’t know if the food has declined.

The best food in RCL is the Indian vegetarian option. The crew is mostly Indian, including kitchen staff and typically head chef. There were a fair number of Indian-American cruisers on our cruise and they also seemed to enjoy the Indian food. I didn’t think the main dining room food was bad but our RCl cruise was Alaska and it was pre pandemic so maybe they’ve slipped.

If you’re really picky about food do something like the NCL club level (haven) — it has a dedicated restaurant and the food is good. Some of the Ncl specialty restaurants are also good (except the Italian one) and the main dining room isn’t bad in NCL.

Most if not all RC ships have all of the bolded above.

[Anonymous]

You do know these two cruise lines have most (all?) of their Baltimore ships now NOT leaving from Baltimore.