Thread: Ship or Itinerary?

When choosing your cruise, which is more important--the ship or the itinerary?

I'd have to say 70% the ship, 30% itinerary.

Reggie

JMO -- Itinerary for us.

First is itinerary, then the ship. Still likely not to go on a "party ship" on school breaks.

Although it is sort of part of the ship, I am going to toss cruise line into the mix.

50% cruise line
30% ship
20% it itinerary

We always look at Princess first and except for our Hawaii cruise, have always found what we wanted on Princess.

I guess I would have to say itinerary is first since we did pick another line for that cruise. Also our Jan cruise coming up, we went for itinerary, this will be my third time on the Sun Princess. Baltic cruise was itinerary too.

I am thinking I will pick one for the ship soon as I would like to see some of those new ones out there!!!

So far it has been the itinerary, although we really like Princess.

Ship first, Princess Grand Class, prefer eastern 3 sea days, but will go anywhere the ship goes!!

Interesting question. I think the process I use is to decide on a time of year I want to cruise, find some areas of the world I would like to visit, then go to the websites of our favorite cruise lines (Celebrity, RCCL) to see what they offer. On Celebrity, I prefer the Millenium class ships, and would try Century, but probably would not try the other ships. I'm open to other lines (Princess, HAL, but not Carnival). Our experience on NCL was not as stellar as our other cruises, so we don't look there.

While I'd love to try the super premium lines, I don't believe they are in my price range, and once there, I'm not sure there is any going back!

So, it's a combination of line, ship, and itinerary.

Itinerary is by far the most important to me at this stage in my cruising career. I recently booked a cruise on Oceania simply because of the the cruise that they were offering. It was a 10 day Med cruise that went to Spain, France, italy, and Greece. That was the exact 4 countries we wanted to go to and it was 10 rather than 14 days. I didnt go look at Oceania first, its just that they offered the perfect itinerary for us.

I would be open to any cruise line or ship other than NCL, which I continue to hear disappointing reports on.